Information vs entertainment: away win.
I was recently involved in a debate about whether information or entertainment was the most important thing to advertising.
I was on the side of information, but as the debate went on I realised that these are the only two essentials in any ad, in fact any piece of communication.
In its purest form, information tells you something. It might be a reminder of something you already knew or it could be a real eye-opener that changes your thinking 180 degrees. Whichever it is, there is always going to be some form of it in an ad.
There’s obtuse, abstract information that you might find here:
(Budweiser is a good drink to have with your friends or while watching a game of football.)
Or explicit information along these lines:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LApWU34o0eY
(Dyson blah blah blah suction blah blah blah etc.)
But information is always there.
However, it can’t exist without entertainment, which in its purest form is diversion: if you don’t notice something, you can’t be informed by it, so it has to catch the eye/ear/brain in some way.
You might consider the Dyson ad to be dull, but if you were ever aware of it then it entertained you to some degree (possibly a very tiny degree, but a degree nonetheless).
This balance was brought to light in the comments section of the yoghurt wars post I put up last week. Dave Trott wrote:
Ben, I appreciate this is a very old skool pov, but forget brand for a minute. Which one tells you anything about why you should put your hand in your pocket (or purse) and actually exchange cash for that (word that’s fallen out of favour) product?
to which I replied:
Dave, To answer your question: YV; Muller is simply branded entertainment.
But then I think it’s difficult to judge either of these as conduits for persuasion or information, rather than just diversion. I hear Yeo Valley’s words and accept that, as they are organic, they farm in the right way. So far, so exactly what I thought before the ad. Muller tells me nothing, but then we all know it’s low quality yoghurt with a corner of chocolate balls or jam, so I would have been insulted if they tried to suggest there was anything more to it. They have a shit product and that means they have no choice but to try to distract us from that fact. Lipstick on a pig, innit?
The odd thing for me about Yeo Valley is that they add so much ‘entertainment’ to their communication that it almost gets drowned in the bullshit. They have something good to say, but seem to feel that it’s not enough, that they must put lipstick on something that’s already very attractive.
It then struck me that in these days of homogeneity of product, multiplicity of media channels/messages and reduced attention spans, entertainment will always win out. Hardly anyone has anything worth saying, and even if they did, the need to cut through is keenly felt. So you tell people your dairy products are well made but you do it via the medium of a two minute boyband pastiche.
For better or worse I suppose that’s what we’ve come to.
Entertainment will always win out *in the ad break of X Factor*
While packaging, DM, online, exhibitions etc all offer media space for brands to address different comms challenges.
I think it’s much much simpler than that.
If I’m going to interrupt your episode of Corrie, or The X Factor, or Embarrassing Bodies etc., the least I can do is entertain you a little bit.
And if I’m hoping to whisk you away from your web transaction into a deeply interactive immersive reality augmentation jamboree, then I’m going to have to be *incredibly* entertaining.
The pure information approach starts to feel a little bit like the Goebbels School of Marketing.
But in truly great ads the information and entertainment are inseparable. Using Yeo Valley as an example, what the fuck has a boyband got to do with the way they farm? The boyband bit is quite entertaining, the information bit is quite interesting but they’ve got nothing to do with each other which is why the information gets overwhelmed.
Leo’s point was first recognised by agencies (in this country) like CDP and BMP in the late 60s/early70’s (Smash martians, Fiat ‘hand built by robots’, etc etc etc, ad infinitum). What’s a space alien/boy band got to do with powedered potato/yoghurt? That’s called ‘creative tension’ isn’t it? Some things change, some stay the same.
But it isn’t information v entertainment is it?
There is a greater propensity to purchase if ads inform us in an entertaining way.
Ben,
I didn’t mean my comment to be a choice of one film over the other, just my opinion on how the discussion might go.
Instead of the subjective, which bit of film do you prefer?
(“I like the mad, random, one. It’s funny.”)
Try the objective, which one works better?
So basically there are two elements.
‘What’ are you doing (content/message)?
‘How’ are you doing it (execution)?
So Muller’s ‘what’ is market growth for snacks, their ‘how’ is crazy cartoons (probably aimed at children).
So the question is, do we think that works?
Yeo Valley’s ‘what’ is brand-switching to organically farmed and natural dairy produce, their ‘how’ is a boyband (presumably aimed at women under 50).
Do we think that works?
Budweiser’s ‘what’ is market growth for beer (Bud is way market leader), their ‘how’ is a funny catchphrase (lots of free media).
Dyson’s ‘what’ is brand switching (everyone’s already got a vacuum cleaner), their ‘how’ is information (= rational, sensible, clever brand).
Sometimes(as with Webster in TV or Abbott in print) you get both.
But that’s rare.
As Bernbach said “Execution is content in a work of genius.”
entertainment vs information?
ask Apple.
they know.
(and yes, homogeneity is poor excuse)
Dave, I must confess I thought you were suggesting there was something better about the Yeo Valley ad, but as we see, the end justifies the means and no matter how many blog posts I write about the method it’s really only the bottom line that matters (as in your German tank commander post).
And John, you’re right that it’s not one against the other. I oversimplified it a bit, but one often gets sacrificed for the other.
And Leo and Richard H: the pure information school of marketing must work to a certain extent (Dyson), so I’d put it that if the information is entertaining/interesting/diverting enough, then sometimes that’s all you need.
There’s not enough what and too much how these days. Why?
Demand drives sales. Sales pay wages. So we need to create demand.
Not sketches. Or clever puns.
Creativity too often gets in the way of this simple process.
Nick, your comments are uniformly excellent.
If advertising is supposed to be informative and persuasive. Then is the debate between content being rational versus emotional?
Their is much evidence to suggest emotional content gets better results than rational. And that people tend to post rationalise emotional decisions.
But I do wonder can emotional advertising be quite manipulative. Currently there appears to be much written about advertising being too manipulative doesn’t there? Especially those aimed at children.
He’ll never blow his own trumpet but this excellent post from John Willshire also touches on this area: http://smithery.co/marketing-2/adverspectacular/
I certainly sit in the camp that thinks we default to entertainment too easily but then, in a world of generic, ‘me too’ products with very little unique usefulness or interest to people, I also understand exactly why entertainment wins out.
Apple have been able to succeed with information and product heavy advertising simply because they make epic products. Most don’t.
Let’s not forget: “Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.”
to quote etc pp “advertising can inform you about a product, service or company. the art is to make and transport that information in a relevant and entertaining way”.
the yeo valley boygroup might be relevant to the target group (which i doubt), but its not relevant to the product, or the information it wants to transport. its not even entertaining. i dont watch xfactor, btw. the ad makes me dislike yeo valley. seriously. why? because they got something to say and prefer to drown it in wank. of course, it might move product. but who knows how much it would move if they would stop the wanking. sometimes, i get the impression its either too much information or wank. gorilla goes in the wank box. dyson in the former. but i am quite sure that information trumps wank. especially since most seem to be into nonsensical brand and entertainment nowadays, or even better, conversation, thinking the punter is impressible and gullible enough. but thats just a guess.
‘i am quite sure that information trumps wank’.
It’s comments like that that remind me why I write this godforsaken blog.
you can be as rational as you like if you’ve got a fucking great product (apple, dyson).
the emotion comes in when brands are commoditised, identical.
and often that stuff seems like pissing in the wind because we’re making stuff up.
the grail, i guess, is an emotional ad that is absolutely about the (great) product it is representing.
either that or build new digital products around the commoditised brand to effect long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with the people that buy it.
and use your telly to drive people to those amazing things.
like VCCP driving people to the O2 Priority Moments app that R/GA have created.
i think part of the problem is that too often ad folk define televisual “entertainment” too narrowly, ie comedy. and all the energy goes to simply getting/attempting to get a laugh. and nothing else.
another problem is we frequently start from the assumption that all products are unspeakably dull and we must frantically compensate for this.
dysons are kind of cool.
The only issue we’ve got these days is how do we stop people using using your ad as a reason to go and have an almighty great piss, or text or tweet or facebook or wank or shop or download.