We live in an advertising saturated society. We all think we hate “pushy” advertising. When you see a commercial with a slightly crazed salesman screaming about the best price they’ve ever offered on new cars, you change the channel.
“Screw that. I’ve seen it before. It’s boring.”
And you’re right…
You have seen it before and it is boring. But you also aren’t looking for a new car.
If your car had just been totaled and you had a fat insurance check in your hand you wouldn’t change the channel.
You’ve still seen it before and still looks tired and overdone. But you pay attention to that commercial from beginning to end because it’s directly addressing your need.
The commercial ends with the salesman saying (screaming) “come down to the intersection of routes 1 and 2 right now! These deals are too hot to last!”
If the deals really are good, you may just end up hopping in a cab and heading over to that dealership to take that shiny new car for a test drive. In your mind you can already see yourself pulling up to the intersections of route 1 and 2. Your need is pressing and since it’s pressing to you, it’s probably pressing to other people who are in your situation. The cars really may not last. Better get over there.
This kind of advertising represents about half of the car ads you see on TV.
But there are other kinds of ads out there that want to sell to the exact same audience- You. The guy or gal who doesn’t have a car and needs one yesterday.
This commercial takes a different approach. They want to be different. They want everyone to watch their commercials in the hopes that they’ll get the attention of both the people who need a car right now and the people who will need a car in a few months.
So what technique can they use to do that?
Be Entertaining. Either funny, witty, dramatic… whatever.
People also watch those commercials from beginning to end.
Great! Mission accomplished, right?
No, actually. they haven’t done much of anything.
Getting attention is a huge part of the equation of selling anything. They can’t sell if nobody knows they exist.
But if all their commercial does is entertain, they’re not going to get your business.
Let’s say they show a funny commercial about cars to the same crowd who saw the commercial with the pushy ad and good deals…
You’re entertained the whole way through and you laugh your buns off when the commercial hits the punch line. Then they mention the name of their dealership a couple times.
They’ve gotten their name in front of you and you’re in a good state of mind. But they haven’t answered any of the pressing questions on your mind.
You need a car. The little nagging voice in your head is asking questions.
“What kind of car should I get? Should I buy new or used? Will I still have some off this insurance money left over after I get the car? What kind of car will meet my needs?”
If they’re lucky, at the end of their funny car commercial, you may also be asking, “what was the name of that car dealership again?”
But chances are if you pulls together the energy to look that dealership up on the Internet or actually get up, get in a cab or bug a friend for a ride, you’ll have already seen one of those pushy ads and had most, if not all, of your questions answered.
Most of us are lazy, at least in that respect. We will not do any unnecessary work to give someone money, and why should we? Someone else is more than willing to make it easy for us and answer all our questions.
Those of us in advertising can get drunk on our creativity. It’s an easy trap to fall into. “Wouldn’t it be cool if…”
Yes, it would be totally awesome… but it probably won’t help sales. If we get too creatively entertaining, we’re doing a disservice to our client (or employer) and their customers.
If a company really has a great product at a great price, they’re doing both themselves and their customers a disservice by going with the purely entertaining commercials. They’re not going to make much money and their potential customers are going to end up overpaying or getting worse service with someone else.
Entertainment Is Only Advertising If It Gets You To Do Something
The idea of advertising has never really been understood by the world at large. Literally billions of dollars have been wasted on entertainment that was, in the business’ mind, designed to sell something.
It’s not advertising.
If I only had the options of the above two styles, I would use the first option every time. Pushy that makes an attempt to sell will out pull entertainment every time.
However, entertainment can be mixed with advertising very effectively. In fact, it takes much more creativity to be entertaining and persuasive.
Is it restricting?
Yes. But restrictions are the basis of creativity.
Harsh restrictions are responsible for some of the most creative breakthroughs ever. Remember the scene in Apollo 13 where the NASA crew on the ground had a box of junk dumped in front of them and were tasked with the job to make a square peg fit in a round hole? That took some serious creativity with under the most serious of conditions… and they made it work.
Can you pull off the ultimate act of being creative and persuasive in advertising?
