I don’t want to be a name dropper but I was waiting at Berlin station for the ICE (inter city express) to Munich when I spotted it!

“What did you spot, Winno?” I know you will ask after you overcome your envy at my international globe trotting.

Well, it was one of those electronic billboards which display a number of poster type advertising messages in rotation. The posters are about 2 m high by 1 m wide and coz they’re electronic you can use the space any which way you like.

And there it was… an absolutely brilliant photo of a penguin in front of an iceberg which occupied about 90% (the penguin not the iceberg) of the poster area. It was a fantastic photo of a very photogenic penguin.

But what was it advertising?

It took a little while to find it but there it was! Way down in the bottom right hand corner, in a fairly small sized font (in comparison to the height of the penguin!) was a photographer’s name and website.

So small it was easy to miss if you were hurrying past!

Now, yes I know, a picture is worth a thousand words but as David Ogilvy  pointed out… photos should always have a caption to spell out the message. And frankly sometimes a lot less than a thousand words works better than a picture.

This guy could have kept his beautiful penguin photo on the bill board if he’d just had a headline like “Your product can look as good as this penguin. 1800greatphotos or www.greatfotos.com”

By the way, about 12 words is the maximum number you can use on a billboard and less is more if you can get the message across clearly.

If you don’t tell your market what to do, you’re wasting your money. And remember, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of their market. You forget the curse of assumption at your own risk.

Oh, and another thought occurs to me (as I thunder toward Munich at 140 km/h!). Was a railway station the right place to advertise?

After all, this photographer was obviously aiming at the business market decision makers and the commuters hurrying off the train were the workers not the bosses. I’d have used different media to get to those bosses.

If he was targeting commuters, a great photo of cute kids with a caption like “Capture  your family when they are cute!” would hit the spot. But if he was really aiming for families then local area marketing (through the letter box, local paper or promotion) would be a better choice than a capital city railway station.

Now, where’s the wine list?