HEAD BLOG

Every once in a while someone says something that makes you want to reach for the bucket. The comment is so loaded with pseudo- intellectual sugar  that overdose is instantaneous.

The headline statement here is one such comment. It carries self importance about its person like a student at a sit-in and if you’ve any sense you’ll be walking on by with a shake of your head.

But I see morbid curiosity keeps you here. Quite right too because every criticism of advertising you might have, every design bugbear you hold, all can be answered through that swollen claim.

Advertising and design goes wrong when the creatives and marketeers involved forget that they are problem solvers. Some of them appear to be brand evangelists, others appear to be artists, none of them produce anything like the commercially appropriate work they ought to whilst those millstones hang around their necks.

It’s easy to spot them too. Designs that don’t function as they ought to. Image taking precedence over usability. A complete lack of message.

Watch for them all because in their steely good looks are more bullshit statements than our claim to be problem solvers could ever make.

OK, I’m going to shock you. You may not survive the process. You may find your world has been irrevocably destroyed.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Advertising isn’t new.

Don’t shoot the messenger. It’s the plain and simple truth.

Yet many people think it is.

They must do.

Because when it comes to advertising on the internet, they seem to throw out all the experience we’ve collected over the past hundred or so years.

Perhaps in the early days of Flash, after seeing nothing but blue hyperlinks, white text and grey background, people saw image led advertising as new, as a drink of water in the desert. Perhaps.

These days there is no such excuse. The prevalence of ad blockers show that we are, in the main, quite used to advertising on the internet and hold it in the same, suspicious regard as all other forms of advertising.

So where are the messages.

And why do so many ads not only avoid supplying us with a reason to buy but actively discourage us from making an informed decision on the purchasing process by holding of on the information until we ‘clickthrough’?

It must be a new form of advertising.

And I’m not sure I want to buy into it.

Two days of consecutive sunshine has us all in weather mode. Whether it is to long for cooler days or to talk about how marvellous the heat wave is (followed by a glum prediction of it ending soon), the weather leaps into conversations at every opportunity.

Marketing is similarly hasty in its willingness to take advantage of each change in weather, be it an oncoming storm of football fever or the potential break in the clouds offered by a long awaited election.

Here is something which unites us all, it seems to say, something we can all talk about. And look how switched on to the national mood we are. You might think all we do is sell crisps but really we are your friend and as such we can take liberties with your time by striking up a conversation.

Much akin to a stranger sat on the bench next to you who decides to try his luck with a line about how long term weather predictions have us suffering through a rainy summer before offering us advice of a handy umbrella shop (owned, incidentally, by his brother), the eager Marketeer will stop at nothing to catch your interest.

So it is we have had every form of product sold to us on the strength of a weak “vote now” campaign and so it will be that the World Cup will be drained of any effectiveness as products rely upon our dumb willingness to buy anything from anyone provided they have a fine line in football related conversation pieces. This lawn mower is a like a game of two halves you say? Adorned with a flag even? By the cup, I’ll buy one and visit your store again.

It may be that certain topics hold a common interest for many people. But it also true that they make for short term conversations and fair weather friends.

In 1855 a man sat down to write some poetry. Not a book, not a film and most definitely not a video game. The poems came from his ability to string words together. Cost-wise the outlay to write them was minimal. How much does it cost to feed a man for six months?

The man was Walt Whitman and it can’t be denied that he managed to make something of a name for himself.

By doing two things: using the tools he had to hand and having belief in his own ability.

He didn’t need to raise three million in start-up costs. His idea could be managed solo.

Hearing of game developers and filmmakers looking to raise capital in order to fund their great idea always makes me wonder at how great the idea must be and what part of it is actually the important bit.

Ideas don’t cost much to implement, even great, ideas. The way in which they are realised is what costs the money and if a newbie developer is relying on that part… well that’s where my doubts kick in.

Take the simple choice of platform. If a game can only be made for Playstation 3 then you have to ask yourself, why? Given the choice between then relying on major investment and all the associated risk accompanying it, and opting for a simpler platform, Facebook for example, then I’d choose the latter and use the paired down technology to hone my idea into something sharper and less reliant upon the big effects.

I’d think small.

I have read a bold claim.

An agency claimed that a piece of creative they were responsible for had led to an increase in sales.

It might be true.

But the claim came on the back of the information that sales rose after the ad was aired.

So was it the creative?

Or was it just the media buy?

How do we know where responsibility lies?

The problem with making a claim is that once made, it is open to question. A designer who claims their logo concept boosts sales has to do so with confidence that the rest of the activity isn’t also having an affect.

Regardless of this, however, is a deeper question: what does advertising do?

My feeling is that advertising doesn’t sell…

It creates the urge to buy.

There’s a big difference. I’ve had arguments as to the effectiveness of advertising. Friends not wrapped up in the world of advertising claim that an advert has no effect on them; that it doesn’t influence them. The fact that companies are spending billions each year to reach people like them has no effect on the argument. They just insist they aren’t influenced and that’s that. Then they go and buy a BMW.

Whilst there is little doubt that many companies waste huge amounts of money on ineffectual advertising, it’s certainly not true to say adverts have no effect. Even as a barrage of messages upon our collective consciousness they have a cumulative effect.

What matters to me is whether that effectiveness is selling or creating the urge to buy.

The difference may seem pedantic but it governs the way we approach the creation of advertising.

Research conducted by EEDAR and highlighted by Games Industry Biz “shows” marketing plays more of a role in shifting product than reviews.

This stirred up a bit of a fuss. Nobody likes to believe marketing affects them. Least of all the journalists who hope their reviews carry weight.

So The Guardian came back with their view which was that by looking at the top selling games they had discovered a correlation between high sales and good reviews.

Both camps are correct. Marketing does drive sales and so do reviews.

And it all comes down to Dan Brown.

The way a marketing spend is decided is by sales projections. If a sales team thinks they can get high numbers of sales for a product then it will get a higher marketing spend.

Why do they think it will get high numbers of sales? Because they believe it’s a good game.

Now, what do you think happens with a good game?

It reviews well.

There’s a correlation there.

But correlation doesn’t always indicate causality.

When the publishers of Dan Brown’s latest book got together do you think they said “this is going to review brilliantly”? Did they (or even Mr Brown himself) believe for one minute that critics were going to gush over his literary style and elegant wordplay?

Doubtful.

But they knew that it had mass appeal because The DaVinci Code was a mass appeal hit because the marketing of that book concentrated on the controversial aspect of religion and conspiracy. Which we all love. The easy, child-like style of the book may have helped also.

What both articles could be interpreted as showing is the lack of quality marketing for titles which may not review well but which could have mass appeal. Or maybe it shows the lack of titles with true, Dan Brown mass appeal.

My friend, Gary, is the smartest guy in the world.

Seriously.

Eight years ago we were on our lunch break and walked into the local shopping centre. He’d eaten but had the urge to buy some food. He wanted biscuits.

So we walked up to Millie’s Cookies where he pulled out a double handful of the most random collection of coins you can imagine.

There was no way anyone could tell, at a glance, how much he had. He certainly didn’t know.

But he wanted some cookies.

So he handed the cash over to the poor woman at the counter and asked:

“What can I get for this?”

I wanted to disappear. At the time, it was embarrassing and funny at the same time. I thought he regressed about twenty years. The woman at the counter thought so too. She must have thought I was letting him making his first purchase.

But she kindly counted his money for him and handed over the single cookie and some change.

Millie’s cookies taste great. They are expensive, but they taste great.

Gary was pretty happy.

He’d made the most of his money. He could have bought ten packs of custard creams from Kwik Save but to him, that wasn’t value. That was just spending his money and then eating.

A cookie from Millie’s tastes great. They are expensive, but they taste great.

I work on advertising accounts of all sizes.

The big clients spend a lot on media and buy as much coverage as they can. Which is a lot of coverage.

The smaller clients spend a lot less on the same media and get a lot less coverage.

Why are they buying custard creams?

I can sort of understand the big clients wanting a lot of exposure. There are arguments on what that exposure will do for them but I can understand it.

But the smaller clients… well, would they buy a hundredth of an adshell and be lost next to the ad from the big client?

Why aren’t they buying something else entirely and making the rest of us look with envy at them?

I’ll always remember Gary’s cookie.

Reading around a few of my favourite blogs today I happened upon this little gem from Rob over at the-ad-pit. Rob has an eye for effective advertising and, in his role as planner, obviously thinks a great deal about creativity, effectiveness and the role advertising plays in our lives. Read more…

An old boss of mine challenged me as to the effectiveness of packaging.

“I could put this product into paper bags and it would still sell” he declaimed. Read more…

Smash Authority with THQ

Take a look at the latest Head First project – Red Faction Guerrilla and let us know what you think? Does it make you excited about the game? It’s certainly iconic and acts as a call to action – not just to smash authority but to grab the demo, and this, for me, is what’s really interesting.

Read more…