Advertisers should remember ordinary people don’t care about advertising
Dave Trott offers a friendly reminder that no one outside of advertising cares about advertising, and offers advice on how to make work translate to the everyday person.
Nicholas George wrote a comment on my blog last week:
When I got my first job in an ad agency in London it was a bit overwhelming.
Nobody in my family had ever worked in the capital, or any big city for that matter, so there was nobody I could ask for advice.
But I took my work seriously, maybe too seriously for some people, and after work I really did not want to socialise with advertising people, I got enough of them at work.
I love this and it’s 100% correct. We take ourselves too seriously (and importantly)
Love Dave Trott’s work and love reading his blog.
[Always a lesson in how to present an argument clearly and concisely].
But, I beg to disagree with him just this once.
Advertising doesn’t have to be fun, or interesting, to be effective.
Nor does being fun, or interesting, automatically lead to greater effectiveness.
Often straight and relevant is not only all that’s needed, it’s exactly what’s needed.
And despite claims that –
‘ads have to be fun and interesting to stand out because there are 10 billion ads a day and people only remember 2 of them’
– it never ceases to amaze me how many people have little problem noticing the 2 ads that are relevant to them.
Good ads make the product interesting for people. Why not have fun making such ads?
I just think that we might need time to educate (in a way) to show people that they might think that they don’t need advertising but they rely on it without realising how much. That is why, even though they (think they) don’t nee advertising, it never goes away.
Mr Trott is onto something here. The serious employee who doesn’t care what outsiders think isn’t limited to advertising – I suspect this is a problem in most industries. But it is more problematic in advertising.
Pride, including professional pride is insidious and something that can snake away from our self-awareness. But if you ever find yourself talking along the lines of “who cares what those idiots think”….your performance is likely going to suffer.
A lot of brands and advertisers striving to make an emotional connection think they can make their brand matter to the audience as much as it matters to them. This isn’t realistic. I think striving for interest rather than emotional investment is likely to yield more fruit.