ADVERTISING SIMPLIFIED

That day, I was going through an article which says that 38% of US adults use ad-blockers in their mobile phones and 0.35% average display ad click-through rate. Furthermore, Havas Media Group UK has already frozen spending on Google and YouTube. Another research shows that general visitors of different webpages (in desktop version) cannot recall any brand/communication/contents that are placed in the right side of the website. Can you imagine this? So, what are the ways to overcome this? Many advertisers these days are coming up with some phenomenon infotainments, infographics, interactive contents, etc. through different media channels (both conventional and social media) to keep their customers engaged. But how successful they are?

I don’t consider myself as a creative person. Moreover, the marketing knowledge I have is the very basic. So, pardon me if I sound loud to you. In case of developing a creative/ad, I personally follow a simple theory. Trust me, it helps a lot. The theory is ‘A + B = C’ where, A refers to Attention, B refers to Benefits and C refers to Creative.

Every ads, communications, promotional messages, etc. must ensure both attention and benefits. And only then, I will call it a creative. These days, we see a lot ads/viral videos/promotional messages, etc. in different media channels. Stories of some of these ads are extremely powerful and sticky. I believe many of you will be able to recall the ad below:

Such a brilliant story! This ad went viral like anything. There were billion views and more than million shares worldwide. I, myself also loved the ad and watched several times. Last time I saw the ad is roughly 8 months ago. Now, if I ask you, how many of you can recall the ad? All of you will say, “Yes, I remember”. But if I ask you to recall the brand name, I think many of you will fail to answer. In fact, all in my circle failed. It is because this ad created an emotionally powerful story but failed to deliver the benefit and/or relevance. How the product is going change the life of a customer? This question remains unanswered. Therefore, the audience found it very entertaining. But, they didn’t find any good reason to remember the brand. In fact, the power of the story (to some extent) offset the brand itself. Hence, the story got registered in the minds, but not the brand. I call these ads “Film”.

And sometimes, the marketers get so obsessed with the power of the brand (or, benefits) that they forget to make the ad interesting for the Target Audience. Hardcore, end-to-end, precise messages are good. These the qualities I personally look for in a person as these make my life easier in many ways. But when it comes to product/service, I think we have no other options than to attract the customers through sufficient interesting ingredients. Bottom-line, we are no longer in the era of ‘Product Concept’. Come on! Aren’t you bombarded with too many info, ads and contents every day? To me, communication without adequate ‘attention grabber’ is nothing but a general announcers. People are not going to read/watch what is there if they don’t find it interesting within the first 5 seconds.

Other than the above, I think you can make your communications more effective by answering few additional questions. Answer the following questions and you will find out that the things are making more sense:

1. How much do you know your customers?
2. What do you want to achieve?
3. How relevant you are to them?
4. Are your messages consistent enough?
5. Are you overconfident about your media mix?

Bottom-line:

Several times I heard experts saying that marketing is all about common sense. Well, they are absolutely correct as long as you read your customers correctly. In addition to that, you should know your abilities, what are you good at or can be good at. So, act accordingly. Advertising, one of the key drivers of your marketing efforts not always need the best designer or copywriters. Rather it's about knowing what you want to achieve and saying the right thing at the right place in the most sophisticated way.