Top 10 Best Print Ads to Inspire Your Next Marketing Campaign
A brilliant print ad could skyrocket your business and brand image. Even though digital marketing is all the rage nowadays, print advertising still works. It might be exactly what you need to drive sales and convert prospects into buyers. For inspiration, check out some of the best print ads ever created!
Many people mistakenly believe that print advertising is dead. While digital advertising may be the preferred platform for businesses, running a print campaign alongside a digital campaign can net better results.
Looking for some inspiration? Here are 10 of the best print ads to get you feeling energized about your next campaign.
1. KFC’s Fowl Faux-Pa
We’ll start off with a doozy of an ad that recently made its way across the web from KFC Britain.
Last year, the chicken chain closed over 900 stores across Britain due to poor supply. Their solution? Come up with a crafty campaign that’ll get people talking.
They released an ad featuring a KFC bucket with its letters rearranged to read ‘FCK’ as a reaction to recent supply woes. While clever, people weren’t amused.
2. Pass The Heinz
Heinz’s advertising has always pretty strong, mainly because they let their products do the talking.
Their semi-recent Pass The Heinz campaign didn’t feature a single logo…just great photos of food along with the campaign’s slogan. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re getting hungry…
3. Paper Pregnancy Test
Ikea hit it out of the ballpark with their paper pregnancy test campaign. The ad was simple enough, featuring an IKEA baby cradle along with a bit of text up top advising the reader that, “Peeing on this ad may change your life”.
Seriously. The ad itself was a pregnancy test!
Better yet, if expectant mothers brought in the urine-soaked ad with a positive result, they’d receive the aforementioned crib for half-off.
4. Better Future Foundation Shows Us A Stark Reality
Better Future Foundation’s ad featured an astoundingly well-created mash-up of two women, one young and one older.
The image itself was accompanied by text that read, “Poverty knows no age”. It’s shocking, sad, and best of all, simple.
5. Penguin Audiobooks Saves Paper
Admittedly, this ad was a bit ironic since it was a print ad, but we’ll allow it. In an effort to push Penguin Books’ foray into audiobooks, the publisher released an ad with a large photo of a tree stump.
In that tree stump was the image of Moby Dick, the titular whale of Herman Melville’s classic, along with a note encouraging the reader to save paper by switching to audiobooks.
6. Stop The Violence
To combat the dangerous trend of texting while driving, Ecovia released a series of ads titled ‘Stop The Violence’. In these ads, models were punched in the face.
The fists featured sports cars on them while the models’ faces had semi trucks or other vehicles.
Together, the images created great symbolism of drivers getting hit head-on.
7. Pepsi’s Halloween
The rivalry between Coke and Pepsi is a storied one. And a few years ago, Pepsi upped the ante by releasing an ad featuring a can of Pepsi dressed as a can of Coke.
The image read ‘Have a scary Halloween’. Ouch.
8. StrongerMarriage.Org Encourages Teamwork
This ad shows that poster templates accompanied by simple, strong text can create effective print ads.
The background is a simple template of a cloudy sky. The word ‘ME’ is front and center in big, bold lettering, with dotted lines surrounding the M.
The text itself says ‘How to build a lasting relationship’ followed by instructions to cut the M and switch it to a W, transforming ‘Me’ to ‘We’.
9. McDonalds’ WiFry
McDonald’s announced its rollout of free in-store WiFi by shaping four french fries of decreasing size against its signature red background.
Together, the fries created the WiFi symbol. It didn’t say much, yet was instantly recognizable thanks to brand recognition through color psychology.
10. Lego’s Tribute To The Simpsons
One of the longest-running shows, Fox’s The Simpsons is quite iconic. So much so that The LEGO Group released an ad where they recreated the family using colored blocks.
It was cool, simple, and yet another example of how you can get your point across without even using text.
The Best Print Ads Should Inspire
Now that you’ve seen a few of the best print ads of recent years, the only question is how will you leave your mark?
Be sure to check out our business archives for more great tips on how to effectively market your brand and run your business.
