2019 was a banner year for bad TV commercials. Between Liberty Mutual’s bird-brained LiMu Emu commercials, Allstate’s “Mayhem” antics and Chevy’s not-so-real “Real People” ads, viewers had a lot of reasons to be cranky.
Which means big brands have a lot of reasons to fire their ad agencies (not to mention their own chief marketing executives who aid and abet these clowns in their multimillion-dollar malpractice).
But since that won’t happen, here’s another idea.
Gather round, baby birds, because Uncle Cranky has some New Year’s resolutions for advertisers.
Heed this advice and you’ll take the first wobbly steps to repairing the advertising industry’s tattered reputation in 2020.
New Year’s resolutions for advertisers
1. Know your job.
As an advertiser, you have one job and that is to sell.
Your clients don’t pay you to tell jokes. They don’t pay you to win awards or the adulation of your fellow creatives.
They pay you to communicate a compelling reason to buy.
2. Know your place.
Never forget that you start in the hole with viewers before you even begin.
That’s right. As the uninvited salesperson who interrupts the programming we pay to enjoy, we already kind of hate you.
Let this knowledge motivate you to make ads that don’t irritate us further.
3. Know your goal.
Your goal is to increase sales.
You can do this by earning our attention and giving us good reasons to engage with your brand.
Your goal is not to tease, or entertain, or “build awareness.” (Sorry, Liberty Mutual and other advertisers that try to hide their campaign performance behind squishy metrics.)
If you don’t feel that the job of selling is sexy or exciting or fulfilling enough for you, then find new work because you are in the wrong business.
4. Respect your audience.
So many advertisers today have forgotten their manners.
Rather than approach us respectfully, like civilized human beings, they burst into our homes like half-witted barbarians, beating us over the heads with loud noises and braying idiocy.
This is not the way to make a brand more likable.
In a blog post titled “Hating ads. With good reason,” George Tannenbaum, executive creative director and copy chief at Ogilvy, said:
“I’m not buying that people hate ads.
People hate ads that are silly, ridiculous or stupid. They hate ads that lie. They hate ads that promise things they don’t deliver. They hate ads that sling mud. They hate ads that run too often.
To bastardize a line from Howard Gossage, ’People don’t hate ads. They hate things that insult them. And often that’s an ad.’”
Advertisers, you can do better.
5. Have a message.
What is the big idea that your client wants to communicate?
If your client doesn’t know, you can help. Find out what makes the brand better or unique and build a message around that.
If it’s true and you deliver it clearly, you can’t go far wrong.
Oh, and if you are creating a campaign slogan, steer clear of meaningless tripe like “Better service, better savings” and too-cool-for-school lines like “You’ve got this.” A good slogan communicates a unique idea. If you can slap it onto an ad for any other brand, it fails.
(Seriously, when TV commercials for Reese’s peanut-butter cups and Toyota RAV4 vehicles both use the (dumb) slogan, “Sorry, Not Sorry,” you know the ad industry is in trouble.)
6. Provide value.
The best advertising does more than sell. It serves.
So be useful. Help people find solutions to their problems. Give us something interesting, informative, or valuable in exchange for our time and attention.
You serve your clients best when you serve their prospects well.
Related reading: “Hey advertisers! People hate you, and you deserve it”
7. Put clarity before creativity.
Too many ad people are obsessed with “being creative.” They forget that the point of advertising is to sell a product, not to be creative or do something that’s never been done before.
The result is a glut of ads filled with fancy CGI effects and unfunny gags—few of which come together to form a cohesive sales message.
As legendary ad critic Bob Garfield said in his book, And Now a Few Words from Me: Advertising’s Leading Critic Lays Down the Law, Once and For All:
“Advertising creatives are not artists, not auteurs. They are businessmen—or at least they’re supposed to be. Their job is not to explore the unexplored. It is to sell stuff. It is to find an engaging way to get the client’s message across to a skeptical and sometimes hostile audience. It is not to be original . . . The consumer couldn’t care less.”
Don’t get me wrong. Creativity in advertising is great when it is employed in the service of selling. But too many advertisements today seem more focused on selling the agency’s creativity than the products themselves.
“We want consumers to say, ‘That’s a hell of a product’ instead of, ‘That’s a hell of an ad.’”
Leo Burnett
8. Stop yelling at us.
You’ve bought ads on TV or radio. Great. That doesn’t mean you have to blast them at twice the volume of regular programming. You don’t need to hire actors that screech and squall like blithering idiots.
Seriously. If we have a need for your product—if we have any interest in it at all—we’ll take notice. But quiet down. You can’t blast us into buying from you.
9. Stop using celebrity spokespeople.
Does anyone really believe that Shaquille O’Neal buys Epson EcoTank printer cartridges or insures his cars with The General?
Of course not. Yet Shaq-centered ads for Epson and The General are both running on TV at the time of this writing.
The truth is, most consumers don’t see a connection between celebrities and the products they endorse. There usually isn’t one outside of a big, fat endorsement check.
So please, stop wasting your clients’ money on high-priced celebrities. It’s lazy and distracts from your message.
Advertisers, go forth and make better commercials
So there you have it. Nine New Year’s resolutions that advertisers can adopt to serve their clients and consumers better in 2020.
It’s not that hard, is it? I’ve always thought that good marketing is mostly just common sense and common courtesy.
If you make good ads that aren’t painful to sit through, we’ll watch more of them. And maybe hate you a little less.
Back to blog home page | See all Cranky ad reviews
With the “Super Bowl” of TV advertising upon us, I thought it would be a good time to provide this link from a New York Times Magazine article entitled, “Car Wash,” by Jonah Weiner. I think it ties in well with Rob’s post here. It quite brilliantly captures the multi-layered complexities of commercial advertising in the midst of the disorientating world between social media and old school advertising. I often wondered why I get so worked-up over a commercial spot. This article nails it!
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/magazine/is-the-viral-non-ad-ad-the-future-of-advertising.html
Hi, Criswell. Thanks for sharing. Yes, advertisements like the Renault ad mentioned in the article are appearing more and more as ad makers pull out all the stops to reach a public that increasingly shuns them.
Here’s my problem with the Renault ad. To me, it feels almost like a dirty trick — with the same-sex relationship used for no other reason than as a cynical ploy to make waves and “go viral.” (And to win awards, of course.)
Viewers get emotionally invested in a touching narrative and then at the end, wham — it’s a car ad.
As young Ralphie said in A Christmas Story upon decoding his very first message from the Orphan Annie Secret Society: “A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!”
I think the author captures this feeling well in his final paragraph:
“What feels uniquely contemporary, in the case of the Clio ad and others like it, is how the prerogatives of clickbait and the trappings of awards-bait jostle against each other within its borders. In deploying the visual language and tone of indie cinema or contemporary ‘prestige’ TV, these branded narratives dress themselves up as something we gladly pay for, until they reveal themselves to be the thing we now routinely, through our streaming subscriptions, pay to avoid. This means that the connection between the narrative and the product (ostensibly) being hawked registers as so abstract that it verges on nonexistent. Renault’s ad, after all, racked up millions of its views in the United States, a nation where its cars are not even for sale; and even if they were, why would viewers feel compelled to buy a Clio after watching a Clio ad that works so assiduously to avoid selling them a Clio until the last possible moment? What we’re left with is a strange paradox: a commercial that feels both deeply insidious and laughably ineffectual at the same time, a bid for sales that may wind up garnering only clicks.”
Beyond the perception of pandering, another problem people may have with ads like this is the seeming intent to push a social agenda. That’s all well and good for an ad created specifically for that purpose, but it doesn’t sit quite as well as the focus of an ad made to sell cars.
Thanks again for sharing.
Awesome post! Keep up the great work! 🙂
Thanks, ExoRank! I appreciate the kind words.
Rob I can’t figure out how to post a new comment on your blog. The reason is now the stupidity ad of Safe Lite glass repair. Their ad says leave your keys on the dash of your vehicle and they will take care of you. Are they going to take care of your missing car? How stupid.
I hear you, Jim. Haven’t seen the SafeLite commercial, but I’ll be sure to Google it up.
You’re right, leaving one’s car keys on the dash sounds like a stupid, irresponsible, tone-deaf idea. :\
Great post Rob. Given that TV is more measurable than it used to be, the sad fact is that a lot of this stuff might actually work. Not surprising given the diminished mental state of many of our fellow countrymen. Do you have the State Farm Aaron Rodgers ads in your cross hairs?
Oh, the ads with sports tie-ins. Don’t even get me started.
As to whether or not some of these dumb ads actually work, I’d suggest that any benefit to sales is the result of multi-million dollar media buys and relentless repetition rather than smart messaging or clever creative.
To paraphrase Bob Garfield, we’re being bludgeoned into submission with brand messages and phony unique selling propositions wielded like truncheons. Yes, that’s one way to do it. But advertisers can and should be trying to do much better.
Thanks for your comment!
Of course we know Shaq does not insure through The General, but I dont find the ad offensive…nor do I find the Hefty guy offensive….I think those ads are effective without being annoying. In contrast, that Big Dope shilling Eugenics to Barney Fife and winking “she’ll like it too” makes me cringe.
I would like to see a comparison of methods used by ASPCA vs Shriners Hospital ads, and their respective effectiveness.
“Mayhem” is great! Mother in Law, Licking Dog…that’s good stuff….except I cant remember company he’s representing.
The legendary David Ogilvy once said this about celebrity spokespeople: “Testimonials from celebrities get high recall scores, but I have stopped using them because readers remember the celebrity and forget the product.”
In Shaq’s case, by speaking for everyone, he stands for no one. I can see his value when he endorses sports-related products because that’s his area of expertise. But printer cartridges and car insurance? When both campaigns are running at the same time? That’s just a mess.
Thanks for reading!
Also had enough of outfits insuring/investing in our “dreams,” a-la American Family and now Northwestern Mutual. Gag me.
Tell me any given insurance adjuster gives a flying crap about my life goals. His mission is to articulate a reason why his boss shouldn’t dish out a dime.
I’m with you, Joe. The problem with these kinds of sentimental messages is they don’t pass the smell test.
Who really chooses one insurance company over another because they believe it cares more about them?
I get that the marketing people at these companies are trying to create an emotional bond with consumers, but to me it seems like an admission that there isn’t any real, concrete reason to choose that company over its competitors. Insurance is a commodity, I suppose, and the buying decision comes down to price and who has the most likable message or mascot.
Thanks for taking the time to comment!