Yeah - that was what brought the issue back to my mind and prompted me to start the thread.
Well, I’d say it sort of does - because the argument I’m talking about really seems to be based on an underlying dogma that the ads you really despise are in fact highly successful because they got your attention.
Currently in the UK we have one of those ‘ear-worms’ of an advert --its for an insurance provider called Go Compare. The ‘ad’ is so bad that it has got its own notoriety now --as to whether more people actually USE the company -well thats another matter.
That one is mentioned amongst others in post #3. Yes, it’s worked on me - in that I use other comparison sited, but am determined never to use that one.
Another one at the moment (which I shall not give the oxygen of publicity by naming) is the series of horribly low-budget ads featuring a supposedly wealthy and decadent gentleman who we are led to believe is some kind of expert in matters of credit. I want to punch the smug twat squarely in the face, but I will not patronise the website.
That one is particularly patronising - you can’t help but feel that a bunch of middle-class, well-remunerated creatives sat around in their Ideas Hammocks asking each other “What do poor people think rich people are like?”.
The Comparison Site adverts are interesting, because here there is of course a hard measure of success - the number of people visiting the site before and after the campaign. I know that the meerkat ads were ludicrously successful in boosting visits (although for one brief period, the spoof site was getting more hits than the real one). The Site Which Shall Not Be Named was quite clearly aiming for “quirky and fun” or more accurately “just like the meerkat one” and failed badly. I’d be really interested to see what’s happened to their website traffic since the campaign launched.
I only have my personal anecdote, but I used to eat at Quiznos all the time until they did their SpongeMonkey ads. After that, I stopped going in there. I guess a lot of people liked the ads, and the ad campaign worked well for them, but for me, it just turned me off of their food forever.
I am apparently alone in that I like the Go Compare ads. They amuse me. I think it’s the mustache.
The other one you mention, however, provokes exactly the same reaction in me as it did in you. I’ve managed to get past my desire to vent my anger on the actors, however, and would settle for setting fire to the trousers of the ad execs responsible.
The worst example in recent times IMO were those Gillette ads featuring famous sports personalities attacking a hapless customer (Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Thierry Henry in the UK, although I believe Derek Jeter replaced Henry in the US version or vice versa). There’s nothing like a company saying “We’re glad you like our overpriced products, but you’re not giving us enough money so please throw out your perfectly good razors and buy our new system which is also so overpriced that we can afford to pay some of the most highly priced sportspeople in the world to appear and abuse you by proxy. Besides, what are you going to do if you don’t like it - use a straightrazor? Ha ha!” to make you hate them. If any good at all came out of the Woods scandal (and the Henry one in the UK) it was that these ads went away.
I really like the Go Compare ads, particularly the cheesy joke that they always top it off with. As for the Experian ads, what else would you expect from a company whose business model is effectively just fleecing the gullible?
The razor thing is an interesting example of ads being too successful - for years we were told that the original razor was “the best a man could get” and dammit, we believed them. So much so that when they told us the new version was better, we just didn’t see how that could be true. I mean, how much better could razors get than “the best”. The answer is none. None more better.
Don’t you know? Every product has just now reached its pinnacle of quality. Razors, shampoo, laundry detergent, makeup, you name it. All these years we’ve been using imperfect products. Your old shampoo will leave your hair frizzy and dull, but the new shampoo (it doesn’t matter which brand) has a revolutionary formula that will make it strong and shiny and sleek. They promise. Never mind that they always say they’ve just reached their pinnacle of quality; this time they really mean it.
My dad’s a marketing professor, so I’ve been exposed to a lot of commercials and commercial theory over the years. One example stands out- an ad for a website that featured a gerbil being shot through a large model of the logo of the site. I have no idea what they sell. I have never been to the site. However, it’s been more than four years since I’ve seen it and I still remember, without hesitation, that the name of the company was Outpost.com. I’m watching a TV show on Hulu right now, and I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what the last advertisement was. But this one stupid commercial I remember, and so it’s more successful than the one I saw not two minutes ago.
“If an ad makes you remember the product, it has succeeded.” Certainly not. An ad has succeeded only when it influences you to purchase or use the product. But an ad that you remember is radically closer successful than one that you don’t.
There was a famous US ad campaign years and years ago (1980s, IIRC) featuring a Soviet-style fashion show, with the older dumpy female “model” showing off a series of drab outfits while an announcer droned on “Swimwear - very nice. Eveningwear - very nice…” Lots of people remembered the commercial and parroted the announcer’s lines. Surprisingly few could remember what company it was for. It became a textbook example of a memorable commercial that nevertheless failed.
Do you remember it? It was for
It’s entirely possible for an ad to make you remember the product but still have no influence on your desire to buy it. I can remember very clearly a car advert from years ago which miraculously managed to make me remember the maker and model of the car which I find extremely hard to do normally, as far as I’m concerned they’re all the same. So okay I remember ten years down the line that the product is a Volkswagon Polo, success! Downside is that I don’t drive and have no interest in ever doing so, and am therefore not ever going to buy one.
Same with all the car insurance adverts - doesn’t matter how good they are on making me remember who they are, I don’t need their product.
You don’t, but that means those adverts have a greater chance of sticking in the minds of other people, who might. As noted above, it’s all about increasing the chances of sales, not achieving 100% sales.
It’s been more than 20 years since that ad first aired so I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people don’t remember what it was for. At the time I don’t think anyone was unaware of what it was an ad for given that it generated some amount of controversy.
Absolutely. It was made by Joe Sedelmaier, who was famous (and rightly so) for his very effective FedEx and first series of Wendy’s ads (“Where’s the beef?”)
He took exactly the same creative concept he had used to develop effective ads, mixed it all together, and - voila - came up with a *memorable but ineffective *ad. Which just goes to show, no one knows what makes an ad work.
Someone said that 50% of an ad budget is useful and 50% is wasted, but no one knows which 50% is which. I suspect that since it is easy to see if people remember a product, ad people like using it as a metric as opposed to actual increases in sales, which can come from other reasons. There are plenty of flops we remember - most of us remember the sock puppet from Pets.com. Didn’t help much.
I don’t know if this ad fits the op or not.
On the one hand I can remember to this day an ad for Strand cigarettes because it was so dire but on the other hand it didn’t sell many packets of cigarettes either and it ended being pulled fairly quickly.
So the ad was a failure but I can still remember it.
FTR, usually attributed to 19th Century department store magnate John Wanamaker and phrased something like, “I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. I just don’t know which half.”
A similar example: Piels beer used the cartoon characters of Burt and Harry Piels, voiced by the immortal Bob and Ray. I have some on a DVD, and they are as good as I remember. I believe the ads did sell more Piels - in the short run. The problem was that the product was awful, and people trying it never touched it again and no doubt provided bad word of mouth, bad enough so some drinkers dropped it. Each successful ad campaign caused a short term spike in sales, and a long term decline.
So what does success mean? The ads were memorable, that was for sure. But should they have given some product advantages that would work instead? Would not advertising sold more in the long run?