I've started to get
irritated by ads lately since they are everywhere. Some reasearches
say that people expose to more than 40 000 ads a year. 40 000! That's
a huge number of ads. And to how many do we actually pay attention? I
cannot recall too many of them to be honest. Especially Australian TV
is full of ads – have you ever paid attention how much there
actually are commercial breaks? I'd like to run an experiment and
take time how many minutes they are showing ads during programmes. I
will report the results later. Moreover, it is more tricky to try to
capture people's attention since everyone's doing there own business
during commercial breaks – unless there's something really
interesting going on. ”You have to find your own pink elephant.”
-Paul Rogers
As we all know, ads have
different functions: to inform, to remind and to persuade your target
audience. Even though an ad is informative, it doesn't mean that it
should be boring. On the other hand, persuasive ads might end up
being nothing but persuasive. It's becoming harder and harder for
advertising people to try to come up with new, fresh and innovative
ideas, because that is what companies and customers are eagerly
looking for.
There are two elements
that appeal to me in ads: humor and emotions. If an ad is funny, it
makes me laugh and feel good, it is probably going to do the same
when others see it too, so I'll share it. Nowadays, when the social
media is a part of our everyday lives, it is almost too easy to share
those Youtube clicks. The more people share it to their networks,
lets say for 300 people for example, after a few shares, there's an
enormous reach – cost effectively. I believe that it is not too
hard to try to pursue managers when saying out loud the magic word
”cost effectiveness”. One of the best ads that will fall into
this humor category is the ad by Carlton Draught. There are familiar
elements that will from now on have new associations in consumers'
minds and will definitely be on top of mind when someone's feeling
like a can of beer.
Using emotions in ads might be an effective way to get your message through. I must admit that I'm quite a sensible person and when I saw the ad for quit smoking campaign, in Australia, I almost started to cry. Basically the ad asks what is more terrible than to hear the doctor saying that you have a cancer. The answer: to tell it to your children. Even though I've never smoked, it made me feel really emotional and really got to me. I hope it will also reach its target audience and not just anti-smokers like myself. Even if you didn't care that much of yourself, the ad might make you thinking about others and how your death would affect to your near and dear ones.
Advertising in its
traditional sense is changing all the time, e.g. facial recognition I
wrote about. Companies are also trying to create interactivity with
consumers and try to engage them. One example of are experiential campaigns, where people are actually in the ad either participating
or looking at it real time. This ad by T-Mobile promotes cleverly
their telecommunication services since people start sharing to their
networks what they've just experienced. In these kind of flashmobs,
people don't might even recognise that it is actually an ad and
therefore people don't be as irritated as they might be when just
looking at an ad.
The main thing is to evoke discussion: either your ad is funny and people share it or it is terrible – and people still share it. It might be even the purpose of the ad to annoy people and get them involved so that there will be constant buzz going on in the social media. But there's nothing in between. If your ad doesn't evoke any discussion at all, it's nothing but average. Strangely enough, I sometimes have the feeling about my posts being average since there are no comments. Maybe I should change my strategy and persuade readers in different ways. If you have thoughts or ideas, feel free to drop a comment!
What kind of ads appeal to you and why do you
think they are effective? You can for example leave Youtube link for
me to watch and write a few words.
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