Where does diversity and choice part company?
I’m interested in choice. Or the lack of.
Any regular reader of this blog who ISN’T paid to read my ramblings may have noticed this. Whether I’m talking about the rise of the supermarket own brand and the way in which it elbows out brands who have spent the better part of a century worming their way into our homes; or the iPad with a gloomy eye to a single entertainment gateway and the way we will all willingly walk through it as a direct consequence of our genetic tendency to gather in mobs, choice is something that is often, in my mind, off the menu.
It’s easy to see this effect in the shops we use. Amazon, iTunes, ebay – the giants have set up store not so much along our most popular bus routes and busiest retail spaces in the way M&S did, but right in front of our eyes. They are hard to avoid and the lazy majority (guilty) don’t even bother trying.
Less easy to see, perhaps, is the same effect in products.
As a company, Head First are hired to promote video games, books, films and other entertainment products (all of which, increasingly, are sharing the same digital and promotional spaces using many of the same techniques to make them more visible to the consumer, quick-eyed as she is). In ten years of business, we have shepherded a large number of these products through our creative process and, from the middle of the forest, it rarely feels as though we are repeating ourselves.
I say this not to brag of the way in which we find unique solutions to our projects but to highlight the range and flow of product; and it’s apparent diversity.
Yes. Apparent diversity.
On the face of things you only have to walk into Game to see a wide array of products. Game after game lines the shelving, a barrage of action shots vying for your attention. But split these down into genre and choice begins to lessen.
Advertising is about finding a compelling reason to buy that the consumer can latch onto. As products seek to compete with each other these reasons often become marginalised. It may be a slight improvement in taste, a tweak of image or a reduction in price but the obsession with becoming the next big thing in Genre A takes over and genuine innovation takes a backseat.
It’s inevitable. Risk costs money. It costs more money to launch a new IP than to issue a sequel. With films this risk is lessened by the inclusion of a Star. Bruce Willis may be starring in the same old action flick time after time but hey, it’s Bruce Willis and we like him. So that succeeds. Bring in an unknown star and the film better have something unique about it for advertisers to sell us the concept. Think back to The Matrix and yes, Keanu was a star but the concept was something new(ish). So the marketing looked fresh, taking its cues not from the genre (sci-fi) but from the concept. The stylistic approach entered the lexicon and today we see parodies in all forms of product lines (Money Supermarket being the one that most springs to mind).
Just asking yourself how often this happens provides the clue as to the extent of diversity within what we consume. Books are wonderful at providing cutting edge graphic design for certain genres but they also know when to piggy-back another style. Because book marketing understands what some other products don’t – that people like their choice in one flavour: limited. Movie marketers know this as well of course which is why we all fall for the same old poster with the goofy guy and the gorgeous girl when it comes to finding a simple movie which EVERYONE will like (but which nobody really does).
As someone who writes advertising, this apparent contradiction intrigues and challenges me. It demands that I be blunt in the face of a brief’s assumptions of what is the product’s unique selling point and prepared to find new ways of helping make a product noticeable.