The joy of not being sold anything
No-one needs advertising, and we increasingly seek out channels or content experiences which allow us to bypass the advertising all together. So what can brands do about it? Virtue's Alex Light explains.
Netflix tested ads on their platform in Australia in August. Sure, they were only promoting other shows on Netflix. But people went berserk.
“I’d rather stop watching Netflix than have them run ads.”
“I don’t need ads for content between shows.”
No-one needs advertising. And in a world where people pay for subscriptions like Netflix to avoid ads, increasingly we’re seeking out channels or content experiences which allow us to bypass the advertising all together.
A recent Havas survey ‘Meaningful Brands’ found that a lack of trust, attention and interest, as well as an over saturation of irrelevant content was attributed by the audience to low engagement with marketing, with a recent Havas survey demonstrating that, when asked how much a brand would be missed if it no longer existed, 74% brands scored zero out of 10.
The old adage of ‘I know half my marketing works, but I don’t know which half’, could probably be re-written in today’s media landscape as ‘I know half my marketing is pissing off my customers and making them actively dislike me, I just don’t know which half’.
For those of us in advertising and marketing, time to find a new career? Not yet.
It’s a golden opportunity.
An opportunity to use our marketing budgets to connect with people in a meaningful way. To make their lives better. To make society better. To solve a problem that people face. To make something they care about.
But it requires a shift in how we think about our consumers. Firstly, we need to stop thinking of them as consumers. We need to think of them as people. As an audience to our communications. To take the mindset of a publisher, and understand what they care about, and what matters to them.
To add value to their lives.
Here’s three examples that demonstrate this beautifully.
Natty Light, a college beer brand in the US, giving away a million dollars in Student Debt relief.
Dove Men+Care, using their voice to advocate for greater paternity leave.
Havas’ study concludes that ‘Meaningful Brands’ have outperformed the stock market by 206% over the last 10 years.
Time for a rejuvenation of how we think about our marketing and communications.
Alex Light is head of partnerships at Virtue.
The two examples are not thinking about advertising differently: the beer one is called a promotion, Dove is called a testimonial. Nothing new to see here.
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Advertising is obnoxious.
Yes advertising needs to be attention-grabbing. No its not ok to be obnoxious as a means of getting attention.
If the majority of the industry doesn’t remedy this, expect more ad-blocking and other content bypassing.
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Ha ha ha … good luck with that. The whole ponzi capitalist system is geared towards selling people crap they don’t really need. Everyone knows that if a corporate makes some “altruistic gesture” (especially in australia, with no history of corporate philanthropy) it is just a cynical attempt at market exploitation: like “free student debt relief” which just comes out of the advertising budget. Advertising has well and truly reached saturation and everyone is sick of the cultural pollution that it spews out. It has rendered itself almost valueless as everyone automatically dismisses or ignores all the rubbish as it pops up. I personally hate uber with a vengeance and every time I see an advert for those b4st4rds on youtube, I hate them even more. But if they didn’t advertise, how could they convince the muppets to use their exploitative (“gig economy”) business model? If advertising is so “good”, how come youtube is spraying this crap with greater and greater ferocity while the actual content creators (channels) need to go to Patreon and get funding directly from individuals to stay viable? This is starting to happen to more youtube channels and may be the canary in the systemic coal mine of advertising in general. And, please advertisers: stop lying! It’s not the 50’s any more, nobody’s buying it.
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Advertising is the tax you must pay for an unremarkable product. Sorry.
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The Havas study is pretty rubbish, and you haven’t provided any evidence that brands who don’t “add value” are suffering.
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Advertising is here to drive the capitalist machine. Consumer driven demand accounts for 65% of the GDP – our job is to help people buy stuff. The best way to do this has very very little with the stuff in this article. Trying this stuff (unless its just a promotion, or you really understand the numbers behind the feel good activities you embark on) is reckless and self-indulgent as you’re doing it on someone else’s coin.
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