Advertising agencies...
A recent Charlie Brooker TV show sort of dealt with one of my main gripes with this but it seems even he, the Baron of Bile, seems to have had a blind spot on this.

It started with car and perfume ad's in the 90's but that was okay as I was too you to care, I remember the backgound noise of some standup ranting but it's too fuzzy to remember.

Simply put my problem is with adverts that, if you removed reference to the product in question, would leave you completely oblivious as to what the product does. A sloppy explination I know but as they say the bear is with me.

I try and go through the meetings in my head that lead to adverts like the recent Smirnoff ad campaign where a bunch of rich young Tarquin, Jarvis, Apple and Geniveve socialites have a magical costume part in the woods, (a la Guess Jeans).

If you remove the one scene with the bottle in it and the logo at the end then it could be for fucking Anusol for all I know! The people talking aren't telling me how smooth Smirnoff is or what interesting drinks I can make with it because...well...because it's just vodka; but they just tell me how mad it was to have this party in the woods and, if you'll allow me to read between the lines, how fucking great it is to be richer and have more richer friends than me!

Admiral Insurance! Why am I more likely to buy it from a cunt in a hat? You never see his legs because he's not wearing pants, the talking parrot is in his head and he's in at 2 o'clock for electro shock therapy because Bonaparte won't stay out of Prussia!

This is a rant now and it wasn't supposed to be, but these adverts seem to be getting more popular, (anyone who has seen the dancing penguins will know it is a direct result of webuyanycar), and on this basis I ask what is the companies attraction to these talentless bastards!?

'Because it sells comes the answer', so it then falls at your feet, why do we find this dross appealing
(Feeb is a smooth operator, operating correctly, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 13:54, 23 replies)

"Appealing" isn't the word
As an adcunt, I know about these things. Irritation is a sound way of making a brand name stick. Look at jingly ads like Sheila's Wheels, or Go Compare's opera singer (their reaction to the extremely successful CompareTheMeerkat ads).
Tons of money is spent each year on advertising recall. The type of ads you talk about are clearly failures. The successes are those that are remembered by the people the ad agencies are targeting.
There's an old adage about a CEO who says that he knows 50% of his advertising works, but he doesn't know which 50%.
( FishNChimps Achtung! Spitfeuer!, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:17, closed)

Nope
Admiral WORKS. Believe me, I've seen tracking.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:25, closed)

I didn't mean it as a personal attack
re-reading has pointed out that is how it sounds. The way you've put it, it does make sense that even though they annoy me, (the ad's), I can quite clearly recall all of the jingles that I so despise.

Damn you adcunt!
(Feeb is a smooth operator, operating correctly, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:26, closed)

McDonalds.
At first, the ads had the "do-do-do do-doooo" whistle followed by someone singing "I'm lovin' it" to a tune that sort of resolves the questioning tone of the whistle.

Then they took the singing away and just left the whistle. Because of the cleverly crafted melody, your brain can't help filling it in by thinking "I'm lovin' it". Good trick, that.

At least it worked until I read an article about McD by Will Self, entitled "I'm leavin' it".
(MiscellaneousFiles, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:39, closed)

As someone who works in advertising....
...you've kind of hit the nail on the head. It doesn't really need to make sense or be any good in order to sell stuff.

The Smirnoff one will make it seem more premium and upmarket just because it does feature a bunch of braying twats. That will get more students drinking it and will make more chavs think Smirnoff is a classy drink.

As for Admiral, it's because nobody really gets excited about the brand of their insurance - their criteria is that it's cheap and they've heard of you. The advertising is terrible but it is memorable, so awareness of Admiral is higher, and therefore they will be on more people's shortlists to call for a quote, and more acceptable to people who go through price-comparison websites. I have had dealings with insurers in the past about their marketing and believe me, they know it's terrible.

So unfortunately, yes, the truth is 'because it sells'. You're right in that it's the public to blame for letting it work....
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:25, closed)

fucking public
it's always their fault.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:28, closed)

Ah well...
At least I now have an answer unlike may others on this board of the damned.
(Feeb is a smooth operator, operating correctly, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:33, closed)

It really is...
You try showing adverts to a focus group. They will methodically reject anything clever or intelligent in favour of something simple and straightforward with a recognisable character and a jingle. Every time.

Old advertising trick: if you really want to be sure of getting an advert a good response from a focus group, put a puppy in it.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:35, closed)

There's a video on YouTube somewhere
of a focus group watching an animatic (i.e. cartoon version made before money's spent filming it) of the iconic Apple Mac "1984" ad. They hated it for being depressing, dark and not having any monkeys in it, or something. It's fucking hysterical.
( FishNChimps Achtung! Spitfeuer!, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:47, closed)

Ha!
Might have a look for that...
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:49, closed)

Here 'tis
www.youtube.com/watch?v=624FxhJlVM0
( FishNChimps Achtung! Spitfeuer!, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:50, closed)

A thing of beauty

( mrlogic is copying your beard, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:54, closed)

Wonderful
'I'm a big fan of anything with a chimpanzee in it...'
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 15:34, closed)

As the late, great David Ogilvy said, “Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.”
But...

The Smirnoff ads (and all alcohol ads) are, by law, prohibited from telling you pretty much anything about what the product does. So all they've got to go on with their advertising is brand - and therefore lifestyle. People see others being socialites having a magical costume party (I'm assuming you meant party and not 'animal costume part', though I haven't seen the ad in question so who knows), basically living a good life/having a good time, the viewer wants that for themselves. Tacking Smirnoff on the end associates the brand with the lifestyle. Simple as that. Though there's usually a ton of "planning" and "research" that has gone on before the agency is even briefed which somehow justifies animal costume parties(parts?).

Admiral, who own a lot of the other insurance brands like Elephant and Diamond, create their ads in-house. No ad agency at all. And that seems to work fine for them: "Over the nine months to 30 September 2008, Admiral was on track to "hit or exceed" profit estimates, with a 13% lift in turnover to £718m and a 17% increase in customers to 1.71 million." More here...

You said your problem with ads is that if you removed reference to the product you'd be completely oblivious to what it does. And you're absolutely right. Ads like that are bad, bad ads. I do a lot of work with advertising students and one of the things we always say to them is "If I took off the logo, I wouldn't know what brand it was for. Go away and do it betterer."

All I'm saying is that there is a lot of talent in the advertising business. Even Charlie Brooker knows that. The problem is that it doesn't always end up in the ads.

Can you guess what I do for a living? ;)
( mrlogic is copying your beard, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 14:32, closed)

But can Admiral say for sure
that the achieved profit targets have anything to do with the advertising?

I spent ten years in market research, including advertising research (not sure about the puppy thing, never had any experience of it), and my impression was that ad companies were far more interested in winning awards than in making ads which communicated the product/brand/service effectively.
( Sonic the Hedgetrimmer doesn't care what you think, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 15:42, closed)

that's the difference between advertising and marketing
Responses from TV and billboards can't be monitored. So you have to make as big a splash as possible - therefore, creative.

As an interesting side note, Bob Isherwood, worldwide creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi, commissioned research which showed that award-winning advertising is significantly more effective than the dull stuff.

But then the people who commission research often get the results they want.

/contradictory cynic blog
( mrlogic is copying your beard, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 17:23, closed)

Well....
There's Econometric analysis to strip out the effect of all factors other than advertising, but in general what that shows is that you rarely get positive return-on-investment from advertising in the short-term - in other words you make less money off the back of it than it costs you as a business.

However, you just hope that in the long-term it pays off. Or that's what you tell the client anyway...
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 17:32, closed)

Yep.

( mrlogic is copying your beard, Thu 22 Oct 2009, 13:08, closed)

These type of adverts are "anchoring" thoughts and feelings to their product
By association. For example, some visual or audio anchors that will elicit positive responses in people are things like bird-song, pictures of open hills and sunny valleys, ya know, *happy* stuff.

On a similar level having trendy motherfuckers swanning about a night-club and then pasting a SoCo jingle at the end makes people sheeple associate trendy rock-wannabe cunts with SoCo. I know you and me and most people here see through this and throw our hands up in despair, but sense and popularity never go hand in hand, hence this QOTW.
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 15:20, closed)

muff trimmers and jam rags
i personally love the new style advertising for ladies.
The new razor for ladies with the floo trimmer ? Shows a bint walking down the street as all the bushes around her shrink and become tidy and neat. Blatant muff imagery. Awesome!
Then the new always ultra ad... shows the pad... with a lovely vadge shape in blue. The pads do not have imprints of blue vadges on them.. but the advert does. More blatant muff imagery.
All we need now is more willy for us ladies. Its only fair.
(a girl called harry, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 16:43, closed)

Floo trimmer
I'm stealing that.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 17:17, closed)

There have been at least three adverts in the last year
that I've found myself watching for the hundredth time thinking "I still don't know what this advert's for." It all becomes clear at the end, but by then I've lost interest and forget again anyway. Surely that can't be the desired effect?
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Wed 21 Oct 2009, 16:53, closed)

I'm just wondering...
Has anyone seen the dancing penguins yet? Anyone!
(Feeb is a smooth operator, operating correctly, Thu 22 Oct 2009, 8:42, closed)