Project 6 — Advertising for Small Businesses

Think about how you first heard of a new film, a place you wanted to visit, a snack you wanted to try, or a campaign such as Swachh Bharat or the polio drive. Some of it came from friends and family, some from books and news — and a great deal came from advertisements.

An advertisement is a message, paid for or planned by someone, that tries to persuade people to do something: buy a product, use a service, visit a place, or change a habit. A board outside a sweet shop listing its specialities is an advertisement; so is a shopkeeper calling out ‘fresh jalebi, hot samosa!’ to passers-by.

Advertising has an important place in a market. A seller may make an excellent product, but if buyers do not know about it, it will not sell. Advertising is the link that carries information from sellers to buyers: what is available, where, at what price, and why it is worth choosing. For a small business — a home bakery, a tailor's shop, a potter — good advertising can mean the difference between struggling and growing.

Advertisements are of two broad kinds:

• Commercial advertisements promote products or services for profit — a toothpaste, a coaching class, a mobile network, a local bakery's festival offer.
• Social advertisements (public service messages) promote the good of society — keeping streets clean, vaccinating children, saving water, road safety, voting, saving through post-office schemes. Governments and non-profit organisations often make these.

Both kinds use the same tools: words, pictures, sound and stories designed to catch attention and stay in the memory. Because advertisements are so powerful, they also carry responsibility. A false or careless advertisement can mislead people into spending money unwisely or even harm their health.

In this project you will study advertisements with a critical eye — noticing how they try to influence you — and then use what you learn to make an honest, attractive advertisement for a real small business near your school.

People have always needed ways to spread news and attract buyers. In Indian villages and towns, a town crier would walk through the lanes beating a drum to draw a crowd and then announce important news — a royal order, a coming fair, or the arrival of traders with their goods. This practice gave Hindi the phrase ḍhinḍhorā pīṭnā, meaning to announce something loudly to everyone. Its modern form is the auto-rickshaw or jeep with a loudspeaker going round town to announce a film, a sale or a public meeting.

Many old ways continue today:

• Street calls and bells: vegetable sellers, kulfi-wallahs and bangle-sellers call out or ring a bell so that people know they have arrived.
• Hand-painted signboards and wall paintings: painted shop boards, truck art and wall advertisements for bicycles, cement or medicines are still common, and sign-painting is a skilled craft.
• Nukkad natak and folk songs: street plays and songs carry messages about health, education and rights, and sometimes about products.
• Melas and festivals: fairs bring buyers and sellers together, so news about good stalls spreads quickly.

Word of mouth is still the main advertising for many small businesses run from homes, workshops and carts: ‘buy sweets from that shop, mangoes from this one’. It costs nothing and people trust it, but it has limits. It spreads slowly, stays within a small area, and the seller cannot control what is said.

Print arrived in the eighteenth century. In 1780, James Augustus Hicky began India's first newspaper, the Bengal Gazette (popularly Hicky's Bengal Gazette), in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and it carried some of the earliest newspaper advertisements in the country. Later came posters, magazines, radio (from the 1920s and 1930s), television (spreading widely in the 1980s), hoardings along highways, and now websites, video platforms and social media, which let even a small seller reach thousands of people cheaply.

Whatever the medium, the aim has stayed the same: catch attention, tell people what is special, and persuade them to act.

The medium is the channel through which an advertisement reaches people. Each medium has its own strengths, costs and audience.

Activity: an advertisement diary. For one ordinary day, from waking up to going to bed, note every advertisement you see or hear. Look for the newspaper at breakfast, the jingle on the radio or a phone, the pictures on the school bus, the hoarding at the crossing, the poster on the shop wall, the sale banner at the market, and the advertisements before or within an online video. For each one, write the product or message and the medium. At the end of the day, count them and sort them into the five categories.

Most students are surprised by the total — often dozens in a single day. Many advertisements influence our choices without our noticing: we pick one biscuit packet over another because its jingle is in our head, or we want shoes because a favourite cricketer wore them.

As you sort your diary, also note who each advertisement seemed to be aimed at — children, parents, farmers, office workers. This idea of a target audience will be central when you design your own advertisement.

Why do some advertisements stay in our minds for years? One reason is that they are built around a few elements repeated again and again until we connect them with the product. The first two are the logo and the tagline.

A logo is a visual symbol that stands for a business, product or campaign. It may be a picture, a shape, stylised letters, or a mix. A good logo is simple (it can be drawn in a few lines), recognisable even when small, meaningful (it suggests what the business is about), and works in one colour as well as many. Think of the many emblems you recognise instantly on buses, packets and signboards without reading any words.

A tagline or slogan is a short, memorable phrase linked to the brand. Most strong taglines have between two and seven words. They often use rhythm, rhyme, alliteration (repeating a starting sound) or a simple promise. The Pulse Polio campaign's ‘Do boond zindagi ki’ (two drops of life) is a famous example: four words, easy to say, carrying the whole message. The same logo was used across India while the tagline was written in many languages, so everyone recognised the campaign and understood its words.

A tagline usually stays the same across advertisements, while a slogan may change for a particular offer or season. Using the same logo, colours and tagline everywhere is called branding — creating a recognisable identity for a product, service or campaign.

How to make a logo for a small business.

• List three words that describe the business (for a bakery: fresh, warm, homemade).
• Sketch at least five quick ideas — a rolling pin, a loaf with a smile, the owner's initials in a circle.
• Choose the simplest and test it: can a friend draw it from memory after seeing it for five seconds? Is it clear when shrunk to the size of a stamp?
• Choose two or three colours that suit the mood.

How to write a tagline. Write ten short phrases, read them aloud, and keep the one that is easy to remember, true, and says what is special. Try it in English and in the local language.

Most people glance at a poster or hoarding for only a few seconds. In that time the visuals must catch the eye and the layout must lead it to the important information.

Visual elements include photographs or drawings, human or animal figures, shapes, colours, the style of letters (fonts), and in videos, light and movement. Visuals also set a mood: warm yellows and oranges feel cheerful and festive; blues and greens feel calm and fresh; bold red feels urgent. Smiling faces suggest happiness; a mountain backdrop suggests adventure.

Parts of a typical print advertisement:

• Headline or title — large, at the top or centre, to grab attention.
• Main visual — one strong picture is better than many small ones.
• Logo and tagline — usually in a corner, the same every time.
• Key information — what is offered, special features, price or offer.
• Call to action and contact — what to do next, with address, timings or phone number.

Rules of good layout.

• Keep text to a minimum. A poster is not an essay; aim for a headline, one or two lines of detail and the contact.
• Legibility. Text must contrast with the background — dark letters on a light background or the reverse. Yellow on white or red on green is hard to read.
• Hierarchy. The most important thing is biggest; the next is smaller; the contact smallest but still clear.
• Space. Leave empty space around elements so nothing looks crowded; do not cover the main picture with words.
• Few fonts and colours. Use at most two fonts and three main colours, matching the brand.

A useful test is the five-second test: show your poster to someone for five seconds, then take it away and ask what it was about, who it was from and what they should do. If they cannot answer, simplify.

When studying advertisements you like, try to identify these elements and decide why they work — this is how designers train their eye.

Audio and video advertisements. On radio, television and social media, advertisements use sound and movement. Striking background music sets the mood, and a jingle — a short, catchy rhyme or tune about the brand — stays in the memory long after the advertisement ends. Some jingles become so familiar that hearing two notes makes us think of the product.

Audio-video advertisements are short, usually 10 to 30 seconds, because people dislike long interruptions while watching a match or a film. In so little time, every second must work: the logo, the main visual, the jingle and the message must be planned carefully. Count the length of advertisements you hear — note the start and end times — and ask whether the time was enough to understand the message.

Dialogue in an advertisement has a purpose: to show a problem and its solution, to make a character likeable, or to make us laugh so that we remember.

Connecting to emotions. We remember what makes us feel something. So advertisements tell little stories: a grandmother and grandchild sharing a sweet, friends helping each other, a young person achieving a dream, a family celebrating a festival. A recruitment advertisement may make young people feel pride in serving the nation; a road-safety advertisement may remind us that a family is waiting at home. Ask of any advertisement: what is the story, and what feeling does it create — joy, pride, care, excitement, worry?

Emotion must be used responsibly: it should support a true message, not frighten or shame people into buying.

The call to action. Every advertisement wants the audience to do something. The call to action tells them clearly what: ‘Visit us today’, ‘Order on this number’, ‘Bring your child for polio drops this Sunday’, ‘Go and vote’. It should be short, use an action word, and make the next step easy — an address, a phone number or a date. Without a call to action, people may enjoy the advertisement and forget it.

As practice, pick two of your favourite advertisements and identify the jingle or music, the story, the emotion and the call to action in each.

Because advertisements can influence what people buy and believe, the people who make them have responsibilities, and the audience has rights. In India, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), a self-regulatory body of the advertising industry, has a code saying advertisements must be honest, decent and fair; and under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, misleading advertisements can be stopped and penalised. You should follow the same principles.

1. Be truthful. Never make false claims. If the bakery uses ordinary flour, do not call its bread ‘sugar-free and full of vitamins’. Avoid exaggerations that cannot be proved, such as ‘the best in the world’. Prices and offers must be exactly what the owner will honour.

2. Respect copyright; avoid plagiarism. Pictures, music, logos and text made by others belong to them. Copying them without permission, or presenting someone else's work as your own, is plagiarism. Use your own photographs, drawings and words; use free-to-use images or music only where the licence allows, and credit the source. Do not copy a famous brand's logo or jingle.

3. Be sensitive to culture and gender. Avoid stereotypes, such as showing only women cooking and cleaning or only men fixing machines, or making fun of a community, region, skin colour or body type. Show people with dignity.

4. Take consent. Photograph or film the owner, workers, customers or products only after asking permission, and use the images only for the agreed purpose.

Personal safety during the project.

• Always tell a parent, guardian or teacher before visiting a business, and go in a group with a known adult.
• Meet in public, well-lit places during the day.
• Respect the owner's time and their work; be polite even if they say no.

Internet safety. Ask your teacher before uploading or downloading anything. Do not share personal details of yourself, your classmates or the business owner online without permission. Before posting the final advertisement, the owner must approve it.

An advertisement that is honest and respectful builds long-term trust — which is exactly what a small business needs.

Meeting an expert. Before making your own advertisement, invite someone who works with advertising to speak to the class. This could be a shopkeeper who distributes pamphlets and organises sales, a sign painter or flex-board designer, a teacher from a management or commerce college, a local newspaper's advertisement executive, or someone who manages social media for a business. Prepare questions beforehand, for example:

• What makes an advertisement interesting and easy to remember?
• Why do businesses spend so much on advertising? What effect does it have?
• How do you choose the medium — print, radio, television, outdoor or social media?
• What are the problems or drawbacks of advertisements?

Take notes and write three things you learned.

Finding a client. An advertising agency works for a client — the business whose product or service is being advertised. Your client will be a small business near your school, or even inside it, such as the school stationery shop or canteen.

• Step 1 – List businesses. Ask classmates, teachers and neighbours. Look for bakers, tailors, diya makers, toy makers, bamboo or cane workers, potters, hairdressers, cobblers, flower sellers, and fruit and vegetable sellers. Note why each might benefit from advertising.
• Step 2 – Divide the work. Decide as a class which group will approach which business, so that two groups do not go to the same owner.
• Step 3 – First meeting. Go with a teacher, parent or adult who knows the owner. Greet them, introduce each group member, explain the project in simple words, and ask whether they can spare 20–30 minutes now and a few short meetings later.
• Step 4 – Agreement. If the owner agrees, write a simple agreement (contract) in your own words, signed by the owner and every group member.

What the agreement should say: the names of the owner, business and school; that students will create an advertisement for the business; that photographs of the owner, shop or products will be used only after the owner approves them; that meeting dates and times will be agreed together; that students will share progress regularly; and that all meetings will happen with a teacher or parent present.

Writing an agreement teaches you something every professional knows: clear expectations, written down, prevent misunderstandings later.

A good advertisement comes from knowing the business well. Interview the owner — you have learned interviewing in your language classes: prepare questions, listen carefully, ask follow-up questions, and note answers in the owner's own words.

Questions about the product or service:

• What do you make, sell or offer? What is your best-selling item?
• How long have you been doing this work? How did you start?
• What is the price range?
• What makes your business special? Is it the price, the materials, how long the product lasts, the taste, the speed, the cleanliness of the shop, home delivery, after-sales service, or the skill passed down in the family?
• How is your product different from others nearby?

The answer to ‘what makes you special’ is the unique selling point (USP) — the one strong reason a customer should choose this business. A potter's USP might be ‘designs painted by hand by the same family for three generations’; a tiffin service's might be ‘home-style food, delivered hot by 1 pm’. Your advertisement will be built around the USP.

Look for the human story. Ask how the product is made, how the business began, and about loyal customers. These details give your advertisement its emotional connect and help the audience trust the business.

Questions about customers (the target audience):

• Who usually buys? Their approximate age, where they live (how far from the shop), and their work — students, office workers, farmers, homemakers.
• What do customers say? Have you changed anything because of their feedback?

Choosing the medium. Match the audience and the budget:

Prices vary by town and year; ask a local print shop and note the date. Elderly customers nearby? A board and pamphlets. Young customers across the town? A reel on social media.

Now bring everything together. Whatever the medium, the core elements stay the same. First fill a decision table as a group, writing each decision and the reason for it:

Share the table with the owner, as agreed, and adjust if they disagree.

Poster by hand. Posters are the simplest advertisements and must work at a glance.

• Title: write a headline that grabs attention — often a question or a promise.
• Visuals: list the pictures that support the message. If you use photographs, take them yourselves with permission; if any image comes from elsewhere, credit it.
• Emotional connect: decide how the poster will make people feel — a smiling customer, the owner's skilled hands at work.
• Colours and design: choose colours that match the brand and mood, with strong contrast for text.
• Layout sketch: draw a small rough version first, with boxes for each element; then draw the full-size poster lightly in pencil, letter the text using a ruler for straight lines, and colour last.

Digital poster. Recreate the same poster using a tool such as PowerPoint, Google Slides or Canva, with your teacher's guidance. Set the page size (A4 or A3), place the photo, add text boxes, choose fonts and colours, align elements using the guides, and export as a PDF or image for printing or sharing. Save versions with clear names.

Compare the two. Which took longer? Which was easier to change? The hand-made poster may feel warmer and more personal; the digital one is easy to edit, copy and share. Record your comparison.

Keep a cost record of every material bought and every print made, with the date and shop, and add it to the project file.

A video or animated advertisement uses the same core elements — logo, tagline, USP, emotional connect and call to action — but adds sound, movement and time. In a poster the logo stays in one place; in a video it may appear suddenly at the end, and the tagline may slide across like a ticker. The key message stays the same.

1. Music and sound. Decide the background music and sound effects that create the mood — a cheerful tune for a sweet shop, the sound of a sewing machine for a tailor. Use music you have made yourselves (clapping, tabla, singing your jingle) or music whose licence allows free use, and credit it. Never use a film song without permission.

2. Script. Write the dialogue, voice-over or narration. Keep it short: a 30-second video has room for only about 60–75 spoken words. If there is no dialogue, describe what happens in each part. A common pattern is problem → solution → call to action: ‘Shoes worn out before the exam? Raju Shoe Care fixes them in an hour. Near the school gate, 9 to 7.’

3. Storyboard. A storyboard is a row of boxes, like a comic strip, showing the key frames in order. Under each box, write the action, the words on screen or spoken, the sound, and how long it lasts. Four to six frames are enough for a short advertisement.

4. Design and animation. Decide which elements you will use — text, photographs or drawings, backgrounds, animation, jingle, music and sound effects — and how text and images will move: fade in, zoom, slide in from the left. Use movement for a purpose, such as revealing the cake slowly to build excitement, not just because the app offers it.

Making it. Film in good daylight, hold the phone steady (rest it on books or use a stand), record sound in a quiet place, and film each frame several times. Edit with a free app on a phone or computer under your teacher's guidance: trim clips, put them in storyboard order, add text, music and the logo at the end. Keep it between 15 and 45 seconds.

Show the owner every image and clip of their shop, family or customers before the video is finished, as promised in your agreement.

Professionals never release an advertisement without reviewing it. Before showing it to the owner, exchange it with another group and review it against clear criteria:

Add criteria of your own. Ask reviewers for one thing that works well and one thing to improve, then revise.

Owner's feedback. Present the final advertisement to the owner and ask: Would you use this advertisement? Why or why not? Note the exact answer. If they ask for changes, make them — the advertisement is for their business. With the owner's permission, help put up the poster or share the video, and later ask whether any new customers mentioned it.

Records. Your project file should include: the advertisement diary, notes from the expert, the signed agreement, interview notes and client profile, the decision table, sketches, the final poster or video, the review sheet, the owner's feedback, a cost sheet (each item, quantity, price, date, shop, and total), and a time log showing the periods spent on each activity.

Reflection. What did you enjoy? What would you do differently? What did small business owners think about advertising? Did you use learning from other subjects — art, language, mathematics for costs, social science for markets?

Going further. Plan a nukkad natak on a local social cause such as cleanliness or school attendance, with a clear message and call to action. Look for advertisements and signs made for divyangjan — Braille labels, sign-language videos, accessible signboards — and think how your advertisement could reach everyone.

Careers. This work connects to graphic design, copywriting, marketing, public relations, photography and video editing, social media management, sign painting and printing.