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The above ad is from the AIDS prevention campaign being run in Uganda. It was shared by Perry Marshall over the weekend. It stands out from the usual ads, and has an immediate on the reader because of its ability to directly address the target audience — middle aged men with the income and propensity for procuring teenage sex.

What makes this ad stand out? Some reasons I can think of are:

1. It is dealing with morals/values, where its possible to act differently in private from what we  accept in public.

2. It uses just a few words and that too as questions, which you will tend to answer within yourself.

3. The few words are supported by a carefully chosen image, which really delivers the full impact of the ad.

4. It puts you on the defensive; very few ads can achieve that. It makes you respond internally. So you are likely to remember it for some time.

These days we see hundreds of ads every day on the Internet and in print media. Our mind has been slowly getting trained to separate the signal (content) from the noise (ads). In the early days of the web, 1997 to 2000, there were not that many ads, and the technology behind them had no capability to geo-target the audience.

The above ad is a great example of a powerful ad.
See how you can use its structure for your own business.
– Shankar