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, 1 reply)

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)