Only 10% of an ad is what you see

It’s a new year and it’s time to get back to basics.

Take this ad for example:

The moment I saw this news service ad I got the message: “You see 10% of the picture. We’ll give you all of it.”

Two basic lessons can be gained from this.

Firstly, the right picture will say your message faster, more intuitively and sometimes more effectively than a tagline.

Secondly, like an iceberg, in branding what you actually see is only about 10% of the message. What’s more important is what is evoked. Fonts we’ve seen before, cultural references, the meaning behind colours, the context we view it in – these all contribute to a message. You need the whole iceberg in mind to create the 10% that is seen.

Image: Katherine Liew