Filtering by Category: Advertising
Everything sucks but it doesn't have to
If you pay attention to my LinkedIn profile, which I’m sure you do, you would have seen that I recently read Lemon, by Orlando Wood, Chief Innovation Officer of System1 Group and member of the IPA Effectiveness Advisory Board. I wish I had read it in tandem with someone in the same room so I could say ‘YES!’ and ‘LOOK!’ and generally annoy with them with my exclamations.
Read it, and you’ll see what I mean. No matter if you’re designing social ads, OOH ads, approving creatives or sitting in C-level wondering how to make those numbers look good, you’ll wish you had read it earlier.
And now is the ideal time to read it. It fits perfectly with the current conversations that seem to be inundating my feed about the sorry state of marketing. You know, those ones about how we’ve got to start focusing on long-term initiatives. About how we’ve got to get back to being truly creative – and give ourselves space and time to be creative. About how we’ve got to stop pouring over dashboards and analytics because everyone knows it’s nonsense, and anyway, it’s going away soon.
It feels as if we’re teetering on the edge of change, perhaps brought about by a perfect storm of disillusionment with the industry as a whole, the enshittification of Google, the realisation that long term is just as (if not more) important than short term, and the realisation that oh crap yeah it’s this year cookies are going away. Add to all that the shit show and aftermath of a global pandemic, and a major shift doesn’t seem too far off.
I don’t know. There’s a chance I’m spending too long on LinkedIn, bouncing around my little echo chamber, but the optimist in me likes to think that maybe this general dissatisfaction and these debates around long vs short based on cold hard data are the first indications that we’re moving back into what Orlando Wood dubs a right-brain period. I want to believe that, at the very least, this year, we’ll see a rise in creativity and a pushback against short-terminism.
Lend me your jelly orbs for a bit longer, and allow me to attempt to elucidate.
Honestly, I’m not sure if I can, but I’ll give it a go, and we’ll see where we end up. Good luck.
The right brain, the left brain and mosaics
I know, mosaics. It’s a weird place to start but bear with me.
In Lemon, we’re introduced to Iain McGilchrist and his work on brain lateralisation – the science of the right and left brain.
Our brain is split into two hemispheres. Each works in its own special way and has its own take on its surroundings.
The left brain is short-term. It’s instant. It’s factual. It wants simple words superimposed over a fast-moving montage of expressionless, generic people saying nothing, photographed next to a bit of whatever it is you’re trying to sell. It’s in-your-face obvious and does not entertain.
The right brain is long-term. It understands context. Cultural references. Humour. Implicit emotions. Accents and the plethora of unspoken somethings they contain and communicate. It’s wordplay and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it look. It’s entertaining and makes you think.
Now, look at these mosaics (stolen from Lemon).
One (left: the Image of Christ, 4th Century A.D.) is flat, restricted, emotionless and featureless. Where are we? No idea. What’s going on? Who knows, and who cares? This would be a left-brain mosaic.
The other (right: scene from New Comedy, late 2nd Century or beginning of 1st Century B.C.) contains subtle nuances, emotions, movement and details. It puts us in the moment and provides perspective and depth. This is a right-brain mosaic.
Essentially (grossly oversimplifying things), these two mosaics represent art history.
We swing from the right brain to the left brain and back again (Renaissance to Reformation, Baroque to Classicism, and so on). Society, religion, government – everything plays its part in this oscillation, and right now, we’re firmly in left brain territory, having left a period of right brain…ness around 2006. We’re stuck in a world of saying hello, having a moment, finding our something and instantly forgettable ads.
So how on earth did we get here? According to Lemon, it’s the inevitable swing of the pendulum thanks to global events, politics, cultural shifts and, in a starring role, social media. And with the latter, I would wholeheartedly agree.
The short-term, quick-fix obsession
From the moment we realised we could track and record attribution from online ads, the more addicted we became to that sweet, sweet high of performance advertising.
Throw another ad out. Track how many people clicked it, visited your site and bought your product. Boom. Attribute sales to that ad.
But, a) attribution is never so black and white, and, more importantly for this blog post, b) the ease and attribution addiction results in shitty ads.
Shitty, left-brain feature riddled ads. Ads that are churned out, often by people with little to no creative experience, and worse, by those who have the experience but are so boxed in by budgets and briefs and bad bosses that they have no other option. They’re ads that require no work to decode and decipher. Ads that literally spell things out for you. And ads that are for everyone – the dreaded global ad. No accents. No wordplay. No innuendo. No cultural references. Even writing it makes me bored.
But performance marketing is fast, simple, and, crucially, you can easily access a dashboard, track ROI and give those numbers to bosses who need them for their bosses.
We’ve become so focused on quick returns that it’s causing damage not only to the level of creative output and advertising effectiveness but also to the bottom line.
“80% of CFOs at 400 of the world’s largest companies would sacrifice a firm’s economic value to meet this quarter’s earning expectations.”
We keep throwing money at digital ads when 77% of B2B ads can be expected to generate zero growth for companies, and 95% of B2B buyers aren’t in the market for your product anyway.
Of course, the good (or bad, depending on your camp) news is that cookies are going away. If this and the above percentages don’t necessitate some kind of change, I’m not sure what does.
So what can you do? Focus on long-term branding efforts. Heck, you can even prove that long-term branding campaigns deliver on both long and short-term goals, while the reverse is not true.
“Advertising mainly works by building and refreshing memory links to a brand – rather than by directly driving sales.”
Long-term builds brand. Long-term builds ESOV. Long-term boosts both long and short-term sales. Long-term makes you top of mind. Long-term works*.
But back to our brains.
*I’m by no means advocating for 100% long-term focus. 60/40 rule and all that
Do ads with right-brain features perform better?
Absolutely yes. “Ads with more right-brain features have a clear advantage on the effectiveness Star rating* over ads with fewer right-brain features.”
The key here is entertainment. Ads that entertain, speak to the right brain, and make people feel something are proven to provide positive long- and short-term effects.
System1 analysed 200 TV ads (100 UK and 100 US) and found that those with more left-brain features proved more likely to achieve a low Star rating, whereas those with more right-brain features proved more like to achieve a high Star rating.
Apologies for the image quality. I had to take a photo of the book then edit it and that was awkward
Remember that Cadbury’s Gorilla ad? “They said, ‘so you want to make an ad three times longer than a normal ad, that doesn’t feature any chocolate and there’s no message?’ It was the hardest thing [I’ve had to sell] in my career.”
Did it work? 10% sales boost says yes.
*The Star rating is a propriety system that predicts market-share growth
What now?
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? We know what works and what doesn't. We know what we should be doing and what we shouldn’t be doing, but we’re all so hooked on measuring things that can be measured we can’t stop, and we’ve backed ourselves into a corner where all we can do is work that we're not proud of, and we know won't actually work. Is there a better way to kill creativity?
I hope that armed with the knowledge – and proof – that creativity and long-term initiatives positively impact the entire company, from fluffy ol’ brand reputation to sales and profit, we’ll have the courage to shift our focus.
I hope that being forced to abandon our traditional digital dashboards and tools will give us the kick up the collective arse we need in order to change how we use digital ads and how much reliance we’ve put on measuring the data we can so easily access.
I hope that we’ll stop obsessing over instant sales and performance ads and let long-term brand building have its day in the sun.
I’m starting to remind myself of the final five minutes of Shawshank Redemption, so I’ll stop with the hope. You get the idea. I’ll leave you with this quote from Orlando Wood that sums it all up nicely.
“For profit gain, speak to the right brain. Broad and long-term effects are associated with advertising that elicits happiness, that amuses, that leaves people awestruck, that plays to a connection with other people and the wider world.”
On second thoughts, I’ll leave you with this piece of creative genius that I still go and find on YouTube because it’s so goddamn entertaining.
OK, here’s another one, riddled with right-brain goodness. Remember the print ads? They were fantastic. I used to tear them out of magazines and put them on my wall. An ad. On my wall. I’m shaking my head right now.
The end.
When you give yourself lemons...
Volkswagen shot themselves in the foot in 2015 with their emissions scandal, but fast-forward four years and they’re back with a ‘we’re sorry here’s an electric car’ ad that smartly references their famous Lemon ad from the 1960s. You’re evil, Volkswagen, but I do like this.
Plus, long copy is always a win in my book.
