What do we do about people hating ads?
Dave Trott often quotes the statistic that we don’t remember 89% of the advertising we’re exposed to. That suggests that there is a massive amount of built-in wastage that supports the effective parts of an industry worth billions of pounds a year. We create what we create in the knowledge that the vast majority of people won’t give the first or last toss about it.
Isn’t that kind of odd? And in the thousands of years advertising has existed the rate can’t have improved. That might be a result of the giant number of messages we’re now exposed to (after all, who could possibly take in 100% of them?), but still, we all pretty much hate almost all advertising. From the most expensive 90-second extravaganzas to the most bovine banners on the side of your Facebook page, if anyone asked you if you’d like to look at an ad voluntarily you’d think they were mad before telling them to fuck off.
Part of me wonders if that’s the reason some people in the industry are trying to circumvent the inherent dislikeability of conventional ads and are instead trying to create other things entirely: social campaigns that have little or nothing to do with the products they sell, books, tattoos on footballers… Aren’t they all just attempts to sneak ads past people who don’t want to experience the things that interrupt their TV programs? Is it the equivalent of smothering a piece of broccoli in Nutella to hide the taste? Will the public end up becoming inured to these new forms, then hate the industry even more for trying to fool them?
The odder thing is that there’s no consensus about the right way to go. Billions are pouring into annoying ads for shoes that follow you around the internet right after you buy a pair of shoes. Is that a good idea, or are the fake bike paints, TV series and pizza delivery apps better? Never mind all the clients who still think the best use of their money is to fill ad breaks and posters sites.
Perhaps we’re just ignoring a more obvious fact: it doesn’t actually matter where we put a message, or what form it takes, so long as people like it.
Isn’t that all that matters? All that’s ever mattered?
Didn’t someone say that if you have the temerity to invade someone’s living room (or laptop) and interrupt their viewing (or surfing) you should at least have the decency to be entertaining.
What have you done to your site Ben? It’s messed up.
I’ve changed the theme to try to stop the spam.
But it’s not really working.
I’ll try something else.
It’s now a horrible electric blue colour which hurts my eyes. Worst thing is you can’t see if people have commented without opening individual articles.
Writing is still good though.
If people like an ad it helps, but you can’t really steer that. I think the problem roots in the belief that there was a time when people liked ads (or liked them more), but now things have changed (for whatever reasons). And so ads don’t work and the solution is sneaky, camouflaged stuff that screams for likes. I think this is bullshit and the result of lazy thinking. If an ad doesn’t get noticed, it fails. The question of likeability is a futile one in my opinion. Punters don’t watch ads and reflect whether they liked it or not. They either get the message or they won’t. What happens after that is beyond our control. The price for getting noticed is that you can’t be everyone’s darling. Some people will like it and others won’t.
I agree Parvez
Parvez, I thought a long time about the ‘thing that matters’, and was going to put ‘has impact’ instead.
I think impactful, disliked ads do damage in the long run, hence the ‘like’ thing.
And thanks for the feedback on the new look. I’ll have another look.
These kind of discussions are difficult because advertising seems so varied in the way it works (or doesn’t), that everyone can tend to find individual examples to back up their own point of view. But I struggle with the notion of liked or disliked as a measure of success. I’m not sure an ad is necessarily unsuccessful if it’s disliked, or necessarily successful if it is liked. My own rule of thumb is to make sure you’re treating the customer/audience with respect and intelligence, and respect the time/space you have taken in their lives. There are tons different ways to do that of course.
I’m trying to think of hated ads that are still good.
Maybe ‘liked’ is wrong because there are plenty of brilliant unpleasant ads.
OK, I’ll go with ‘impact’.
I always like holding up the example of WeBuyAnyCar.com.
The original adverts were simple to the point of being mind-numbingly crude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-yEWZTBQ64. Low budget production, prime time telly slots, with a brutally clear message.
People really hated them. From their wiki: ‘Marketing Magazine voted the TV advertisements the most annoying of 2011, 2nd most annoying advert of 2010 and 7th most annoying advert of 2009.’
But they worked, helping to take the company from £52 million revenue in 2007 to £315 million in 2010.
Now they’ve got a much bigger budget, they’re trying to make ‘nice’ ads. And they’re crap.
It probably helped that they are in no way a lifestyle/aspirational/luxury brand. All they needed to do was get people to think of their name when they needed to sell the car. ‘Liking’ the ad/brand didn’t matter.