HEAD BLOG

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.

The fuss and bother around Apple and Adobe, around HTML 5 and Flash, is raising issues at every turn.

Misconceptions arise over what constitutes ‘open’ as Apple use their closed portal to push open standards whilst Adobe use popular takeup to push their closed system.

It’s all very interesting.

It’s all very entertaining.

In some ways it is a fight over who controls the web and neither side represents a particularly attractive proposition. Even when Google enters the fray the potential for greater public harm doesn’t dissipate and web watchers are right to be concerned about the role of the Nation State.

But we will leave that weighty issue to one side whilst we think for a minute about what this means for communication, in particular for advertising.

When it comes to platform, the best use of the word in advertising terms is as something to stand on. It’s not important whether that be a wooden box or a Web 2.0 super site.

What is important is who is standing there.

And what is more important is what is being said.

It may seem like stating the bleeding obvious but looking around at web advertising reveals that more focus is going on the technology than on the message. Flash can do many things. It can animate text, connect to Facebook, manipulate the browser screen and generally astound.

Which is to say it can’t do diddly squat for your message.

It can’t urge consumers to click your banner because it can’t think of a good reason to give them.

And nor can HTML5.

You might be happy that your ads can be seen across multiple platforms, by multiple millions of people.

But are you happy with what you are communicating?

Apple’s recent announcement of the iAd system was designed to further desensitize us to use of the lower case “i” in a bid to trademark the letter and prevent us all from talking about ourselves.

It also had the effect of exciting an awful lot of media buyers who know that wherever Apple walk, premium pricing “opportunities” are sure to follow.

The system was heralded as something new, as adding value to advertising as only Apple can by being more than than just animated text over a background – something most marketing people seem happy with when it comes to online advertising.

It’s a welcome move.

But it certainly isn’t new.

The Great Enemy – Flash – is capable of doing everything Steve Jobs demonstrated. It just isn’t done very often. All creative advertisers (not just Head First) understand that people don’t really want to click through because, well, they were on that page for a reason. Enabling consumers (or people, as we like to call them) to be diverted but not distracted is something we would all love to do because we’re people too. I’m reading a story and I like the cut of your ad. That doesn’t mean I want to marry it. I might explore a little further, see what the rollover state is but really, I’d like to carry on reading.

iAds “solves” this by not taking you out of the App space. It has the benefit of working within a fixed frame, thereby ensuring designers can make full use of space rather than be restricted to 300×250 or 728×90. And creating a mini-site within the ad, with all the hooks into the system is a great idea. It’s what closed systems can excel in.

But it’s not new.

Our recent ad for MotoGP 09/10 enabled people to choose from a variety of different trailers depending upon their interest in the game – from balls to the wall action to the more strategic coolness the game offers.

Much like the iAd proposition, it didn’t demand that you visit the website in order to explain why you really ought to buy the game. It showed you what was cool and then left it to you to decide.

We think that’s sensible. We know it helps sales.

Not all briefs enable us to this of course. Some briefs are written so that the client can increase traffic to the website.

And that’s ok too.

iAds will be a lovely advertising system. But it’s not new and certainly not innovative. All products can benefit from such an approach if they opt to bring the sales message to the person, not send the person to the message.

If I were to leave you with an image of a broken rattle and an NSPCC logo you could fill in the blanks. As far as advertisements go you would be in no doubt as to the message. That is, of course, assuming you are aware of what the initials ‘NSPCC’ stand for. So whilst the advert could be seen as a risk (the risk being leaving you clueless as to its intention), it’s a minimal one.

Stood upon a train platform at 6:30 in the morning each day I take special note of the billboards that cycle through my early morning life. Even on the darkest of mornings, when it’s hard to see the person next to you, the powers that be ensure a warm glow surrounds the hoarding as it sits, fattened by years of paper and glue, by the platform edge.

If I were to leave you with an image of a guitar on a chair and a strapline of ‘It pays to be confused.com’ you might ask why, you might guess at the meaning by knowing that confused.com are in the insurance business or, like me, you might not understand what the message is supposed to be.

Teaser ads, ads that don’t give you a clear understanding of their purpose are a difficult form of advertising. Sometimes, as with the excellent campaign for The Economist, the tease is the message. But often they are designed to intrigue the viewer enough to peak interest and spark some sort of follow through whether it be through the viewer talking about the mystery or tapping the company name into a search engine.

Often, these campaign elements are a part of a larger, linked concept.

The result hopefully being greater than the sum of its parts; but that assumes the tease concept has sufficient power to spark that interest.

When I saw the billboard for confused.com I gave it quite a bit of thought. I didn’t understand its aim but I carried on thinking because advertsing is what I do. Was it just there to reinforce the brand name (which seemed like a waste of money) or was there a clever sight gag I was missing? I just didn’t know.

I’m reminded of something Dan Chung once said, that we naturally form ourselves into patterns. He was describing the way people will form unconscious patterns by the choices they make when sitting down ( so people might choose to skip a seat in order to retain personal space and in so doing form a checkerboard) but the observation works equally well for describing how we naturally look for such patterns.

And when it comes to interpreting advertisements this behaviour can be used (and is used) to great effect.

I couldn’t see a meaning, however. So I sent out a Tweet.

The socially aware guys over at confused.com came back to me saying that if I watched the TV ad then all would be made clear.

Why didn’t they tell me that on the billboard?

Maybe the TV ad would make it all clear. Maybe if I’d seen that first I would be more receptive to the billboard; receptive enough for it to give the old brand retention a dig in the elbow. The bus and underground ads show the real message and it’s a cool one. It makes sense, offers real incentive to use them by being appropriate to people’s lives – all a great campaign apart from the billboards. Which makes me wonder why they expected me to see those and run to a TV set to see what it all meant.

Which I didn’t.

Mainly because the imagery and approach weren’t interesting enough to compensate for the lack of message, the lack of reasons to engage that would prompt me to action. I work in the advertising world and so have a bit more motivation when it comes to pursuing this sort of thing. For others, advertising is an inconvenience; street furniture that can get in the way. They aren’t proactive.

This tendency to assume knowledge of a wider campaign isn’t a pecualiarity of teaser ads. Nor is it confined to confused.com (whose social media policy, incidentally, I admire). Look around at the billboards on your way to work and ask yourself whether you get their message and on what level.

MacDonalds have an ad running featuring a burger and the headline “The best things in life are 3″. Now of course I get that they sell burgers and I get the free/3 joke. But what does it mean? There is a pay-off line at the bottom of the ad with a list of ingredients but it doesn’t seem inclusive of all the real ingredients which make up the burger so I assume it’s part of an in-store promotion. But what in-store promotion? Do I get three items for a low price? Are there three really lovely new burgers to choose from? Or is it really just a burger with three ingredients (one of which is onion)? What? And why should I find out?

The message needs to be clear. And the message might be as simple as “remember our name” which is fine of course. Putting your brand out there for people to remember next time they go in-store is as worthy an aim as pushing a specific product or feature. The way in which they are achieved, however, differs greatly.

It’s that time of year again: Superbowl time. Traditionally I enjoy skipping the actual event and turning instead to the ads. Companies spend such a huge amount of time, creativity and money on them that it seems rude not to politely sit through to the end, bitter or otherwise.

This year they are getting talked about more than usual. Normally I read about which movie trailers played but this year Google ran an ad which made it into the mainstream press; dragging everything else behind it.

Google’s ad was pretty nice; whimsical and confident and with a simple message – namely search is a fact of life. As brands become increasingly switched on to the social side of commerce this positioning resonates.

What stood out for me, however, was the number of ads that were content to essentially waste time and money. Go Daddy drew lots of ire but, subjective views aside, at least it threw in the facts of the product.

Other brands weren’t so ambitious, relying instead on the media spend to impress the viewers. Why spend money on creative if all you are doing (from a semiotics perspective) is showing the company logo? Indeed, if no message and no values are conveyed then thirty seconds of a logo would not only be cheaper, it would arguably be more memorable also.

Advertising, of course, is the opportunity to be more than memorable. It offers the chance to inform as well.
And in these times, when buzzwords such as “social” and “conversation” are in such free-flow, what better form of dialogue is there than a contructive one?

Earlier this week I wrote a couple of articles (here and here) about Twitter.

They achieved three things:

1) I was followed by @davetrott – we admire his approach to advertising so this is “a good thing”.

2) Our blog traffic increased by around 900%. This is also a “good thing” and shows the degree of influence Dave has as an opinion former.

3) It cheered me up. This is a “good thing” for everyone else in the office.

All in all it shows stuff works.