I recently had a “Hey, do you know that TV ad?” conversation with a friend who has no particular interest in advertising and I noticed something, well, normal. He kept telling me about several commercials he had seen and liked – most of them for cars – but he got wrong almost all the brands those commercials were for. As far as he could recall, “the one with the dancing robot” was for Volkswagen and not for Citroen.
This means then that he remembered the creative ideas in those adverts rather than the actual brands they were advertising. Does any brand want that? Exactly. So could this mean that consumers don’t pay much attention during commercial breaks? Or could this be the advertising agencies’ fault?
There is a positive answer to the first question. Yes, it is a fact that only a small number of TV viewers actually pay attention during commercial breaks, which means that the majority of them ignore TV advertising (and engage in other activities) or are only affected by it on a subconscious level, as in the case of my friend.
As regards the answer to the second question, the situation is certainly more complicated than it may seem. Advertising agencies build brands by creating brand image and brand personality and all that, right? In order for them to grab the attention of the consumers, they must come up with memorable adverts that say “Hey, you, don’t go pee, you want to see this!”, hence the dancing robot. Still, TV advertising today seems to be more like a competition of creative ideas rather than good selling techniques, so the risk of people having no idea what “that cool ad” is for seems only natural. Having said that, the lack of attention on behalf of the audience might be a matter of association – as a component within the facets model of advertising effects – between advertising and the product being advertised. But that’s a different story. Actually, it is not, only I will expand on it in a future post.
Billboards 