Junie Chow's Blog

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In this day and age it takes a lot of effort to attract potential consumers to an advertisement. So marketers are always coming up with new methods of advertising that are hopefully effective. New and effective advertisements need to stand out from the crowd of regular formats; they need differentiate themselves. How about using the crossword puzzles in the daily newspapers?

Now you probably are wondering what I mean by this. Well it’s pretty easy. What you do is just simply have the word associated with a company or product or whatever you want to advertise be the answer to one of the riddles. So this way people must see (and write) the ad if they want to completely and correctly solve the whole crossword. Creative isn’t it? This is exactly what a company did in Brazil, as mentioned in a recent article in adweek.blogs.com/adfreak. The advertisement was for a department store called “Magazine Luiza” and it was mainly targeted to seniors to announce to them of the relevant benefits that they can receive in the store. In Brazil, as the article states, retirees make up the majority of people who do the daily crosswords. So, this is a smart tactic in regards to where the ad was placed, since placing the ad in the crossword will reach their target group better.

I think it’s an effective way to get the store’s name into a person’s head (and retrieval set) because they actually have to write the store’s name rather than simply reading it. However, the ad wouldn’t work if the person couldn’t figure out the answer from the clue. Overall, this method is unique and it’s always interesting to see new ways of advertising.