I often watch TV adverts and can't guess what the product is until the end, when it usually appears. Sometimes, if the product never appears, I'm still none the wiser. Maybe I'm too old for adverts!
A couple of recent ads as an example: a cartoon character building a cardboard car - I understand the product but why would that ad make me buy one? I might even start to associate cars with flimsy cardboard! And I can't remember the model or brand.
Another advert features someone fighting clones of himself. I was sure it was an ad for a video game until a car appeared! It was something about "you're only fighting yourself" - why would that cliche make me buy a car? And I still can't remember the model or brand.
Are adverts really too subtle for me? Or am I simply not the target audience?
Not familiar with the adverts to which you refer Mulder but it does sound like their either bad or you're not target audience.Originally Posted by Mulder
Car advertising is an interesting case in point since the main aim of repeated TV advertising is seldom to get new customers - the focus is on cognative dissonance. The constant presence of an ad showing how swish your car is acts to reinforce your decision to buy and will increase the likelihood of repeat purchase.
In my old advertising days we used to play a game with adverts by removing the pack shot and getting innocent account executives to try and guess the product being promoted! They of course thought we were testing them whereas we were really trying to demonstrate how most advertising could be achieved at a tenth of the cost by just filming the pack for 30secs plus some nice music.
The other test was to run the show reel for the account execs - a dozen or so ads in blocks of 4-6 separated by a couple of cartoons (beats working!). We then asked them to describe the ads and name the products advertised. I still ask people who refer to an advertisement whether they can recall the product - if they can't all that expensive creative and airtime is wasted.
As soon as I read your first sentence, I thought of car ads.
Here is the best ad ever.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=891pmKoKGE4
I don't think the point is to get people to remember the product consciously. If they did that they might consciously avoid it because they know it has been force fed to them in an advert. The idea instead is that when thinking about buying something, one will see a row of brands on a shelf or in a showroom and the one featured in the ad will stand out, without knowing why.
Does that actually work...sounds a bit like uhh...whatcha macall it...with the flashes and the frames and, oh I'll get back to ya.
If I did that I'd not keep the business. Advertising is measured (in the main) on the basis of recall - prompted and/or unprompted.
On brand choice people seldom have a single brand in mind - the point of promotional activity (away from PoS) is to get your brand into that limited portfolio. Most people (when surveyed) are positive about advertising although they will tend to the view that advertising influences other people!
The best way to understand this is to look at a single brand - say Coca Cola. Few people never buy another brand of cola drink but the ubiquious 'real thing' will be in the choice set of nearly every potential customer. This would contrast with own brand Colas or competing drinks such as Dr Pepper. Advertising reinforces that position -which is why Coca-Cola spends so much money on it.
Car advertising is something of a special case - cars are our second biggest purchase (in value terms) and are a considered choice. this is why the emphasis of advertising is brand and decision reinforcement rather than sustaining a position in a person's brand portfolio. We advertise to increase repeat business and to promote recommendation - that's much easier than starting from scratch every time.
I know of no work that supports the argument of advertising working at the sub-conscious level and ideas such as subliminal advertising are widely discredited. Advertising works best (IMHO) when is has a very simple message and the consumer is battered over the head - metaphorically of course - with that message. It is repetition that builds brands and it does that by driving advertising folk mad (bear in mind we've had 6 months or more of that bloody slogan before you guys have heard it once and it won't start taking effect until it's been around a while and has sunk in!)
I see - I don't get car adverts because I don't own a car! It makes sense now.
I wonder if car adverts will have to change in the recession. Cars are an aspirational product in almost every culture in the world. So, I guess adverts don't need to sell the idea of owning a car as that is a given. However, sales of new cars have 'fallen over a cliff', according to the media, since the recession started biting. I guess the message will now be 'buy a new car rather than second hand (or is that pre-owned now?)'.
The problem is, cars have had very few innovations since they were invented, so there is little to excite people about new cars. Take away satellite navigation and anti-lock braking (neither invented with cars specifically in mind) and cars have hardly changed in decades. I realise that only a non car owner would say this but they all appear the same to me. So how does a manufacturer sell new cars now - on kilometres per litre?
Car ads have been getting worse of late, and the two mentioned in the original post (for the Audi Q5 and VW I believe) are typical lowloghts of the cuttent trend.
Anyone remember the brilliant Honda ads, like the Accord with all the components moving into one another, or the chap with the 'tache miming to 'The Impossible Dream'? Now that's how it should be done.
By the way, more is often said in the small print that breifly appears than by the nonsense you hear in the ad.....
As for best advert ever, I humbly submit...
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0a06gsiF4
Surely advertising is measured on the basis of how much of the product sells. I would find it odd if, say, the manufacturers of Fairy Liquid tested their adverts by asking a few hundred people in the streets whether they remembered the adverts, rather than simply checking how many repeat orders for the stuff they are getting from the supermarkets.
As someone who has been stopped in the street to participate in just such a brand recognition survey. I imagine the reason being that one particilar advertising or marketting campaign is one of many variable that affect sales volumes and market share. Such surveys target the effectiveness of an individual campaign.
To elaborate on Matt's observation.
It's a bit more scientific that that (we use a structured quota sample - similar to those used for opinion polling) but essenitally that is precisely how advertising is measured (or at least brand advertising). The overall promotional effort will use Neilson and other scanner data (mostly for assessment of market share which is what we're really interested in for most mature markets) but we can't easily separate out different elements of our promotional mix nor the inevitable inertia that comes from existing brand loyalty (and believe me we've tried). Pedigree once shifted all its promotional spend below-the-line with the result being a serious hit of sales - but they never disclosed how much merely that they decided not advertising was a bad thing!
On supermarket orders - contracts for big brands are agreed early and there is always a bit of an inventory war with the manufacturers wanting to shift product out of their facility and the supermarkets resisting. This (financially driven) situation makes it really hard for short-term effects to be reliably measured.
For cars of course the infrequent nature of the purchase means we can never really make the link between advertising and actual sales excpet at the aggregate level.
So a big thing is just keeping products visible. I fear this is why we paranormal researchers have to fight the 'spirit theory' of ghosts all the time. It is never off the TV, whether in horror movies or supposedly factual programmes like Most Haunted. By contrast, real research is almost invisible to the public and even most 'ghost hunters' (as opposed to serious researchers). Perhaps we shoukl try advertising.
Will religion suffer a hit from the 'probably' campaign and will it rebound once it is over?
No, we should make more TV programmes like 'Jonathan Creek' - a skeptics detective programme if ever there was one!
Religion is declining - the younger demographics in the UK show a rapid drop in church attendance, increased admission (if that's the right word) of atheism. But this is countered by a similar reporting of doubts about science (I'll try and find the polling to post it up).
Not bad.
Wasn't very big though.
That was a great show and a great idea.
Mythbusters is good too but not a drama.
It would be good to counter the many woo programs. (and have something to watch other than the endless crime shows. Do you get CSI over there? How many versions does that show have ???, there will be CSI Ulan Bator next.)
Actually, car adverts are abstract because the manufacturers are not allowed to make any claims about the speed or performance of the car any longer. However, consumers still factor those things as important when making a car purchase, so the manufacturers find abstract ways of conveying the impression of speed or performance that won't imply the car goes fast or outperforms any other car. Given how much competition there is, this is not easy.
So you get 'zoom zoom zoom' or whatever. Or the idea of a car being fun.
If the personality of the advert matches your own aspirations, bingo. You engage with that manufacturer and model. But no-one buys a car because they like the advert alone, there are lots of other factors at play. The advert is just to open a door.
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