Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

What's the objective? Whose website? Or is this a banner ad that's going to appear on others' websites? Why does it need to be entertaining? What are you trying to communicate, and to whom?

We need a lot more information if we're going to really be helpful to you.

As for the image, it all depends on what you're trying to communicate and who your target audience is. If the audience is individuals who are afraid of physical theft of their computers, then maybe it's okay. It depends on what you want them to remember and take away from your communication.

@Mgoodman:

>What's the objective?

Get more clicks and hopefully conversions (conference ticket sales).


> Whose website? Or is this a banner ad that's going to appear on others' websites? Why does it need to be entertaining? What are you trying to communicate, and to whom?


This banner appear in banner networks, partner websites, media websites. I hope that entertaining banner will stand out in the crowd of hundreds of other ads. I'm targeting pretty wide spectrum of business folks: corporate IT professionals, VC, start-ups, legal, academia and many others.

>We need a lot more information if we're going to really be helpful to you.

Much appreciated, you are marketing gurus, so I hope you'll be really insightful.

> As for the image, it all depends on what you're trying to communicate and who your target audience is. If the audience is individuals who are afraid of physical theft of their computers, then maybe it's okay. It depends on what you want them to remember and take away from your communication.

The idea with the image is just to spur the mind games, not an end version for sure, so please come up with concepts.
What needs to be conveyed in (1) is corporate fear of transition of their infrastructure to cloud due to allegedly 'more security' in on premise infrastructure. This is huge topic, so it's to explain it shortly. The objective is to show that cloud is not less secure than on premise.

For (2) it is same fear, but rather of legal implications of transitioning your business processes to the cloud. Perhaps here we just want to invite people to brainstorming and discussion.


For (3) we want to invite start-up folks who apparently fighting hard to get financing.

For (4) we want to attract venture capitalists, who are looking for better opportunity for investment.


The best concept that I envision is a combination of image and tagline, e.g. for (3)

Image: Tired programmer in the garage
Tagline: VCs doesn't respond? Get Funded at XYZ!

regards,
KS

The people in IT who are aware of Cloud Computing already know of the "names": Google, Amazon, IBM, HP, Microsoft, etc. A banner alone won't convince someone on the fence to suddenly choose you - a name they don't yet know/trust.

Are you convinced (via research) that FEAR is the biggest obstacle (not time, training, expense, availability, etc.)?

Investors won't be swayed by a banner ad - they want to see proof of return on investment. Do you have that? If so, showcase via targeted financial documents. VCs aren't looking for small businesses to invest in - think $50M not $500,000.

Jay,
Please read my initial question and clarifications, it should be sufficient. I know cloud computing pretty well and could give you entire lecture on topic, but reasoning isn't my objective here.
I don't expect millions in funding after people click the banner, just need a concept for a banner. :)

But a banner concept depends on the underlying assumptions, not simply something "entertaining". The better we understand these assumptions/needs, the better we can help you with a concept. Being entertaining for entertainment's sake won't produce the results you're hoping for.

Jay,
The reason for entertaining is that banner is positioned for targeted audience already, so I know that it'll be seen on, say, start-up related resource and by start-up folks. All that's needed is to attract their attention.

Both VCs and Start-ups need just limited number of obvious things (money, stellar investment opportunity etc), so the problem is in making a concept not too straight-forward, but with a twist, so that the banner is not lost in crowd or just ignored due to lack of attraction points.

If this is still too vague, please give me examples of what kind of model explanation would make you produce some good input. Perhaps we are talking on different languages, tell me a secret guys :)

Any feedback?
I still haven't got any good feedback.