Why 90% Of Today’s Ads Are A Total Waste Of Money
Hundreds of Millions of dollars are being invested in advertising each year by all the major corporations. Nissan, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Snickers, Kit-Kat – all of them are guilty of lousy advertising investments.
Most of the ads we watch on TV and read in Newspapers aren’t working anymore. When I am watching 2009 Lexus IS250 riding around on New Zealand’s finest roads, it still doesn’t make me want to have a Lexus. It does make me want to go to New Zealand though, but that wasn’t what the adman wanted to accomplish, was it?
Most of today’s advertising agencies are clueless. Giving them control over your marketing campaigns would be as crazy as hiring a hungry rabbit to guard a warehouse full of carrots. MADNESS!
Ad agencies are charging millions for creativity but if you were to look at the sales statistics before and after the ad release, more often than not, sales go DOWN. However, it doesn’t concern the adman very much, he got his 7 figure check and he is off to get that Lexus IS250 he wanted so bad while he was creating the ad.
Creativity Over Sales?
Couple of years ago Nissan hired one of the industry’s most Creative ad directors – Lee Clow (note: very close to “Clown,” coincidence?) to create a series of TV commercials for Nissan’s new production line of cars.
The Clow(n) presented Nissan with a series of the most creative ads ever made: Toy action figures driving around in toy Nissan cars. There even were dinosaurs involved…WOW!
The ads were pure entertainment and didn’t include a word about how great, unique, affordable or convenient Nissan cars are… You can imagine what happened next.
As soon as the ads began running – Nissan’s sales hit the dirt. According to The Wall Street Journal, the month the “toy” ads debuted, Nissan’s sales fell 2.7%. The next month they fell 10.2%… then 4.2% … and then, 1.6%.
While Nissan’s sales were going down the drain, Lee Clow was inducted into the advertising Hall of Fame and the ad campaign was proclaimed “the best ad campaign of the year.”
Did Clow(n) even bother about the ad campaign assassinating Nissan? Not at all.
So what’s the point of advertising? According to most of the major corporations it’s not sales. What is it then? What is the point investing huge budgets into ad campaigns that are going to demolish your profit margins?
Some might say “branding,” others are going to give you a blank stare, but the truth remains – MONEY. The whole point of advertising is to get more leads, more sales and more money.
4 Missions Every Ad Must Accomplish To Be Successful
- Create a strong desire for the product by presenting the benefits the product will bring into prospect’s life.
- Convince the prospect that the benefits the product provides are unique and can’t be found in any other product.
- It must communicate urgency for the prospect to buy the product.
- It must compel your prospect to action – to buy the product.
Thousands of small business owners are carelessly investing in TV and Radio advertising every single day. If you don’t want to lose your pants to angry debt collectors – never trust your advertising to media reps. Conveying those 4 key points to your readers/viewers/listeners is essential for a successful advertising campaign.
You don’t need to spend millions of dollars on advertising to make people want to buy from you, you just need to be a little bit smarter than Nissan’s CEOs.
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Igor, it’s not that plain as you present it to be. Advertising for companies (especially large ones) has more things attached to it than just money and branding. If it was like you say then why would Sony for example spend money on advertising. They have the brand, everyone knows it, they have the money?
A major role of advertising/marketing is not to make the company get more sales, but to keep the company from losing sales (i.e. market share, brand awareness etc.).
Imagine you have a curve going upwards (I really wish I could upload pics here) representing the life of a company. Now if this company practices marketing regularly this curve will be very smooth (or might not be that much but it depends on various outside factors out of our reach). Generally the idea is to keep that curve the way it is. Without marketing though, the curve would have large dips in it, representing periods where the company weakened. It may still continue through the same path, but those dips can be fatal at the time they occur if not treated. And marketing is just another way to keep that curve steady and smooth.
Thanks for the article I gave it a tweet
My pleasure.
Thanks for the tweet.
btw, please use your real name when commenting.
Igor
hmmm. Very simplistic, which could be seen as shining light when being read by a business owner uncertain about marketing and how to approach their advertising dollar…. but in reality this information is 101 stuff. I know the basics are important, but merely being able to tackle correctly and being able to kick a ball doesn’t make you an all black or get you in the super bowl. Advertising isn’t simple. It takes thourough analysis, thought leadership and creative intuitiveness. For one, Urgency and action are only relevant triggers for people who are actually in the market to buy your product… which is great if you’re products on a supermarket shelf, but lets be honest, everyone on the shelf is doing the same thing to grab this market – so sometimes the softly softly approach is best – it depends on the category your competing in entirely. Secondly, for bigger ticket items hardly anyone is actually in the market to buy your product from a mass audience perspective so more of your message has to be focussed on either contiunally drumming in your benefits to more of your potential customers believe you or you can create a “shit hot” that gets people evangelical about your product – leaving the masses of advertising businesses to shame. Your product and its attriubtes – ie. market position – SWOT analysis etc will all contribute to the way you approach your advertising…. but to simply outline it as a 4 step process, is like saying “believe in god, because it will lead you on a path to eternal life” – it ain’t true, it’s too easy, and it’s far too good for you!!
This is the basic outline of what the ad should look like.
It wasn’t my intention in anyway to say that this is what it
takes to create a high converting, super-duper ad.
Everything needs testing and tweaking. Headlines, calls to action
and benefits – all need to be tested to see if it gets results. But what I provided
is a basic outline of where to start and what to accomplish.
If you want to be successful advertiser – there is no way around those 4 bullets points.
Igor