Category — Advertising Philosophy

Let’s say you’re a marketing executive for a billion dollar company and an intern approaches you with an idea. She says, “I have the perfect commercial concept for our product. Let’s put a few kids together and have them dance with their backpacks.” You’d probably think the intern was crazy.

Or, back to reality, you might think I’m crazy for naming this one of the best TV commercials ever, but I really think it is. Here’s why.

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The best advertisements, whether TV Commercials or Print Ads, create desire within the potential customer. The goal of an advertisement is to motivate action. Nothing motivates action like desire.

There are many strategies for creating desire in the customer. An ad usually has about 10-30 seconds to accomplish the goal. During that time, here are 5 things that all good ads have in common:

1. Attention Grabbing
Catchy music, a beautiful woman, repetition, loud sounds, visual humor. These all appeal to basic sensory perceptions and if done right, they work simply because we’re human.

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Advertising Age currently has an article up discussing how traditional marketers and advertisers are struggling to predictably leverage social media marketing. The major point of the article is that the best social media systems have become quite good at avoiding repeatable manipulation.

But does this really prevent one from “getting a firm grip on social media”? At AdSavvy we have quite a bit of experience with social media and the one lesson we’ve learned is that to be successful, you need to 1) Adapt quickly 2) Get a feel for the psychology of users of the social media platform (learn what they like) 3) cater your content to the users and 4) network like hell with other social media users.

With these 4 steps, social media actually becomes quite predictable and can even be mastered. But that doesn’t mean being successful 100% of the time. Rather, it means building failure into your system, while doing everything in your power to minimize it. Michael Jordan can be said to have “gotten a grip” on the art of basketball, but that doesn’t mean that every shot he took went in.

One of the pillar strategies of marketing and branding is repetition. Repetition creates brand awareness. Brand memory is strengthened through repetition.

Most marketers use subtle repetition. A TV commercial here, a print ad there, a billboard somewhere else. That’s not what I’m concerned about in this post. Rather, I’m going to address the use of in-your-face, tacky, repetitive marketing (just watch the commercial above to see what I’m talking about) and whether it works.

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The goal of any advertisement is to convince the consumer that he or she would be better off with the advertised product or service. Some products like big screen TVs are very easy to market because they appeal to primitive human desires (e.g. clear, vivid, big high-resolution visual stimulation).

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Commercials such as this one from Cars.com rely almost exclusively on humor to grab the viewer’s attention and create positive associations with the product (e.g. car shopping with Cars.com).

In this Cars.com commercial, you actually see a secondary advertising method used, namely celebrity association (here the actor from the popular TV Show Bones is used). But this ad succeeds or fails based on the humor.

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Advertising is the business of telling stories.

TV commercials tell us a story - the latest Nike Mercurial Vapor IV ad tells us how the new Nike boots help make professional footballers faster.

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1 where were those legs? You’ve seen them– they go on for days. So, tell me… How did the producers manage to keep them off the monitor?

2 the woman was sitting down. The only time the world should be deprived of seeing such a beautiful creature standing up is if she’s on her back, or on all fours.

3 a little more action. A female as gorgeous as Adriana Lima needs to be seen in action to be fully appreciated. Crawling towards you, walking away from you…

4 girl has mad back. Here we have a specimen who possesses one of the most spectacular rear ends known to human existence, and also a few producers who somehow thought we wouldn’t feel cheated out of viewing it.

5 more cleavage, please. The girl’s profession is modeling bras and underwear for a living, so we know she can maximize what she’s got going on. Who’s idea was it to put her in non-cleavage-enhancing lingerie?

6 everything about her was understated. Considering every feature that she has is completely exaggerated, I feel that this particular portrayal of Miss Lima was just downright criminal.

7 that football she was holding obstructed the view. Not that anyone one would mind watching her play any sport… I just know that we would all rather see her stretched out across the goal line.

8 just hose her down. This is one thought that can instantly take you from mental image to full-blown day dream.

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Inspired by the original GEICO Cavemen commercials, ABC decided to launch a Cavemen TV Show. The show flopped miserably. The Chicago Tribune called it one of the worst 25 TV shows of all time.

Not surprisingly, the show was canceled. And GEICO decided they’d capitalize on the show’s failure by employing a little self-mockery. They aired this commercial during Super Bowl 2008:

The GEICO commercial positions the “real” Cavemen (from the GEICO commercials) as analysts of the “fake” Cavemen from the ABC TV Show, suggesting that the mistake was in using fake Cavemen who wore makeup.

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How do you rank one ad as being better than other ads? Is rating advertising an objective act based on measurable criteria or is it subjective, based on whether you liked the model in that commercial or not?

There are 3 simple ways to rate the quality of an advertisement:

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