1 post tagged “advertising theory”
Today I was asked to take part in a reader survey on behalf of advertisers in The Economist, especially Huawei. This gave me my big chance to rant about how much I hate many advertisements. This is what I wrote in the question at the end that asked whether I have any suggestions to offer Huawei on their advertising. Note that I don't dislike advertising per se, just the way it tends to be done at the moment. On the contrary, I'd be happy to see a truthful advertisement that informed me of a product that I'd like to buy.
This applies to all advertisers, not just Huawei:
They need to produce advertisements that I want to see; that would actually give me pleasure. Some advertisers currently have a mindset that they want to force advertisements onto an unwilling public and to bamboozle them into buying a product they don't need. Examples of evidence of this are in their talking of 'creating a need' in the consumer, in the turning up of the base level in television advertisements to wake up people who have fallen asleep (and presumably do not wish to be woken) and in the appalling dullness of many advertisements. Advertising theory (at least when I was taught it many years ago) is mostly about how to give the advertisement attributes that will meet the needs of the commissioner (e.g. create a positive association to the product) and not about how to make an enjoyable or useful experience for the customer. They can only get away with this for so long. Technology makes it increasingly easy to filter out advertisements and even without technology they can be easily ignored. I ignore advertisements as a matter of principal because I dislike some marketing attitudes so much. I barely even glance at them. I have also written a program (for my personal use only) that strips all advertisements out of the on-line edition of The Economist so that I never have to see them at all. It is very easy to do this and I expect that programs like this will become increasingly available commercially. This has already been seen in television where recording equipment will remove advertisements.
If advertisers want to succeed now and in the future I think that they need to produce advertisements that people will want to see. They must put the consumers' needs before those of the commissioners.
They should also get more into new media e.g. sponsoring the TwIT (This Week in Tech) podcast. I respect any company that does this because they would be supporting people I like and trust.
The issue of trust is very important. The repeated abuses by the advertising industry over many decades has caused them to lose all trust of intelligent people. When I see an advertisement, I immediately assume that any claims being made are probably false, such is my distrust of advertisements. This distrust has been proven well founded time and time again. They need to find a way to regain their credibility, for example by having their claims audited by independent experts.
