VISUALISATION AND MESSAGE TESTING AS TOOLS TO GUARANTEE QUALITY CONTROL IN MODERN OUTDOOR ADVERTISING

Abstract

Advertising has overtime grown to be widely accepted as a means of providing relevant information about products or services to its potential consumers. It is also a very effective method used to ignite a favourable purchase decision. However, modern advertising including ‘outdoors’ are marred with several visual and ethical challenges like: unclear messages, depiction of violence, obscenity and sexual overtone, surrogate advertising, subliminal advertisements, false and misleading advertisements, etc. which undermines and threatened cherished societal held values, culture, norms, heritage and mores. While some of these issues are deliberate and consciously intended by most advertisers, as a response to the fast growing but very competitive environment and over concentration on profit, several others are not being intended and often occur as a result of most advertising having a boomerang effects. This paper argues that most issues in modern outdoor advertising often occur due to ineffective visualisation and inadequate or total lack of message testing, hence, making most advertisements to fail from achieving its goal. It is recommended that proper message testing before, during and immediately after placement of the outdoor advertisement be done to ensure message clarity, effectiveness and ethical alignment to guarantee quality control.