Still Don't Beleive Me?

Nielsen recently discovered something. It's not new if you read my blog, just keeps saying the same thing, of the nearly 1,000 consumers Nielsen has interviewed to date, only a third could recall any TV commercials they had seen. Of course if you follow what I write, you know I often say how Madison Ave. doesn't work, how misdirected advertising is, and how millions of dollars are wasted on advertising that sells little, but wins agencies plenty of awards. And don't think what I say doesn't hurt me, it does. I have been passed over for work because of what I think, and have had jobs pulled from me midstream, all because I believe that most major advertising does little to engage a consumer. Now Nielsen puts another nail in Madison Avenue, and another feather in my cap.

Of course the answer to Nielsen's recent discovery, if you asked Madison Ave. is that consumers attention spans are getting smaller and with all the diversions like the web, etc, it's tougher to get your message across. Hey did you ever have a nail that you just trimmed that you didn't quite trim smoothly and you could feel it in your sock. It just snags whatever it touches. Even if the foot is bare, you know that nail is not correct and it drives you crazy. So annoying is it that you must immediately stop what you are doing and fix it, whether you have to use that clipper again, or if you can't find it, you'll even go as far as to bend your leg so as to bite it off with your teeth if you have to.

Wait!!! How did I get here? It was a demonstration. A demonstration of how I engaged you. If you've ever been in this situation you know how that improperly clipped nail can stop your life. I could have continued the story relating experiences and you probably would have continued reading because of the simple fact that I found a connection between most people and shared something that we can all relate to. Some of you didn't relate to my story and that is okay. If you didn't, I didn't fail, just didn't relate a story that worked for you. Advertising can't find 100% of an audience all the time, rather can only engage as many folks as are interested. And the rest simply aren't interested. Madison Ave. doesn't use that way of thinking. Rather they use the term clutter, breaking through, and creative to try to explain the same thing.

Here's how a major Madison Ave ad would have tried to engage you about that same foot problem. A man standing on a subway platform, looking uncomfortable. Images of people all standing around, well dressed, with plenty of color and camera movement. We see eyes looking at him, noticing he has a problem. He shakes his leg, squeezes the foot through the shoe and eventually when the train comes, is forced on it by the multitude of people all waiting for the train.

And there is how Madison Ave. would try to engage you; with an ad that might make you laugh, an ad that would definitely be entered in as many awards as it could be to falsely give the agency security as if they must be doing something right, and basically an ad that you can't remember. You'd forget it, because the agency's goal probably started out the same way most big ads do, an idea is hatched by some former graduate of a Fine Arts institute. Nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is that this person has two goals; to make something creative, and he does it within a system that is about being creative. In other words Madison Ave thinks that if something isn't creative and doesn't win ten of those awards anyone can pay to win, then it isn't good. They forgot that they are in existence to sell products and services and to do it in a way that benefits the client, not themselves.

The way I see it, advertising is mostly broke because it has a method for operation that is mostly broke. No one wants to engage people based on some sort of emotional connection, rather they want to engage folks by being creative. There is nothing wrong with being creative, but I look at most advertising as a person painting a picture. In this case, they don't choose to paint because they actually want to end up with a clear image. Rather they want to paint something that catches your eye. It might mean they want to use the brightest colors possible. Perhaps they want to shock you with an image. Or they might want to even use a canvas that isn't conventional. And what they end up doing is painting something that might catch your eye but doesn't touch your heart. No not everything you see touches your heart, it shouldn't. But I can say that my success in advertising has always been by trying to find meanings that folks can say, I know that feeling, or I've been in that situation, or I know someone like that. And with those examples, people can relate to what you sell. Madison Ave? They'd rather be creative and simply make a joke, shock you with an image, or have an elephant sitting in a room that is only 8 feet wide. And when your done watching Madison Avenues version, you might laugh, but odds are good that like the Nielsen folks found, you'll have no idea what was you saw other than that funny image of a guy trying to share an eight foot office with an elephant.

How do you fix Madison Ave? That is tough. Tough because most of Madison Ave is like an alcoholic that you just saw leaving one bar and heading to another, they are in denial. Recently I was relating a story of an agency job I did to a 15 year veteran art director. To sum up the story a story board was created by an art director who never spoke creatively to the person who wrote the copy so the words didn't work with the pictures. Most folks would shake their head to this kind of ineptness. And he did. But he then defended it saying, "That's the way advertising works!" And that's why it doesn't work and that's why making it work again is going to be difficult.

Ad Age recently published an article about a conference for advertising where as the author put it, the three folks on the panel really wouldn't say anything because they were all afraid of giving away too many secrets. So everyone did double-talk and skirted any questions. But there was one glimmer of hope. One of the panelists admitted that most advertising doesn't work and it would probably take an influx of people from outside of advertising to fix it. That's one of the first steps in recovery for the 'alcoholic' ad industry. At least someone can admit there is a problem. Now getting Madison Avenue to do something about it is going to require more intervention than we might be capable of. So, most of advertising will blame the consumer instead of themselves. And like alcoholics, Madison Ave. will use excuses not to see their own problem. It's always everything and everyone but me when your spiraling down and can't face the truth.

Who said it? Doesn't matter, everyone believes it.

I'd like to start out with a link:

http://adage.com/century/campaigns.html

That link leads you to Ad Ages top 100 advertising campaigns of all time. Look at it and you'll notice something interesting; very few of the top 10 are dated past 1984. Only three make it to near today with Got Milk ('93), Coke Always ('93), and ESPN Sports Center ('95) being the only three recent campaigns to make it close today's date. And even then they are still more than ten year old campaigns. What happened? What about all these award-winning ads I see and read about every week? Why is Creativity magazine like a clearing house for awards? Each week the magazine is filled with all sorts of ads that win all sorts of awards. Yet with all those awards you'd think that we'd have more of today's ads in the top 100, but we don't. The answer is simple, an award winning ad has nothing to do with an effective ad. And that is where most of the industry went wrong.

I was posting a comment on an advertising blog recently. The blog is filled with example after example of award winning, cute looking, and interesting ads. As I looked at them I saw lots of flash and color but little in the way of effectiveness. So I commented on how ads today are more about style than substance. And the blogs owner responded with one of my favorite lines. It's a line that no one can attribute to any author. It's one of those line that "everyone just knows is true". It comes in all sorts of forms. His form was in the words:

"sounds like you want advertising to look like advertising, you know, the stuff people ignore. A good ad comes about when you actually respect the customer enough to try to create something that will actually be of interest to them. I find your comments several decades outdated."

I really got a chuckle out of it. Especially the first line which is what I was referring to as the myth that every knows is true but no one can find the author of. I laugh at that line because advertising is about what connects you customers to the product, not some silly mural on a wall where you'd have to look awfully hard to figure out what the product is. And even if you do, does it do more than catch your attention, do you remember it?

I work with a great guy who has a great saying:

"For an ad to work you need four things. It has to be:

Noticed
Liked
Believed
Remembered"

I agree with him but I take his list and make it a single phrase - emotional connection.
If you have an emotional connection you notice the ad, you like the ad, you believe the ad and you remember it. But most advertising these days is about only noticing. And most advertisers think that if they make an ad that is flashy and stands out from the crowd, then somehow that qualifies it as an ad that works. I know that syndrome. Someone tells me about some funny ad they saw where they can describe not only the content but what color shirt the actors wore. Yet ask them what it was for and they say, "Um, it had something to do with cars, but I don't know what it was for."

WOW! That was an effective advertisement [sarcasm]. I see it a lot. I see a lot of ads that grab your attention but do little to make an emotional connection. And then again I see some that do make the connection. The Geico Cavemen campaign is an example of a good ad. There is one simple underlying truth that makes it work so well, that they are actually turning it into a TV series. It's that we can connect to these people. These people suffer the same ills and feelings of abandonment that we all do, consciously or subconsciously we relate to their feelings. Like working through the pain of your mother, getting back with an old girlfriend, feeling victimized, or very simply not fitting in. And the juxtaposition of a caveman in our world makes it appealing in some way because we all like to watch other groups suffer. It makes us feel ok to know others have it worse than us. That is the crux of what reality television is and why it is so popular. Do we like Donald Trump because he's some billionaire that we respect? No we like him because he oozes with dysfunction, and all the people they wrangle on that show do also.

So going back to this fellas comment about me [sic] liking advertising that looks like advertising, that myth that everyone thinks is true but no one knows who said it. I want to say he got it wrong. He got it wrong because I'm about advertising that works. And what is that? Very simply advertising that has something your viewers connect to emotionally, whether it be a person behavior, a song, a feeling you portray visually, or an overall look. No one cares unless you give them a reason to. Hence why so many ads don't stand out in the crowd, they don't give anyone a reason to pay attention. So to see an ad that is a huge mural on a wall that looks like some artist simply had a fun day rather than something that was created to give the viewer an idea of what you are selling is not a good form of advertising to me. Oh they'll enter it into Cannes and wait with bated breath for an award, but they disservice their client, and most importantly the customer with gibberish like this. Do people notice it, sure. Do they care, not really. Does it increase brand awareness? No, because most everyone that sees it has no idea it is actually an ad and even if they did, it's so out there, that it doesn't have any emotional connection to them so it does nothing even though visually it stands out. The ad spent so much time catching your attention that it forgot it was trying to sell something.


Sorry to say that most large campaigns these days do little to make a connection, rather they make ads that are more designed so that the agency can win an award because the myth that drives advertising today is that for an ad to work it has to stand out from the clutter. People who are successful in business will tell you not to worry about the competition, just do what you do well. But most advertising today is about standing out in the field rather than simply making a message that by itself 'cuts through the clutter'. Perhaps that is why most ads are not successful.

And that is what is wrong with most of today's advertising world. An award winning ad should not be confused with a good ad. They are not one in the same.