Rotterdam M. Amsterdam W.P. Slechts een uur via Gouda. Snelste verbinding Staatsspoor
The pattern
This still is filed under Image carries the claim.
Define
One image does the entire argument. Copy, if any, is a caption, not a second ad.
Mechanism
Pictorial claim. The picture is readable as a sentence. If we need a paragraph, we picked the wrong picture.
Verdict
The idea is visual and the surface is a poster, a feed, or a silent frame.
Why it works
The central device is visual proof of a numeric claim: two clocks and an arrow make the reader perform the subtraction themselves, and a conclusion the reader reaches is held far more firmly than one they are handed. The arrow supplies the verb, so the diagram needs no sentence to be understood. The same claim is then stated three times at three levels of resolution - clocks for the man across the concourse, the three-line shout at each side for the man walking past, the ruled timetable for the man standing at the board - which lets one sheet work at three reading distances. Restricting the whole poster to green, red and cream, and reserving red for every number and every claim, means the eye can find the facts without reading.
Steal this when
Steal this whenever the claim is about time, speed or duration and you would otherwise write it as a sentence. Build the before and after into a diagram the reader solves in one glance, then repeat the same claim underneath in progressively finer detail for the people who want to check.
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