Are Tic-tacs on to Something?
I’ve been watching a bit too much TV recently. I get home exhausted, give a cheery wave to my wife, kick off the shoes and settle in to the telly. No recordable TV for me, so it’s a diet of whatever the channels choose to serve up. It’s an old school, passive experience punctuated by lazy flicking up and down the Freeview channel list – glorious, mindless stuff. This is TV as it’s meant to be consumed – absorbed, not chosen. I watch a lot of TV ads – and though I love it, something’s been bothering me.
There is a terrifying chart from TGI that shows how many people now find TV ads more annoying, versus 15 years ago. And it shows that Britain has steadily fallen out of love with TV advertising in a very short period of time – 40% of us now profess to finding them annoying. There are a number of mitigating factors here: TV on demand services mean that consumers don’t need to see as much advertising as they used to, and there has been a proliferation of commercialisation generally in our culture. Consumers are receiving more and more commercial messages. But I wonder if there is more to it than that.. What if TV advertising really IS getting more annoying?
Everyone remembers the glory days when most ads had a decent punchline to keep us entertained. Now many of them seem to be deliberately set up to annoy me. And it must be working, because I see more and more of them – I swear if I see that cheeky chappy from the Jobsite ad one more time I’ll throttle him. My own father started to sing “Go Compare!” when I saw him at last week.The people who make these ads aren’t stupid, so I can only assume that these ads are helping achieve business objectives, regardless of how they tear families apart.
As an enlightened marketer I believe in building relationships between brands and consumers, but there is something refreshingly anarchic about a marketing strategy built around the platform GET everyone TO buy brand x BY making them seethingly annoyed with our communications; and since the creatives are at it – why not us media planners?
It’s actually already begun: Crazy Frog pioneered the 30 OTS optimised TV plan, and pionerring media owners are catching onto the opportunity. Last year’s annoying media gold award goes went to ITV, who forged a neat partnership with Tic Tacs whereby they cut away from their live FA Cup broadcast stream to show a minty ad while Everton scored the only goal of the match. It’s a start. I’m hoping we can all raise the bar in 2010.
June 1st, 2010 at 8:50 am
I am considering using the services of ‘we buy any car.com, we buy any car.com, we buy any car.com (repeat to fade x30) to sell my seven year old Renault Clio… aaaggh!!
June 2nd, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Personally, I have fallen out of love with many TV ads, that and ad funded programming just seem to plague my once peaceful vieweng experience.
I hate “Nina by Nina Richie sponsors glee “oooowwwwooo”
June 2nd, 2010 at 4:53 pm
A problem is that irritating ads tend to perform really quite well from a DR perspective – with Michael Winner’s e-sure being the best (should that be worst?) example.
And I guess the fact we’re talking, ok blogging, about them is itself a form of effectiveness?
Ads that are just ads, not ads as art. There may be room for both?
June 2nd, 2010 at 6:35 pm
JC, I share your pain. There are several culprits that may have exacerbated your problem.
The direct response market has grown exponentially in recent years driven largely by Finance advertisers, comparison websites and Cash for Gold clients to name a few using a range of irritating jingles, songs and catchphrases. They have also hit on a formula that combines high frequency and omnipresence to drive acquisition and response but to be fair, if it didn’t work they wouldn’t invest that much money. It is in reality a great endorsement of the effectiveness of TV.
One example, my particular detestation, buys on average 600 Adult TVRS for brand and 400 on DRTV per month reaching 90% of all Ads at an averagre OTS of 11.1! If you found the creative annoying that’s another very good reason. I caught my 3 year old singing her own version of it. Guess it works. Go figure!
Ads can be entertaining but the globalisation of marketing and ultimately, the downturn, has also seen the quality of brand advertising decrease as a consequence of budget control.
Also, the massive reduction in TV costs in 2009 by up to 19% has allowed advertisers with far smaller media and creative budgets who could not previously afford TV to enter the market, hence a plethora of less entertaining, direct style advertising.
However, there is one particular favourite of mine which is a response driven advertiser and is the most successful Ad campaign of all time which uses interesting storylines, an iconic character and great humour. If only creative agencies could mirror this more consistently.
Simples!
June 3rd, 2010 at 11:19 am
I think it’s RoseTinted Glasses James. There have always been annoying (and successful ads) – Shake and Vac anyone? Perhaps you’re just getting old and grumpy? My kids love Go Compare, actually so do I.