Do not underestimate the power of design

Delivering eye candy is an important pillar to support contemporary communications. In these roaring, digital times with information popping up from everywhere, it is essential to express yourself in unique ways. In other words: definitely do not underestimate the power of design.

Do not underestimate design because it is capable to boost the effectiveness of your communications and campaigns at first sight. No one is going to dive deeper into your campaign if they don’t see it. As our marketing idol Seth Godin states: “be remarkable or be invisible”. Creating triggering imagery is more important than ever before: It is the key to grab your readers and consumers by the throat immediately. Living in a digitalised world provides a massive amount of pulses, so: be extraordinary in your presentation (aside of being extraordinary as a company, of course). More and more services and products are screaming for your attention, so average or standard isn’t good enough anymore. Not just in the real world, but in the digital world as well.

We open up our smartphones each 5.6 minutes, so the modern marketer has a great opportunity to get personal there and to create awareness several times a day. But if you make bad design choices, the mobile user will be remembered to your bad choices frequently. American executive, designer and technologist John Maeda already said in 2015: ‘Design is more integral to good business than ever before.’ 

That’s what Zlatan Ibrahimović thought as well. The perfect example of how introduce yourself in an incredibly appropriate way is the announcement of Zlatan Ibrahimović at LA Galaxy. Of course, his recent transfer to LA has been accompanied by an easily shareable, spectacular video and an appropriate hashtag: #zLAtan. Things you definitely would expect in times like these. On the other hand, something remarkable happened when LA civilians started reading their local newspaper in the morning.

The legendary, characteristic football player from Sweden bought a full-page advertisement in the Los Angeles Times to announce his move to LA Galaxy. ‘Dear Los Angeles, you’re welcome.’ This piece of work represents Zlatan’s heroic behaviour, sense of humor and personality in an outstanding way, combined with a lay-out that is recognisable since the sixties. For example, take a look at the Volkswagen advertisement (one of the most well-known advertisements in the Volkswagen Beetle campaign, created by Helmut Krone) below and compare for yourself. Zlatan did what Volkswagen did many years before: he told the readers a lot with a minimum amount of words and very, very clean design. He asked for attention by delivering a page that is empty for 80%. Less is more.

Of course, the Scandinavian phenomenon has done more than enough extraordinary PR in the past, but this advertisement really did something special. Result: The advertisement has been picked up by many online sports and mainstream media outlets all around the globe. Afterwards, he scored two goals, including the winning goal during his debut for LA Galaxy. No single word on that newspaper page has been a lie, while Zlatan released the following statement: ‘I’m not arrogant, I’m confident.’