The Power Of A Great Banner
They’re big and bold for big bold statements…
Big written statements need a big place to make the impact they deserve. No matter what you want to say, if you need to say it loud and proud there is nothing much better than a banner. Loudspeakers can be misheard, emails can be lost or discarder, websites can be blocked and people can be ignored. A banner is unavoidable, unmistakeable and can echo for much longer than anything else.
Here are some great examples of where a banner is irreplaceable:
Political
Politics is all about messages: messages of support, messages of intention, messages of anger etc. Every stage of the political process from the unrelenting election campaigns, right through to the smear campaigns that are inevitable for all but the cleanest of politicians involve big sound bite messages that the media and public lap up.
Banners in politics are especially powerful as they leave little to the imagination. Who can forget the devil eyes of Tony Blair from a Conservative billboard banner campaign? Not only did people see this, but the media splashed in on their front pages and carried it further than the graphic artist might ever have hoped for.
Protests
Following nicely from politics, protests are another area where banners have a big impact. Lost amid a sea of clenched fists, a big bold banner can easily be picked up by the television cameras and delivered to computers and TVs around the world in seconds. Protests are all about getting your point across and making bold statements that will hopefully be listened to by all who see and hear the protest. Cheap banners shout louder than hundreds of people and can carry more weight as its meaning lingers for longer than the last handcuffed activist hanging from a fencepost.
Advertising
A great advertising banner is worth a lot of money. Just as political and protest banners have an impact on citizens; an advertising banner or series of exhibition displays have the power to influence everyone who reads it into spending money on a product. (Or so the advertising agency hopes.) When an agency designs a banner to be used in an advertising campaign they need to think about everything including: who their target audience is, where they are going to put the banner, what they want the reader to do, how the message reflects on their company as a whole and so much more. Every detail is crucial as the power of a banner can also backfire.