"We don't make [any products], we make [a bunch of products better]"

Factual Questions
1

What in the world are these people trying to sell me? How is this company benefiting from these pointless (to me) commercials? Here’s how effective that ad is on me: I have been sitting here for almost an hour trying to remember the name of the company, and couldn’t. All I remember is an attractive couple speed-dancing on a carpet that [the company I can’t remember the name of] didn’t make, but some how made better. Yet this commercial must be making money in some way because it’s been airing for a long time.

More pointless commercials:

Car commercials in general. I have a decent car sitting the driveway and can’t imagine being motivated to rush out & buy a new one because it was just now featured on t.v. with hot babes lying all over it. Even worse, the sale only lasts through [whatever the current holiday weekend is], so I better grab my $30 grand and get out there now!

Cigarette ads. If I don’t already smoke, a billboard full of smiling white-toothed models (who are never seen smoking) isn’t going to encourage me to start. If I do smoke, I already have my preferred brand and wouldn’t be moved by the same ridiculous billboard to switch (I don’t smoke, but I base this statement on the numerous people in front of me in the checkout line who would rather go to a whole different store than buy their brand in a soft pack because the clerk is out of the boxed version).

Ads for Coke. I wouldn’t assume that Coke was out of business just because they stopped advertising, but maybe in this case they just don’t want to take the chance and give Pepsi any edge. It would seem like a smart move for the Coke & Pepsi people to get together and agree to get rid of all advertising. They’d both save bunch o’ bucks and both would suffer the same loss, likely no loss at all.

Ads for pet food that claim a better tasting formula. All us pet owners know that our dogs & cats will eat Brand X, and I, for one, will not switch to brand Y as long as Brand X is a big hit with the kennel. (Unless Brand Y is a lot cheaper, but a new better tasting formula is always more expensive- not less)

I’m no marketing expert, just an average Joe Consumer, so feel free to slap some sense into me if I have missed some fundamental underlying reasons as to why these ads persist.

2

Clearly, you are not an average Joe Consumer. The ads persist because you are not the average consumer (a bunch of other people are). The answer to your first question is: BASF

rocks

3

I define “average Joe & Jane Consumer” as people who are reasonably bright, on a budget and shop with a best bang for the buck mentality. I don’t think Joe & Jane C. are likely to rush out and buy a car because of the commercial that was just on.

That’s what I meant.

4

SHUT UP, opus!!! I do freelance graphic art, and it is hard enough getting work,without you telling my clients that advertising is pointless.

“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx

5

Ads for pet food that claim a better tasting formula. All us pet owners know that our dogs & cats will eat Brand X, and I, for one, will not switch to brand Y as long as Brand X is a big hit with the kennel. (Unless Brand Y is a lot cheaper, but a new better tasting formula is always more expensive- not less)
As an average Joe consumer, I am very impressed with Milk-Bone commercials. Their dog biscuits make excellent beer chasers, if you happen to run out of human junk food. I recommend the 5-flavor variety pack (the cheese ones are the best).

And, while BASF didn’t make the Milk-Bones directly, I’m sure they had a hand in making it a more crisper and tastier product. My hat is off to them.

…send lawyers, guns, and money…

       Warren Zevon
6

The purpose of commercials is primarily to make you remember the name of the product. A car commercial isn’t usually designed to get you to rush out and buy a car (except for the various “sales event” or “low financing” types). It’s designed so that, when you decide to buy a car, you’ll consider their car.

Same for Coke. If you keep hearing “Coke,” the next time you’re thirsty, you might think “Coke.”

It doesn’t work for everyone (for example, I detest all colas). But it works enough to increase sales. And if Coke stopped doing it, and Pepsi continued, then whenever you wanted a cola, you’d think “Pepsi,” which would be bad for the Coca Cola Corp.

“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.

www.sff.net/people/rothman

7

I used to work for an ad agency during my misspent youth.

Advertising works. You can measure the results of advertising fairly precisely, using sales increases, surveys, and market research.

Trust me, none of these companies spend millions of dollars without knowing exactly what they’re getting for their money.

The primary purpose of advertising is to get people to remember the name of your product. Some companies (Ed Barbara, General Manager of Furniture USA) intentionally try to annoy you to get you to remember your name (and I still remember Ed Barbara (accent on the 2nd syllable) after 10 years away from California.

The second purpose of advertising is to create associations of positive qualities with the brand.

Sturgeon’s law (90% of everything is crap) applies to advertising. There is a lot of advertising that doesn’t acheive the above purposes, but that’s just incompetence.

Since I have no memory of the BASF ads, and since I do watch a lot of TV, I would guess that the advertising is just incompetent.

He’s the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor, shouting ‘All Gods are Bastards!’

8

I’m with opus on this - BASF goes out of their way in those ads to say that the average consumer will never buy their products directly - so why are they advertising to us?

the only thing I could think of is that those ads seem are mainly on A&E, which has a lot of investment and financial services ads. Are they hoping to encourage people to invest in them?

and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel to toe

9

I’m sorry, I don’t have anything meaningful to contribute to this thread. However, the title reminded me of Zork: Grand Inquisitor, where the dungeon master says. . .

“Perma-suck. We don’t make things that suck, we make things that suck permanently!”
– Sylence

If a bird doesn’t sing, I’ll wait until it sings.

  • Tokugawa Ieyasu
10

I never understood the effectiveness of ads. . .except by way of concluding that they know such things almost never motivate me. So they design them for all those idiots out there, in a way that attracts idiots. :wink:

I pretty much only watch the news on TV, so I don’t have the broad picture of what goes on there adwise, I suppose. I’ll never have the money to buy a new car, but if I did, the sexy, colorful auto-body shapes, innovative digital imaging, utterly distracting rubbish, gimmickry and attractive countrysides would never influence me to buy whatever model is being touted, and I never remember what make put on the ad. Pretty much all new cars, of a given functional category, look essentially the same these days.

I often listen to classical or pop / “light rock” on the radio. The only remaining SF Bay Area classical station carries the most outrageously annoying ads that no other station would carry – which ads clash so much with the classical music that usually I douse that station within a few minutes, except during their relatively adfree times. I can handle, pretty well, the ads on the pop station, but I could never tell you what companies or even what kind of products/services are advertised there.

Some ads are great entertainment. . .only the first time you hear/see them, whereafter you often can’t stand them, and I think, others than I comment that they don’t remember what was advertised in such ads. I guess those are more fun for their designers though.

I never smoked, so cigarette ads never affected me (except as second-hand smoke). The only ads I see these days for cigarettes do not have “white-toothed models”, but rather, various kinds of grungy or dopey-looking people that today’s smokers can better relate to, and to whom the cancer-stick people can better sell.

I normally don’t get interested in soft drinks, but sometimes they work to loosen viscous post-nasal drainage I have from a nasal problem. For this use, I just note that they all taste sweet (but I don’t particularly care for, or like the idea of, the non-sugar-sweetened (diet) ones, and I prefer fruit flavors; so I just grab the particular supermarket chain’s cheap generic stuff.

I have no pets. I see those clever pet-food ads. You can handle them more than once, but not more than half a dozen times. I dunno who sponsors them. I never heard of BASF.

Mr john profiles himself as not of a graphic-artist occupation, but having an interest in it “by trade”. He says, “Go figure.” I went but I never could figure it. Well, at least he isn’t spamming us.

Bluepony: Use the guns on the lawyers and just send the money.

Whether Coke and Pepsi both quit all there ads or not, I’d still buy Safeway Select. . .and likely not a cola.

SingleDad:

Don’t some of these companies spend money on ads just because somehow that reduces their taxes. I never figured that one out, but I think some do.

I never heard of Ed Barbara or Furniture USA. Are they in SoCal? (I take it you meant ‘their name’ rather than “your name”.

Loud, rapid-fire huckster type ads turn me off very quickly. I wish I could remember what they were advertising so that I could deliberately avoid it.

So 90% of advertising is crap? I believe it.

I don’t know what A&E is.

Ray (I don’t buy any of it.)

11

Advertising is very important for many reasons. One is that it educates consumers as to the various features available in products. But another is that it provides feedback to the manufacturers as to what the public likes. If Nike mounts a big ad campaign to promote their new day-glo aglets and sales don’t move, then they know that the public isn’t interested. This is a powerful force in helping shape products that we really do want.

As for Coke and Pepsi, these companies can actually be described as marketing firms. Coke doesn’t own the bottling plants, the bottles, or inventories of syrup etc. It basically licenses the formula to independent bottlers, and then does all the marketing. That’s most of what Coke does. Just marketing.

12

IIRC, before 1945, BASF was known as I.G. Farben, the chemical/pharmaceutical cartel notorious for its support of the Nazi regime, the use of slave labor, and of course the supplier of the poison used at the death camps.

(The other two parts of I.G. Farben are today called Bayer AG and Hoechst AG)

In their case, the soft sell of advertising is probably for the best.

13

Although the position of BASF, Hoechst, and Bayer as heirs to I.G.Farben is not exactly something to be proud of, note that I.G.Farben was a state-sponsered monopoly. If you were German, and you wanted to be an industrial chemist, I.G.Farben was pretty much the only place you could work.

John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams

14

I think, mostly car ads are to make the purchasers feel glad that they just purchased the product, to ensure return buyers.
What I don’t get are the billboards for pallets that I see on the interstate. It seems like very few of the people who will see that will ever actually have to order pallets for something, thus rendering the advert. inefficient. What up?

Sweet Basil

I am NOT a hacker!

15

When the advertisers define "average Joe and Jane Consumer, they use the mode. I’m not saying that that’s not also the same as the mean and the median (and your definition is stretching things), but that’s the one that works for them.

rocks

16

This USC Business School article , by a marketing prof there, tries to combat the conclusion that has been found, that Internet Banner Ads aren’t clicked on. The implementation of their study seems Mickey Mouse©.

When I look at a Web page, I almost always only look at what I want to look at there. It’s not as if one couldn’t tell the info there from the ads. Once in a long while, there is some ad that flickers or moves enough that I’ll glance at it to see what kind of nonsense is there, and then immediately ignore it, because there’s no way to show enough information from such a small gimmick ad to keep anyone fixated long enough to pick up on what the ad is about. So the study’s appartus says the subject “looked” in the area of the ad, but that doesn’ prove (s)he saw anything impressive.

Why test that intermediate level anyhow, in respect to evaluating the overall result? To legitimately see whether such advertising realy works or not, you have to stock two different equivalent articles, but ones having no obvious difference in marketability, and then advertise only one of them on Web pages.

Ray (Advertising is great; it pays for things so I don’t have to. The thing it tries to sell me I’ll invariably buy from some other outfit which sells the equivalent cheaper, because they don’t advertise. Got no milk! I’m allergic to it.)

17

Hey, jti, I think you’ve hit it on the head. BASF’s saying “We’re successful when these major companies who purchase our [magic product improvements] are successful, so if you already buy their stock consider buying ours.”

The cheap flat-rate trading companies on the Web have greatly increased the number of small-time investors. These are the folks who watch BASF ads on TV during the time they save by not reading the Wall Street Journal. Makes me wanna go out and invest in BASF – they didn’t invent online trading, they just made it better.

Sure, I’m all for moderation – as long as it’s not excessive.

18

Hoechst is now Hoechst, Marrion, and Roussel.

–Tim

::merely a few miles from their plant, right now::

We are the children of the Eighties. We are not the first “lost generation” nor today’s lost generation; in fact, we think we know just where we stand - or are discovering it as we speak.

19

Nanobyte, you’re just a bundle of happiness aren’t you.

To the BASF commercials. I do see that their advertising pays off in spades, but not to the everyday consumer. TV ads are a special animal. Everyone can be reached by TV advertising, as opposed to newsprint and periodicals which is going to cater to very streamlined market segments. This is essentially why TV ads seem so wide ranging. For example, think how BASF makes its money. By selling its chemicals and processing techniques to large corporations making wide ranging products, and by selling their stock to investment banks, private investors, and whatever concerns help to fund their research. Its fair to say that the men responsible for soliciting BASF’s services will be watching TV, as will the poeple with money to invest. It is a calculated risk of course, and one could argue that there are more efficient methods of reaching this small but lucrative market without exposing to the deaf ears.

Lots of the commercials you mentioned are very effective. Pet food, for example, sucks in the pet owners. While true that many owners won’t switch brands. Everyday there a millions of people buying new pets and they need to decide on a food, and the loyalty they show once they start is valuable. Coupled with the new fads for health and carefully engineered foods that have trickled into the pet food market, the cautious pet owners are listening for the new food that is going to make their beloved pet healthier. From the numerous threads in here, it seems prudent to consider switching to some of the high end foods, so maybe it is bigger than advertising.

Cigarette ads probably do influence the young smoker not dedicated to a single brand. The fact that once they start with one brand they’re loyal for the rest of their shortened life. That committed buyer, who dumps $10-20+ a week for 30+ years, is worth advertising anyway possible to. One may argue that the advertiser only has one narrow window to snare the customer, which is all the more reason to overmarket and err on the side of caution.

Car commercials are effective, and don’t work like other ads. They are selling a brand name, not one product. When you see a ad for a new model, its more or less a promo for the brand, with the new model just a small addition to the quality of the brand name. This strategy is easily seen when the companies produce exotics that offer very little total revenue by selling only a few thousand cars and develop very expensive prototypes for show only even though they are never intended as production models. It’s all about making people associate the brand name with quality, technological advancement, and whatever genre you cater to.

Some ads that I think are totally misguided are most prescription medication ads. With a few exceptions where people have conditions they typically just live with and the company wants to inform them of the new treatment (ie Viagra). Prescription meds are propriatary and can not be copied, so there is no need for competition. I can’t see any way that advertising helps them, the doctor will perscribe them as needed, and advertising only promotes hypochondria. A doctor friend says that the government is thinking of banning medication ads.

My theory has also been that ads for douche, enema kits, hemmoroids, feminine dryness, toe fungus, or the other drug store items are wholly unneeded, if you have the problem…you will find the solution.

20

I have been a pet owner almost all my life, and a new pet owner four times. I each case I went to the Quickie Mart and bought one can each of three or four different brands. Over the next few days I would see which brand my pet seemed to like more. He made the decision, not me- and I have never caught any of my pets paying any attention to advertising.

I once switched brands because of a sale and wound up with a couple dozen cans of a brand that my pet turned up his nose at. Bottom line: my pet makes the final decision about what kind of food I buy for him.

Not on me they aren’t. 90% of the ads for cars I see are from Dewey, Screwum & Howe Car Dealership and if you want a rebate on [any of the six brands they sell], you’d better high-tail it over there in the next 48 hours. These are the ads that I question, not so much the Honda (or whatever brand) commercials promoting Hondas (Hondae?).

Even there, I tend to automatically disbelieve anything I see in a commercial. I will base my next car purchase on my past experience & recommendations of close friends, consumer reports & trusted mechanics.

I’m not sure I know what these are- where can I “easily” see them? Are they being advertised?