That Commercial Sucks!

OK, you have seen a commercial and you HATE it. So much so that you vow never again to purchase that product, or at least as long as the commercial is running. All of your friends hate it too. You hate it so much you change the channel when it comes on. 

But how do you know it really sucks? I guess you have to start with what would make it successful, and sucking would be the opposite of that. Or can it suck and still be successful? Can it suck (offend, irritate, repel) and still meet the agency's and clients' criteria for success? Are there unimaginable morons who would actually like this advertisement, and would buy the product in response to it? 

Probably. You know some people actually click on the "male enhancement" pop-up ads. And every year we hear about some poor rube who really believed there was a fortune in Nigeria waiting for him to claim it.

The goals of advertising are simple, but the results are impossible to measure and attribute precisely, which makes advertising and marketing a wonderful place for the inept and clueless to hide their incompetence. In which department are you most likely to find the CEO's nephew who took six years to graduate from college? Hint: it's not audit. 

But let's simplify for the sake of discussion:

Despite what the agency may say, or what awards the ads may win, the basic goal of advertising and marketing is to increase sales. If it does not sell stuff, or lead to the sale of stuff, you are wasting your money. 

Dale Carnegie broke the sales process down into several steps. Of course, he conceived it for direct sales, but it's certainly useful for this discussion.

1. Attention
   
2. Interest
   
3. Conviction
   
4. Desire
   
5. Close
   

"Close" is where the money actually trades hands - a customer comes in, takes the product, and gives you money. All advertising should either lead directly to a close, or get you nearer to the close by taking the potential customer to and across one of the previous four hurdles.

• Advertising should command attention (which is where some advertisers stop. They think if they get noticed, that in itself is a good thing. Hence the pop-up ads and shrieking car dealers. This is wrong.)  How many times have you heard someone smugly say "Hey, you may have hated it, but you remembered the ad. You remember who Jeffrey Daumer is too, but you would not want to have dinner with him. Advertising should commend attention, but do so in a way that leads to the next step - creating interest in the product or the company that sells it. If people remember the ad but it turns them off, it's a waste of money.

• Advertising should create interest in the product, which is only possible if the market is aware of it.  Positive interest means that potential buyers have a good impression of the company and the product. If one hates the company because of the ads, this leap is never made.

• Advertising should be credible, should make the target audience convinced it would be a useful purchase for them. Conviction means they believe in the company and the product, and also suggests trust.

•  The advertising should create or tap into desire for the product - make people want it. Sometimes people already want the product, and this will make them want it now. (Think car ads for new models. Car ads try to make the leap from attention to desire, assuming that people already are interested.) Maybe a price drop or loan sale means it's suddenly more affordable, but you better act now or the opportunity may be lost!  The "close" is to get the interested customer to come to the dealership, where the salesman can take over the process, develop the conviction and close the deal.

• The advertising should tell the subject how they can buy the object of their desire. Sometimes the "close" will give you a number to call, a website to visit, or an address to stop by.

Everything - yes, everything - should be pointed toward the close. If your advertising does not sell stuff, or lead inexorably to the sale of stuff, then it is a waste of money. 

So what's the issue? That should make it pretty easy to say whether an advertisement is good, or whether it sucks. Look at sales! Won't that indicate whether it's working?

Not really. There are many reasons it's just hard to tell whether an ad was effective.

• Time lag - long decision cycle: Sometimes ads don't work right away. The create awareness and interest now, leading to the close later. Sometimes especially with big ticket items like cars or furniture, the decision process takes longer, because people can't afford what they want right this minute. So the advertiser bombards the airwaves, hoping for a residual benefit in the form of continued awareness and interest when the buyer is ready to make a decision.
  

• Mix variety: Most of the time, advertisers have more than one medium in the mix. They are doing TV, radio and newspaper ads, and may be playing with Google ads. Say sales do go up, how do you apportion credit for the increase in sales? At this point, even the people in customer service will be claiming credit! Remember, victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan!

• Target Marketing: Say you watch a commercial, and it your opinion it sucks. You decide you have to tell the owner of the business and the agency that produced it so they will stop afflicting you with this miasmal piece of creative rubbish. What are they going to say? First they'll look at you as if you're amusing them with your silly, uninformed opinion. Then they'll tell you, "You're not our target audience."

And the thing is, you're probably not. We typically find commercials to be especially annoying if we identify with no part of it whatsoever, or we think it is insulting. Your opinion, in this instance, means very little to them because they never intended it to sell to you.

And since advertising is something that EVERYBODY has an opinion on, some will like it, some won't.

A key factor in one's identification with any commercial is its language. But we don't all communicate the same way - in fact, only 26% of us in the USA have a four year college degree or higher. If the commercial talks to college graduates on their level, it may be over the heads of a sizable portion of the population.

Dumb it down and you piss off the college graduates with its base simplicity.

Bottom line: You're not going to please everyone.

So how do you decide whether an ad truly sucks? Stay tuned!

Next blog post: How to use marketing research to create advertising and marketing that has the best possible chance of NOT sucking to the most people.

Click HERE to subscribe to Marketing Magic via Feedburner!!

Comments

[Amber Naslund]

Frank - outstanding post my friend! I often find myself scratching my head about ads that seem to indeed stop at getting your attention. Plenty do that, but precious few really establish a connection betweene me and a brand, and fewer still compel me to choose that brand over another. I'm so glad to have your well-constructed thinking in front of me and can't wait for the next installment!

[Karen Swim]

Frank, great breakdown of the process and one that had me instantly recalling ads I hate! LOL! I look forward to the next installment.

[Todd]

Great line that I will be using from now on, "Victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan!"