slimmers world WAWAM! print ad

there's a sneaky feeling the slimmers world print ad is a client-developed ad, someone in the PR department or a clerk who knows how to do some basic computer graphics did the layout and conceptualization of the ad. it's that or the high school child of the the owner of slimmers world did the print ad like a class project in her laptop at nights.


this ad is so terribly done that i think they could have printed the ad upside down and it would have been as effective when it was printed right side up.

this is so bad that i refuse to believe this print ad was done by an ad agency or even someone who has some advertising agency experience. i don't think someone who works in the ad industry can do something as bad as this one.

the ad violates every principle one can think of in doing a design lay-out for a print ad. even an art department trainee or a copywriter trainee will not do an ad like this.

if this ad was done by an ad agency, this then is prime example on what ails the philippine advertising industry. this lay-out should be used by every course in advertising in all universities and colleges in the philippines under the heading : "how to screw up a print ad : what you should never, never do. promise!".

the print ad's layout reminds me of those tea leaves fortune telling where the tea leaves are thrown into a cup of water and it's resulting image is read to tell the fortune of a client. everything in this print ad does not make sense. there are many, but let's just mention a few as analyzing this print ad is making me dizzy.

• where in the world is the headline? it's supposed to be "world class slimming, fitness, face and skin by" (yes, the very top of the ad.), then you get lost, you think it's a typo as it's an incomplete sentence! hahaha. actually, if you do some very close scrutiny, you will see the completion of that sentence, "slimmers world". look closely, it's hidden on the next line, center page.


• the lay-out is a nightmare - there is no center to the print ad. every component is given almost equal prominence, that your mind will refuse to look at anything in the ad.


• believe it or not, they have crammed at least 8 products and services into that print ad and none of it you understand what they are. you know they are there but your mind is refusing to read any of it.

the copywriting is of no help either. with this kind of lay-out, you really don't want to read the print ad. but for the purpose of analyzing the print ad, i forced myself into reading the copy. and it's of no help. nothing spectacular or mind boggling about it. the copy lines they have are just like words lifted from a brochure or the manual they got when they ordered the machines and technology they use in slimmers world. here's a sample - what is the difference between "Buy 1 month, get 1 month free!" and "Buy 15 treatments and get 15 treatments free!"???? they mean the same thing, right? but in this print ad, they chose to put them in two separate sections of the ad in the most irritating large fonts. i don't see the point of separating them if the only difference is just "treatments" and membership. collapsing these two ideas into one would have lessened the extreme clutter on the layout.

they have a second layout of the same ad, above. that should have been cause for a celebration and some hope, but all they did was change the image in the center of the print ad, the rest practically the same - a palengkera print ad.

a WAWAM!