It works:
Because the Advertising Agencies tell you it works without producing one iota of evidence to substantiate their claims as to the exclusive increase in sales that one advertising campaign has produced!
It works because we live in an over informed society, and the agencies are working very hard to increase the quantity (but not quality) of clutter
It works because the customer has become immune to advertising, so Advertising Agencies are attempting to cut through the clutter with brilliant creative work.
Advertising works – especially now that it is moving onto the Internet!
Advertising works because advertising agencies pay scant attention (if any) to the actual process of communication, and concentrate heavily on creativity and media buying.
Advertising works because the days are numbered for TV ads dominance…but they don't know what to replace it with!
Advertising works because the correct model of communication is totally ignored by the advertising industry whilst they cling onto the reach frequency model beloved by the advertising industry but which has no relevance to the actual process of communication.
Advertising works to waste your money. Study the annual expenditure of advertising in America, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and Australia.
Apply the statement 50% of my advertising expenditure is wasted but I don't know which fifty percent" the costly ineffectiveness of advertising is huge, to say the least. Factor in the fact that there has never been any true accountability.
Then consider that this wastefulness has been going on since the end of the Second World War, now that wastefulness!
Advertising is clinging to a world that existed ten years ago as if it were trying not to notice it’s vanished. Advertising has to modernise and change.
Its effectiveness will regenerate itself because the information content of advertising is a fundamental necessity for the efficient conduct of a complex and free market place.
Instead of asking, “When are the good times coming back?” we should be applying ourselves to doing advertising in ways that are right for the time we live in.
Of course advertising works, it works very efficiently to kill off any good idea that was not invented within their own agency. It is amazing when you consider the many excellent marketing ideas that have been available, however the promoters of such ideas eventually gave up selling to advertising agencies because all advertising agencies wanted was to get their clients onto television.
That it might not be the ideal medium was totally ignored!
Of course advertising works, consider this: Despite all the evidence to the contrary, here’s what a current luminary of the advertising industry said recently
"The conventional stuff won't ever go away," said Kate Bruges, the Marketing Director of J Walter Thompson.
"An awful lot of this unconventional stuff is the icing on the cake, that extra bit of media mileage. But it's never going to give you the cost-efficient mileage or get the message across consistently enough to a large enough number of people."
Another example of the usual Advertising Agency bull. They will not accept that there are better ways of communicating with consumers than ‘conventional stuff’.
It is also fascinating that she talks about cost-efficiency when she has no idea just how cost ‘ineffective’ her cost-efficient mileage really is! Just where is the evidence to support this cost-efficient mileage? What factual piece of research has been done to measure the cost effectiveness of the ‘conventional stuff’? And without such why are people like Kate allowed to get away with making such audacious claims?
By: Paul Ashby