As people who frequent pizza delivery services may have heard, “No One Out-Pizzas the Hut.” Pizza Hut is a well-established company with over 11,000 stores across the world, with thousands of people subscribed to their emailing services to gain coupons and the newest, freshest information about the company. With so many people to reach out with simply email, Pizza Hut stepped up its game in October of 2016 with an animated Halloween email promotion.
Pizza Hut Halloween Advertisement - Overall Grade: B+
ANIMATED:
This advertisement is simple, yet effective, especially for parents wanting to host Halloween parties or events. It grabs attention immediately by being extremely dark, contrasting a usually red and white color scheme that Pizza Hut uses almost universally as with their branding. The black is also a considerate contrast to the Halloween orange that is usually used in branding in October. Once the audience is looking, either the bright red text at the bottom will have them reading, or the scary animated red eyes that seem to pop out of nowhere will have them looking at the ad for longer than if it were simply a still image. The animated leaves that move across the image from right to left also keep the audience interested, and if they’ve finished reading the text, bring their eyes back to not only the image of the door but also the beginning of the text. A good addition to this advertisement would be perhaps having the door open slightly, or maybe having it slamming shut after the eyes look around, maybe adding creaking noises or a growl of some sort. I gave this animated advertisement a B+ for its creativity in design for a Halloween advertisement, and the quality of the animation that they’ve included. The best way to improve, in my opinion, would be to add extra movement to keep the reader’s focus for longer or to keep it memorable.
STATIC:
The effectiveness of this advertisement would be lacking if it were just a still image instead of an animation because some would simply look and move on, perhaps not even reading the text on it. However, with the small moving details, the brain gets distracted and will look to see what information it’s missing that’s causing the movement to happen.
The benefits of having animation in email marketing are more than just eye-candy, it’s psychology, and while I won’t go into too much detail here, it’s similar to what I just stated. Our brains instinctively see motion in order to protect ourselves, so when there is a static image, our brains will more likely ignore it in favor of one that’s moving.
This opens up a world of opportunity with our advances in technology, especially for the best marketing advancements. While some are content with static billboard images, innovators are creating interesting animated email advertisements. As these types of animated email ads are produced and become more mainstream, the importance then turns to not only if an advertisement is eye-catching, but also if it’s pleasant to look at, if it keeps the reader’s attention, and if it evokes the correct response out of who the company is trying to reach. With all of these attributes in mind, creative marketing strategies such as making interesting animated email advertisements such as the Pizza Hut one above are not only effective because they might look cool, but they have a psychological reason to do so. It is only through tactics such as these that the companies willing to keep up with the ever-changing field of marketing will be able to flourish.
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