Cutting through the crap

There’s a lot of advertising out there.

And without a well-designed strategy, your ad will be just one more on the heap. That would be a great outcome for the media, the media salesperson, and the agency that booked the ad. But for your business, it’s more than just a waste of time, it’s an easy way to go out of business.

More than ever, the most important part of advertising is the work you put in before you start building and booking the ad. If your message can’t cut through all the clutter, your message is useless. And if you think making your ad “look pretty” is the answer, you’re just adding to the very large pile of pretty clutter.

The problem is particularly acute for traditional media, where audiences are declining. Take television audiences, for instance. A television station could capture a massive share of the audience when there were only two or three channels to choose from. Now, with dozens of channels on free-to-air television, hundreds more on pay television, and an unlimited supply of programming on streaming services like Netflix and Youtube, the audience for that one television station starts to look pretty slender. And they have to keep cramming in more ads to stay afloat. Newspapers and magazines are the same. More than half the pages in an average magazine contain advertising. Around 10 to 15 minutes of every television or radio hour is dedicate to advertising.

Instead of throwing bigger budgets at the problem, smart marketers are looking for more segmentation and highly targeted advertising. But even that approach has limits. With exposure to advertising reaching what seems like saturation level, cutting through the clutter has become the main challenge.

On television, ad-zapping , or ad avoidance, is a whole field of study in itself and one aspect gaining a lot of attention is pre-emptive switching. While there are times when viewers can be confident the ads are not about to start (during play in a state of origin match or during a performance on X-Factor), they know that when the Cowboys score, they are about to be subjected to advertising. Watching drama programs, however, viewers are more likely to be taken by surprise.

TIP: Sit down and watch the programs in which your ads are running. How easy can viewers pre-empt the ads and switch channels or mute the sound?

Understanding that sometimes less is more, the Fox network already is cutting back the number of ads. By 2020, Fox’s Ad Revenue President (yes, that’s a real position and title) wants to see just two minutes of ads per hour of prime time programming. Costs per second will no doubt rise accordingly. Other networks are following suit, with NBC looking at picture-in-picture ads and six-second spots, attempting to create stronger links between the ad and the program. A more powerful but little recognised form of linking can be seen in programs like Australian/American Idol. The subliminal messages is everywhere when you watch the program closely – from simple product placement, like Coke on the judges’ desk, to sets featuring big round creations that emulate donuts to help the program’s major sponsor.

More concerning for advertisers, though, is the deeper issue that goes to how people think and how they process and respond to the world around them. As a result of so much exposure, people have become very “ad literate” and have developed the ability to shield themselves from persuasive techniques advertisers traditionally use. The techniques a good marketing creative employs to cut through the clutter (creativity, engagement, unexpectedness, and subtlety) have led to a new type of advertising medium, which will be the topic of a future blog post.

TIP: Try to explain how your ad will cut through the clutter. If you can’t articulate a sound reason, look for a creative who understands the foundations of marketing.

The average person is exposed to more than 4,000 ads per day (some believe it is as high as 10,000). What makes yours so special?