Ellen Svenningson – 22nd November 2011
“Asked about the power of advertising in research surveys, most agree it works, but not on them” – Eric Clark.
I think Eric is right advertising doesn’t work. Beyond doubt it’s somewhat contradicting to think like this, whilst studying advertising. It’s indeed a sad carrier I have in front of me spending hours of effort to convey messages knowing they possibly wont be heard, these thoughts been nagging me for a while now.
I believe in this quote because I am certainly one of those from the surveys. As motivating as it can be to work with good ads just as skeptic am I, when I am the target for an ad. I imagine more and more people are too if not already, because we all know that in the end companies make advertising to make more money. On top of that we also know that ads is often an unrealistic perfect interpretation of the real world. With more and more people aware of this, it’s no wonder we’re becoming more skeptical towards advertising.
Interesting enough I like to believe that the brands I do buy, I would have bought them even without most of their ads. Those brands might have succeeded but those are few.
I never got to formulate a question before Nicole Yershon from Ogilvy came in and said she worked on the border of advertising. She talked about how brands can be useful. She explained how, brands in the future need to follow the Pull rather than the Push strategy. As Nike+ together with Apple offers there costumers a free app to meet other runners and track how far and fast you run and so on. It’s not a direct sales strategy, but most likely you remember Nike positively, you remember them as being useful to you. Brand Utility will become even more important in the over communicated world. Being a big bad company that wants costumers money are not going to work in the future. The concept of Brand utility is the answer to my thoughts about how to truly get people to care and create loyalty towards a brand. Brand Utility doesn’t stand-alone, it’s a part of an overall campaign.
For me, and my fellow Spankers I’m sure will we still work our brains out to create campaigns – but with much more focus on the gravity of Brand Utility!
