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Advertising Will Have To Become More Specific. Confusing Ads Will No Longer Stand

June 5, 2009

TV advertisingThere is no way, absolutely no way that I would believe that the latest TV adverts for a hole number of new car models, including Citroen Picasso, Ford Focus and Ibiza SEAT, which tell you practically nothing about the cars themselves, would actually help boost sales of the vehicles in question. These ads are just about the admen getting too clever and making ads for ad’s sake. The customers obviously came second, or maybe even third in these advertisment campaigns. It was all about style over common sense.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the mentioned models myself. They may be very good cars, for all I know. But you cannot just come up with some fancy TV ads that tell you practically nothing about the product itself, and still expect people to rush to the showrooms to buy the cars you are supposedly promoting.

And that silly add with Alice Cooper and Bruce Willis and Ringo Starr and Elle Macpherson – all in one – for the insurer Aviva, formerly known as Norwich Union, does not really bring the message home. Who on earth remembers Alice Cooper, a faded pop star with woman’s first name? And the other ones are also not exactly having uplifting careers at the moment. So why use these people for gimmicks when it could have been more important so show some insurance salesman who would say that Aviva, formerly known as Norwich Union, offers some discounts or something else to that nature? Aviva does sound more like a crispy cracker but that is beside the point here.

There are loads of strange TV ads around nowadays but it is difficult to imagine that in times of a severe recession people would fall for slick and often confusing adverts that somehow manage to ignore the products that they are intended to promote. At a time when customers are becoming careful with their money the admen are still living in some fantasy world of an economic boom when anything goes.

I sometimes get a feeling that the advertising agencies are digging their own graves by making all those confusing ads. Companies can longer afford to be non-specific. The message has to be hammered it now: our product is good, it is value for money, it is better than the rest and here is how it looks and here is where you can buy it. Medium and small companies would now depend on targeted and very specific advertising even more. You get it wrong and you might go down, you get it right and you will survive. That is the stark choice you face as a businessmen.

There is talk about the big advertising agencies shedding its workforce and advertising budgets generally being cut. But in a recession the need for good advertising becomes even more paramount. This is the time when businesses not only fight hard to protect their share of the market but even have a chance of pushing their competitors aside. Strange as it may seem, but small and medium firms can actually have a go at the big boys, who have become complacent and think that old rules still apply.

Out go celebrities who have no idea about the products they promote and who have never been of any great use to producers of goods and providers of services. Out go fancy slogans that mean nothing in the real world and in come simple short messages that tell force customers to remember the product. An ad can be stylish and simple at the same time. It does not need to have a multi-million budget to get the message across.

The Internet is becoming a big billboard for adverts and is already taking over the market from newspapers and television. The cost of making brilliant ads would be lower while the target would be huge. We, at StirringTroubleInternationally, are going to start posting ads on our website from mid February and are planning to use out in-house designers to make ads for companies. We have a solid readership and most of these people are professionals with substantial incomes. So a good message properly presented is bound to bring excellent results.

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