Prolific North’s Marketing Festival was held at the Vue cinema in Leeds. Ponderosa had bagged a speaking slot for Jon our Creative Director and me. On arrival, we snuck into an empty Screen 10 to remind ourselves of what we were supposed to be talking about. Moments later three cinema staff walked in to put up trestle tables for lunch and overheard us talking about advertising without a hint of irony; they left the room, smothering their sniggers and giggles. It wasn’t due to the hilarious gags we had laced throughout the presentation (as anyone there on the day will attest). It was reminder of how ordinary people, the people we market to, see the work we do. It’s inconsequential to them and they are utterly indifferent to it. We talk about being brave or being bold, but we don’t save lives or run into burning buildings. We might see advertising as cultural currency, but if we start from that position, we’ll disappear up our own arses.
The starting point of utter indifference is crucial because it reminds us that our work needs to be worth people’s time. In past talks, I have replaced ‘awareness’ at the top of the funnel with ‘entertain’. I like that word because the value to the audience is built in. It’s also not specific as to how we’re worth people’s time. We can make them chuckle, like Specsavers with their famous brand line; we can shock or surprise people like Paddy Power; we can create suspense or make people feel all warm inside like Cadbury’s or John Lewis; we can inspire like Nike or Apple. And it’s not always big TV ads where this can work. The Tesco delivery lorries with ‘Salmon en roûte’ written on the side still make me smile.
This might all sound a little frivolous—agency folk wanting to do entertaining work rather than communicating hardworking selling points—but this is simply a question of making work more effective. Let’s assume there are around 3-5% of people who are in the market, ready to buy, right now. That means the other 95%+ need to be primed to buy later, next week, next month, or next year. This is what the majority of advertising should be trying to do. It relies on recall, on staying with people, leaving them with a gut feeling or an emotion towards a brand until they are in the market.
It’s not just that entertaining work is more effective; the cost of dull work is astonishing. By dull, we mean work that’s indistinct from what the rest of the category is already doing. It’s safe and usually tries to land very rational benefits to the consumer (often more than one) in a very forgettable way. But research by Peter Field and System 1 calculates the additional excess share of voice (ESOV) dull advertising requires to achieve the same results as fame-driving, emotive campaigns.
- 160% increase in ESOV to achieve similar levels of market share growth
- 100% increase in ESOV to achieve similar levels of profit growth
The impact of running dull work varies across sectors, but on average, it costs an additional £10m a year.
The irony of marketers using figures and rational persuasion to convince stakeholders that doing something entertaining and emotive will be more effective isn’t lost on me. Sometimes it’s just important to know you’re right. If nothing else, you will need this confidence in data because entertaining work is much harder to sell. It took Walt Campbell over fifty presentations to get his famous Guinness surfer ad over the line. And when Phil Rumbol tried to sell the Cadbury’s Gorilla ad, he was told, “you’re never making this ad.” All of this was before social media was really a thing and before the word ‘woke’ got a new meaning. The thought that a few thousand Twitter (X) comments might dip a brand’s share price undoubtedly makes shareholders nervous, so how do you avoid disaster?
The answer lies in the brand’s proposition and its alignment to the audience. For example, Paddy Power can make objectively crass jokes because that’s what the brand built its positioning on. It’s what the audience expects from them. Protein World’s ‘Are you beach body ready?’ ads made a few people very angry. But that didn’t matter. The brand’s proposition was aligned to their audience, who spend a lot of time in the gym aspiring to look like the model on the ad. The controversy saw Protein World make over £1m in just four days. Conversely, Gillette tried to do something seemingly worthy when it tackled toxic masculinity. But the execution undermined the proposition, and the ad insulted the very people Gillette wanted to sell to.
It’s easy to do a talk or write a blog promoting the benefits of entertaining communications. In truth, judging what will be worth people’s time while landing a relevant message is hard to nail, and it’s why we’re paid to do what we do. But if the sniggers and giggles of the cinema staff should remind us of anything, it’s this: Our audience is indifferent, so most advertising is ignored, and what’s not ignored is often misattributed to the wrong brand (about 86% of it*). So, if I have a choice between something that’s strategically spot-on but dull versus something that’s just entertaining and doesn’t undermine the proposition, I would choose the latter every time.
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* Ehrenberg-Bass institute, 2010
Link for Peter Field and System 1 ESOV calculations
https://www.warc.com/content/feed/the-10m-cost-of-dull-advertising/en-GB/8691
