Getting a reaction

If on the graphic above you slide the arrow to the left, you will notice the letter C moves three places and makes the word reactivity. In the design and advertising world, this simple anagram is a useful reminder that your goals are to create visual messages that inform, influence, persuade and ultimately provoke a reaction. Audience reaction is a subject which often gets overlooked in a creative brief and is sometimes confused with trying to define who your target audience actually is, which of course is a different question.

It goes without saying that everyone is looking for a favourable reaction to their creative project, which might include building brand awareness, increasing sales or generating page impressions and so on. Even ambivalence can be a good outcome particularly when launching a brand identity scheme. Who will ever forget the negative reactivity generated when the London 2012 Olympic Games logo was launched nine years ago in 2007. While it was a near impossibility to introduce something so high profile under the radar, with hindsight it’s highly likely the organisers would have settled for a more benign reaction to the logo at the time. So be careful what you wish for.