Apologies for the “gap” in blog articles… I have been working on another one of my passions: music composition (http://javierramis.com/Musica.html) and, as you can hear, I need to dedicate A LOT of additional time to get better at it! LOL
Entering into this article’s topic… In Advertising, sometimes (too many “sometimes”) the budgets are too small, the awareness goals are too aggressive, and the timeline to achieve goals is too short. You need to take a shortcut.
Making a TV Ad cut through the clutter and become memorable in a record time is possible, but it comes at a price.
In this article, I would like to share with you some fine (and not so fine) examples of TV Ads from around the world that managed to do exactly that: become memorable at the price of annoying the heck out of the audience.
Brand: HEAD ON
Agency: Internal. Dan Charron VP of Sales and Marketing
Why do we like it? In Mr. Charron’s words “Our Number 1 Priority is Recall”. Is it worth earning the general consensus of being “the most annoying TV Ad message in history”? The 234% sales growth in the year after launching this TV commercial is the clear answer.
The brand even acknowledged, and celebrated, the annoyance produced by its message in a second series of TV Ads. One of the few cases where a brand criticized its own TV commercials:
Brand: Quiznos (SpongMonkeys)
Agency: The Martin Agency won this account with a daredevil idea: using these puppets inspired by Joel Vietch (a TV producer for Channel 4 in the U.K.) to appeal to a young audience and become almost impossible to forget. Good job!
Why do we like it? Do you know the expression “it is so ugly, it is cute”? Well, this is not the case. But it is as memorable as spending a night in the House of Terror of North Augusta. A brilliant compromise of likability for recall, knowing that the brand’s young target demo would not reject the QSR based on the look of these creatures. Trey Hall, the Quiznos chief marketing officer could not say it better: “Quiznos needs to be “dramatic” with the airtime it buys, because it’s got a smaller ad budget than its competitors”. By the way, the “bring any coupon” is as fantastic as timeless.
Brand: Meow Mix – Purina
Agency: Della Femina Travisano and Partners
Why do we like it? A jingle composed by Shelley Palmer in 1970. I believe the commercial appealed to that natural instinct of cat lovers to find everything they do quite fascinating. The secret is that perfect resonance with the target demo: it is charming, innocent, harmless, sweet… extremely safe “humor”. The brand has recuperated this jingle through different generation of campaigns up to the new century.
Brand: Go Compare. “GioCompario” (The Tenor)
Agency: Chris Wilkins and Sian Vickers working without a Creative Director and an agency. Fascinating story. Two years later, the duo was called back to the brand “to resuscitate Gio” after the company ended their work relationship with ad agency Fold7.
Why do we like it? It was voted “The Most Annoying TV Commercial in Britain” for two consecutive years. The series of “in your face” commercials built popularity for the brand at a fast pace. The U.K. hated so much this TV commercial, that many wanted to “kill Gio” or “see him disappear in a black hole”… so the company partnered with the legendary British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking to satisfy this consumer request. Another great example of British humor at its best!
Brand: Mouse Computers
Agency: Unknown.
Why do we like it? I have picked so much on Asian TV Ads that I think it is only fair to recognize some of their best case studies. As usual, I would like to remind you that TV Ads need to match the cultural environment, so we can never be fair when judging a commercial out of its natural target frame of reference. This commercial does not sacrifice likability to build memorability based on, what can quickly become, an annoying message. It evolved the brand colors from orange and black to yellow and black (you would have never guessed it, right?). Partnering with popular music band Nogizaka46, the catchy music (even the audio mixing) perfectly matches the “aseptic” aesthetics. The cultural mascot likability and the “Anime” looks do most of the rest. The awareness growth accomplished by this campaign is forever part of the Japanese Advertising best practices library.
When you are willing to compromise affinity and likability to build quick awareness, you run the risk of missing the shot in both dimensions. There is a fine line between annoying-memorable and annoying-forgotten. Especially as more and more brand opt for this strategy and audiences get desensitized.
Here are two examples that, in my opinion, crossed that line, either failing to connect in any dimension with the target demo or building repetition with a technique that does not resonate with the core intended consumer:
The latter chose a brilliant evolution of the creative message, saving the best of the past (“coin test”) and combining it with a much more connecting delivery of the product benefits. Great example of the importance of fine tuning and optimizing the creative.
On the skirts of the last comment above, I would like to remind you about the importance of accepting and embracing the possibility that we can fail. This is not as a sign of our insecurity, but a phase and necessary step towards success.
We always say it, read it, but then many of us go to our strategic thinking process and start acting as if we will always get it right the first time. Because we are professionals, and “professionals should not miss a shot”, right?
Then reality strikes: the data is not complete, the target demo has evolved, a competitor is using a better strategy, a budget cut decreases the frequency without adapting the message strategy accordingly… or simply, we missed the shot! We need to embrace a phase where we learn from mistakes and, before that, the necessary phase where we make them. The better we accept this process, be open to talk about it, and have a system to learn from the mistakes and avoid them in the future, the better suited we will be to get closer to (but never reach) perfection.
Two reflections from advertising gurus on accepting errors, optimization as part of the marketing process and the true indication of the point when you have really accepted it as a principle:
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” John Wanamaker (1838-1922)
“A Principle is not a principle until it costs you Money” Bill Bernbach (1911-1982)
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I hope you like it as much as I do!
Until the next article,
Javier