You never know what you're gonna get!

The other day I was just considering what kind of ads are really the best ads for my clients.
Is it the main-stream with no creativity or is creativity in advertising really that important and not just a product of my ego? I found out one thing: Being a client of any agency is the same as buying an older car.

In advertising just like in older cars even the biggest experts never really know for sure. If there is some creative or account who tells a client: "I'm absolutely sure that this commercial will work well." he lies. We never really know and neither do the people who sell or buy old cars.

If you buy an old VW Beetle, it probably will do the same service to you as a Porsche if you just want to drive from home to your office in downtown. So does actually a not-that creative advertising accomplish your goals as well as the CLIO winning one. Both can turn out bad (and don't think that your Porsche can't break in the middle of Main Street or it can be stolen from the garage) or great (compared by earned $$). The only and important difference is in the way how they satisfy your ego.

There are also moments when you really need a Porsche, because a VW Beetle won't make it. It's when you have really huge goals set like driving from Montreal to Dallas in two days, or getting a 45 % market share with a new brand in a though figh with competitor giants. But even in those moments, a Toyota probably could make it, with a little more time and good fortune...

Don't ask me for the moral of the story. I would say "Drive your Porsches, I really like to too. And curse the stupid guys in their little dirty VW Beetles. They really suck."

Adland® is supported by your donations alone. You can help us out by buying us a Ko-Fi coffee.
Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
comment_node_story
Files must be less than 1 MB.
Allowed file types: jpg jpeg gif png wav avi mpeg mpg mov rm flv wmv 3gp mp4 m4v.
Dabitch's picture

Late reply, but still: anyone know where i can find some of John Philip Jones findings? That 25% drop number intrigues me.

TDD's picture

You have gone on record as saying that one out of five ads actually causes a drop in sales. How did you arrive at this conclusion?

It's true. Not all advertising is created equal. Life is just not as simple as making an advertisement and then broadcasting it. This fact is based on research on over 150 brands conducted over many years in both developed and developing countries.

We found that for one out of five ads the effects were magnificent: 94 per cent increase in the short-term. For one out of five ads the effect was minimal. For one out of five ads the effect was negative -- the households that received the advertisement bought less than those that did not. For two out of five, the effect was positive.

Quite simply this means that in 60 per cent of the cases the advertiser benefited from the advertising effort, that the ad made no different to 20 per cent of the cases, while 20 per cent spent money to lose more money.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/may/19bspec1.htm