It’s time to trade creativity for selling
Published on 02/15/2005 under Ad Strategy
In a recent issue of Adwee magazine, Cindy Gallop, CMO of London-based Bartle Bogle Hegarty Ltd., was quoted on the possibility that TiVo might spell the end of 30-second TV ads. Her view was that DVRs are only a problem for bad 30-second spots because “People still enjoy truly great, entertaining ads.”
And there may be some truth to that, because we all can cite a favorite ad or two that makes us proud to be in the advertising and marketing profession. But lurking beneath the surface of Gallop’s comment is a much bigger and more troublesome problem--namely that ads are supposed to entertain. I thought ads were supposed to inform.
There’s a big difference, you know. Too many young people are paid far too much money at huge ad agencies these days cranking out clever ads that entertain but give you little or no reason to actually try the featured product or service. Marketing managers have apparently bought into this myth because when sales fall below expectations, they simply fire one creative agency and hire another one.
Creativity is the name of the game, and creativity is too often defined by an ad campaign’s entertainment power. I’m wondering whatever happened to the carefully crafted selling proposition.
I’m much more inclined to agree with Advertising Age columnist Bob Garfield, who rated a TV spot for Dyson vacuum cleaners as his “Most Loved” ad of 2004 because it just makes you wish you owned a $400 Dyson vacuum cleaner. No clever lines. No special computer effects. No cleavage. Just straightforward, compelling information delivered to the camera by a guy holding a critical piece of the product.
I’m not saying that humor, drama and creativity have no place in advertising. I’ve seen them all used to great advantage in helping customers and potential customers understand why a certain product or service might be right for them. You can’t bore people into trying your product. But all too often, the humor and drama and creativity totally detract from the basic message the advertising should be delivering.
An example is a series of ads now running for Vonage voice-over Internet protocol telephone services. Each ad opens with a segment of “home video” showing someone doing something stupid, like snow skiing off a roof or going airborne on a snowmobile over a highway. The viewer then has to follow a series of quickly changing copy boards while listening to wildly distracting background music. In the midst of all this insanity is the message that you can make unlimited phone calls in the United States and Canada for only $24.99 a month. For someone who’s paying three times that much for limited minutes, that’s a pretty powerful message. But my brain is too busy recalling the attention-getting stupid human tricks while the selling stuff flies by at warp speed. It’s more than I can comprehend, much less take action on.
Several marketing publications have nominated Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” Web site promotion as one of the best advertising efforts of last year. (On www.subservientchicken.com, the visitor types in a command, hits enter and a person in a chicken costume does whatever command the visitor types in.) And again, I have to admit it was damn clever. It took a lot of brainpower and computer savvy to put that together, and it is mesmerizing, not to mention highly entertaining.
But the problem I have is it doesn’t make me want to pull in to Burger King as I drive down the main street near my house (and it just happens to be next to McDonald’s and across from Jack in the Box). Judging from the number of Burger King franchisees who are having financial problems, I think the objective ought to be getting customers in the door or drive-though, and not entertaining them on the Web. But that’s just me.
I’m also somewhat annoyed when I read articles about how marketers are shifting ad dollars to Internet vehicles away from traditional media because “traditional media is losing its effectiveness.”
Well, maybe. We all know there are more television and lifestyle magazine choices these days, and yes, digital video recorders might be causing some viewers to miss TV commercials. But for every multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign meltdown, you can find a minimal dollar infomercial advertiser achieving great success using the same medium. The difference is that one is entertaining, and the other is selling.
I’d also like to say I’ve got nothing against Internet advertising. If you are convinced you can reach a reasonable number of customers and prospects via Web-based advertising, by all means, go for it. But the Internet is such a vast frontier, it makes the real frontier seem quaint.
Like most business people, I sit at my computer (with broadband Internet access) at least 35 to 40 hours each week. There are probably a dozen Web sites that I visit regularly. If you advertise on any of those sites, I might actually see your message. But most likely I won’t.
The reason is I visit those sites to get information and most of the ads fail to grab my attention. I know they’re there, but my brain has become skilled at ignoring them. It’s like I have a built-in pop-up blocker.
When you get down to it, it’s scary how little I know about things companies are doing to reach people with Web site promotions and Web-based advertising. Many of these initiatives are truly innovative--like the Subservient Chicken. And I know people like to e-mail each other when they discover something new and exciting. But I also know that companies are clamping down on this activity to avoid exposure to unwanted viruses and spyware.
On the other hand, when I read about a Web promotion in a respected magazine or trade journal, or see something mentioned on a television news show, I’m more likely to try it. Why? Because it usually comes packaged with information about why my time would be well-spent doing that.
It all comes back to information. The purpose of advertising is to inform, not entertain. Maybe we should add that to our list of resolutions for the new year.