You have to love the news here in the US this week that the Online Publishers Association has just released several new really ugly, in-your-face advertising formats designed to be both more obtrusive and interactive.
As I say in my new book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders, as advertisers become increasingly desperate to reach their target audiences, instead of being smart about it and perhaps doing something original, like raising the quality of what they say instead of merely raising the volume, they might get better results. But no, that's rarely the mindset of either clients or the majority of their dumb agencies.
As I said a couple of posts ago, a very senior executive of Interpublic said recently, "Hard times call for hard sell!" Going on to explain that as the economy gets more screwed up and client budgets shrink, agencies should now endeavor to create advertising that actually sells products...
Ogilvy, New York, has just introduced, with great fanfare, a new unit aimed at delivering better value for small budgets, citing the fact that the current economy calls for more accountability. They have therefore assembled a team of twenty one "top experts" - Surely all experts are "top,' that's why they're experts! - Who will now be dedicated to this no doubt temporary task untill the storm clouds dissipate and the good ship BDA can continue steaming into the glorious sunset.
To which, If I was an Interpublic, or Ogilvy client, I would have to ask... Hello, shouldn't you be doing that all the time, no matter what state the economy happens to be in?
BDA's seem to have this masochistic desire to continually shoot themselves in the foot, usually after they've shoved it in their mouth. I am reminded of the last lines of David Ogilvy's, Confessions of an Advertising Man. His sister asks him if advertising should be abolished. He replies... "No, my darling sister, advertising should not be abolished. But it must be reformed." That was 45 years ago. I actually do an homage to David by finishing my new book with his prophetic quote, because I have a feeling forty five years from now, we'll still be waiting for the reformation.
By which time I will have gone off to join David at that BDA in the sky!
There is another very important issue here (which also further underlines some consumers' probable deep frustration with intrusive online ads). From the work we do we know that the vast majority of 'click throughs' via overlay ads are accidental as the consumer fights to get rid of the annoying things that has just got in their way. As well as the annoyance this causes consumers it also plays absolute havoc with 'response' data. It is a fact that many online campaigns are not optimised at a format level as well as site level. As a result of this what often happens is the sites that take disproportionate amounts of overlays are deemed to be more 'responsive' than they actually are, and therefore tend to be given more share than they otherwise would do as campaigns are incorrectly optimised. This is another perfect example of why 'response' data should always be intuitively interpreted rather than taken as a given fact.
why don't you try those animal activists that targeted that guinea pig farmer
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George Parker
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