Sometimes the advertiser uses the institutional copy to sell an idea or the merits of the organization or service rather than sales features of a particular product. Often institutional copy is also narrative in because it lends warmth to the organization. Service ads, such as ads of banks, insurance companies, public utilities, and large manufacturing concerns are the most common users of the institutional copy.
Advertisers use the narrative copy to tell a story. It often sets up a problem and then creates a solution using the particular sales features of the product or service. It may then suggest that the audiences use the same solution if they have that problem. Service advertisements are often written in this . For instance:
LIFE INSURANCE ISN’T FOR THE PEOPLE WHO DIE.
IT’S FOR THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE.
“It broke my heart to hear my daughter Dorsey say she wished her daddy was still here. But thanks to his foresight, we’ll still have the things he worked for”
Dorsey Hoskins’ father Bryan felt a tingling in his arm. The diagnosis—an inoperable brain tumor. He died six months later, at 33, leaving his wife Dean alone to raise Dorsey and her sister Hattie. Fortunately, Bryan bought life insurance when he got married, and again when his daughters were born. Dean invested the proceeds in her own clothing store, which gives her the flexibility to spend more time with her children.
Are you prepared? Without insurance, your financial plan may be just a savings and investment program that dies when you do. An insurance agent or other financial professional can help you create a plan that will continue to provide for the ones you love.
By using a dialogue/monologue copy, the advertiser can add the believability that the narrative copy sometimes lacks. The characters portrayed in a print advertisement do the selling in their own words, through a testimonial or quasi-testimonial technique, or through a comic-strip panel. All kinds of ads can use this body copy , if necessary. For example:
When I want a CD done right, I do it myself. Yeah, this machine rocks. It burns full-size CDs that sound totally like the original. It plays CDs. Records CD to CD at double speed. And records off of just about any source. LPs. Cassettes. The radio. It’s even got a text display. Anyway, now I’ve got my own greatest hits collection. The stuff I want to listen to. I’ve got to admit it’s getting better.
5. Conclusion
Up to now, we have analyzed language features of ads at three levels. Linguistic similarities analyzed in this paper and shared by all kinds of ads are shown as follows:
Ⅰ. Lexical features
a. One-syllable and simple verbs such as get and make are used.
b. Emotive adjectives are adopted to arouse reader’s interest.
c. Words are carefully chosen to make pun and alliteration.
d. Weasel words, such as help and like, make the use of strongest language possible in advertisements.
Ⅱ. Syntactical features
a. Sentences in advertisements are short. On average, a sentence consists of 11.8 words.