When classified advertising surpassed every other form of advertising

Being a Marketing & Advertising graduate, I’m always intrigued and surfing for the best advertisements to have come up in recent times. Just a few days ago, I had the pleasure of coming across one of the most brilliant advertisements I’ve ever seen till date. I was surprised to see that the advertisement was in fact, a classified advertisement and sure enough, was drafted by a person who was a marketing graduate himself. Never before had I seen a piece of classified advertising so creatively made before I came across this!

This person wanted to sell off his old bike and put up a headline saying, ‘Recommended by 7 Ex-Girlfriends’! As if the headline wasn’t attractive enough, the advertisement had testimonials by 9 pretty girls on how the bike helped them during their dates with the seller. The testimonials were crisply drafted with a deft touch of humor and were also accompanied by photographs of all those ladies. The advertisement received a record number of hits on the local classifieds website and the bike was sold within a couple of days.

By sharing this story, I mean to imply that classified advertising can serve a purpose much bigger than what multinationals can achieve by using the power of television and the print media. The key to selling products is creative and clutter breaking advertising! There are a million ads out there but most of them talk alike. To stand apart from your crowd, you should do something different. Then no matter whether it’s personal classifieds or auto classifieds, you’ll be an instant hit!