Why advertising is not working or stop wasting money

Advertising campaigns fail.

This happens so often that success stories are more of an exception than a rule, if we are not talking about the largest brands, but in general about the situation in the workshop.

Advertisers get frustrated, cut budgets for advertising, but continue to order it, because they do not see another way to promote their product. In this case, for some reason, it is extremely rare to find a serious analysis of the reasons for the failure of the campaign and a really thoughtful approach to the next one. And here the responsibility lies with both advertisers and advertisers.
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The latter can be - no, not justified, but at least to understand - someone is just a “not-very-expert” and does not know how to do it right, but someone is no longer able to prove to the customer that he is right and agrees to any compromises, so as not to lose earnings. Advertisers, on the other hand, are harder to understand: they invest a lot of money, spend even more valuable time in order to get a mechanism that does not work!

Let's understand what goes “wrong” and what needs to be done to achieve the desired result.

0. Axiom

Before we begin the debriefing, we call upon common sense and recognize that advertising, in order to work, must articulate a thought (message) and draw attention to itself.

The first literally means that when you see your ad, the person will understand what you want to say to him, and understand it correctly. The second implies that a person generally sees your ad and draws attention to it. Generally speaking, this is even more important, because if the ad is not noticed, then everything is in vain. If he was noticed, but did not pay attention - also in vain, because the message will not be read and taken to deliberation.

Most advertising campaigns fail precisely because of the non-fulfillment of the second condition, so we begin with why advertising is not seen or not noticed.

1. Old tricks don't work.

In general, this rule should be burned out with fire and kept in front of your eyes if you really decided to declare yourself.

Times change, society changes very quickly. Take a look: 15 years ago, many things that surround us today, either did not exist in nature, or they were the ancestors-dinosaurs of modern objects. Household appliances, electronics, computers. Especially computers.


Computer technology - they changed society.

Customers continue to write in their briefs that their target audience is successful people of 25-40 years old, and they advertise on TV. Come to your senses! Many of these people have long used TV, mainly for watching Blue-Ray and video games, and news, films and TV shows are found on thematic sites on the Internet. And every day there are more and more such people. The TV, of course, is still watched by a huge audience, but in order to stand out there, advertising must have exceptional properties, because in 20 years of advertising on Russian TV, viewers have learned to filter this kind of “information noise”. Especially because the commercial breaks are most often used as breaks in a program or film to run to the toilet or to the kitchen.

If you want your commercial to really see, make or entrust experts to make it so bright, unusual and memorable, so that in social and corporate networks it will wander from wall to wall with enthusiastic comments, like “Have you seen this?!” With this attitude, you can safely count on loyalty and celebrate the success of the advertising campaign. If, reading this paragraph, you think “well, this is not for me, we don’t need this”, you shouldn’t give video advertising at all - today there are other, much cheaper ways to just talk about your services, news and promotions.

If your clients can be grouped by interests, find sites and places that accumulate people of certain professions or hobbies, and place your ad there. Agree with fitness clubs or cafe-restaurants, serving a business lunch from 12 to 15, if you are sure that the representatives of your audience prevail among their visitors.

Already mentioned social networks. The number of people registered in them and visiting your page at least once a week is enormous. They are fueled by countless communities, starting with various “joint purchases” and ending with large professional interest groups. Look, it is difficult to find at least one foreign company that does not have its Facebook page. They are friends through it with their audience, communicate with it, report on updates and promotions. Create a page of your organization there, attract subscribers - they will find out all about your news from your feed.

You do not know how to attract subscribers? Organize an advertising campaign in the social network itself - all the mechanisms for this are already in place, and the cost of the campaign can be directly proportional to group visits; make the “play the iPhone” campaign among subscribers who have posted a message on their wall - this is the audience. At the same time you spent only on the iPhone and the necessary costs.

Another “wonderful” advertising mechanism is leaflets and flyers. If these papers do not allow you to receive a discount or do not represent any other value for a person (put a calendar or print a pizza recipe), how long will they stay with a person from the moment of delivery? Right up to the first urn. Almost all the money that was spent on their printing, on the work of distributing to people, goes to the trash. And many take them out of politeness and throw out even without reading.

Why not invest the same money in mechanisms that are even more likely to work? Self-deception, like “well, we did something,” will not be useful for the cause, because this “something” actually means “nothing.” Make a cool bright ad with the same meaning of the message on the bus, transforming it beyond recognition - you get your advertising contacts and save a couple of trees.

You can cite other examples, but it all comes down to a simple truth: to see the advertising message, it should be placed where it is more convenient for your audience, and not where your advertising department is more accustomed. The world is changing, is in constant motion - you need to track these changes, learn to feel the trends, to at least understand how best to communicate with your audience now, and ideally to have an idea of ​​what this dialogue will represent tomorrow. .

2. "No ice"

There is such a word, I do not like it because of the sound cutting ears, but it accurately describes what so often lacks in modern advertising: “wow factor”.

So, they saw your advertisement - what next?

Imagine a bulletin board on which 50 leaflets are about the same size. The board itself is at the entrance, you are waiting for an elevator and look at these ads simply because there is no place to look. You see them all. But so far not a single message has been read - this is a fundamental difference. What 3, 4, 5 papers you read, until the lift arrived? These will be those that are different. And it differs from those around them at the moment: color, letter size, leaf shape. The meaning of what has been written, the beauty of the syllable, the benefit for you personally - yes, this is fine, but if the piece of paper on which all this is, is unremarkable, then it will remain unread, lost in the gray mass.

So today is a lot of advertising. Inside any kind of promotional products there is a huge mass of initially equally uninteresting units. Remember: competition does not begin between goods or services (this is the second stage) - competition begins with the struggle between advertising messages for the right to attract attention. Let your product be a thousand times better than that of a competitor. But if his sign attracts more attention, if his image is better aligned with the views of the target audience, first the buyer will go to him.

Therefore, in order to attract attention, an advertising message must provoke an emotional reaction from the viewer, reader, listener — to surprise, pull it out of everyday life, to shock — take a walk on the websites devoted to global advertising — they contain huge collections of the brightest examples of advertising campaigns that cause genuine interest. to the presented products. This is what works. And it’s not necessary to say that some of these clips or posters were made not for real campaigns, but for festivals - this fact, combined with the success of the advertising product, only proves the short-sightedness of decision-makers.

Are you afraid that you "will not understand"? Regions or anyone else there? ..

It is better to ask yourself, and will they notice your message at all, before trying to understand it? To excel, to stand out, to attract attention is the primary task of the advertising product. It cannot be said that it is much more important than delivering a message, but if it is not resolved, then the rest is meaningless.

Trying to stand out, you should always remember three things: a blackboard with pieces of paper (if all the other pieces of paper around are also similar, then it’s time to look for some new form); that the old tricks do not work (people get used to them and what was previously surprised becomes ordinary, and sometimes brings boredom - it's like a joke, which is told in the fifth round); and about social responsibility (immoral advertising insults the viewer and society, causing moral damage to all of us - it is better to try to find a solution in a positive, in the wide sense of the word, way).

3. Quality

Any advertiser always speaks about the quality of their products and services. Show at least one brief where this word would not be mentioned. It is logical to assume that the advertiser knows firsthand about the quality, what it costs, but very often this knowledge does not leave the framework of its own subject area and is not extrapolated to other industries.

Advertising must be of high quality. Is always. Today we see a lot of high-quality (at least technically) cinema, supplied with first-class sound and accompanied by great posters. In the network and on television there are a lot of examples of stunning quality videos, screensavers and presentations. All this is in a single information field. Ask yourself a question: if your advertising products will seriously lose to the standards, who will believe that you have a solid company, and not just another sharashkin office?

This is not a call to spend more - it is a call to spend wisely. Yes, quality is expensive. Always expensive. Therefore, it is better to do it once well than to redo it repeatedly; it is better to make fewer posters, but to make them cool, one video instead of five, but which will not be a shame to reconsider even after five years.

Of course, the quality of the advertising product is not only an external execution, but also an idea that we talked about in the previous section, but any idea can be easily killed by a bad performance. No need to console yourself with the fact that poor performance is the fault of the performer. It is the customer’s fault in the first place - you could not formulate the task, you did not provide the conditions for its implementation. The executor depends on your decisions, deadlines and budgets: stretched with a decision - it means that the work will be done later and differently (for example, a full-scale summer survey was assumed, which became impossible due to the winter), cut the budget by 10, and even 5% - the performer could not use the technologies that would provide the best result, reduced the time - there was no time left to polish the work to a shine.

Find yourself a good design studio, radio station, video production team, advertising agency whose opinion you will trust - and trust them in their work. They made so many commercials, posters and spent so many promotions, how much you never order yourself all the time doing business, and, therefore, you will never know this business better than they do. They have experience, they know how to work correctly - just as you know everything about their work.

4. Fears

Fear is everyone and always. In business, fears in general can be divided into two types, which, closely intertwined, spur each other. If this is not controlled, the results are completely ineffective solutions.

The first type of fear is the fear of loss. This type of fear a person develops in himself. In most cases, it is expressed in the fear of losing money.

It is typical for both customers and performers. In this case, for some reason, both those and others are much less likely to be afraid of losing time or reputation. After all, the loss of time for both means lost opportunities, and the loss of reputation can aggravate this effect even more: the performer is rude to the customer, throws it and seriously expects that no one will know about his "quality of work"? The customer works according to the principle “I am the master, you are a fool”, he pushes the deadlines and cuts off financing (if he does not withdraw money), and really thinks that in professional circles this information will not be diverted? Losing money is unpleasant, very noticeable at the moment of loss. But often, in the end, not as bad as the loss of reputation and time. It is not so noticeable. Exactly until others suddenly stop working with you.

The second type of fear is the fear of responsibility. He comes from the outside. The performers are dominated by the fear of a response to the customer in the event of a dispute, which leads either to voluminous paper refinancing with fixation with seals of each step, or to inexorably slack nerves. It is difficult to argue with the fact that thoughts like, “what to do if you bother” rarely contribute to productive work. Against this fear, such a real, constantly hovering in the air, other fears of the same nature - such as social responsibility (“and if children see”), administrative (compliance of advertising with the law) - often fade into the background, which can eventually go sideways all participants of this event.

At the customer, this fear has a slightly different form. The prevailing problem sounds like: “And what if I look bad, that if something is not thought of me, they think it is an upstart?” Here, with the same wording, the fear of trying something new and non-standard looms. Although one should focus on the problem of the quality of the goods and services produced, if they are unsatisfactory, then they will think.

It will be bad to think if you sell shit in a beautiful wrapper and advertise it well. And if your product is good, no advertising will spoil it. This absurd desire to seem better than you are, will not impress anyone. Today, sincerity and simplicity of communication work - do not miss the opportunity to be yourself, talk to people in simple language and demonstrate a sense of humor (of course, within reasonable limits).

Noticed these posters in the offices of well-known companies, where beautiful smiling girls in uniforms report that they are glad and obliged to do their job well? And what is the reality? And how do you feel as a result? This is it.

Fears negatively affect the outcome. The stronger they are, the less productive the work is, the worse the result will be. However, most of the fears are capable of dispelling the parties themselves - let the temporary “contractor-customer” team be a team, not an internecine wars camp. You are doing one thing - help each other do it well, because all participants are interested in this, no matter what.

5. Priorities and vicious circle

A few more words remain to the above. As soon as you think about an advertising campaign, start by setting priorities. This is important, it will save time, often leaving for meaningless "discussions", will allow you to set the tasks correctly and decide in general what needs to be done.

The most important thing is to determine what goal you want to achieve with your campaign. If you just decided to "make a video and scroll it on TV", then think about what you are trying to achieve? This action may be aimed at creating a certain image, or a story about a service. Think about the audience - who will see who you want to show your message to. As soon as you decide on this, it will immediately become clear how to set a task and by what criteria to evaluate the work of specialists - ensure that the advertising product clearly and interestingly communicates the message, and not the presence of a mole on the model, without which you personally would like it more. Keep track of what is really important, the rest - delegate to the appropriate professionals.

Why is it important? Incorrectly placed priorities, an attempt to get into the work of specialists, showing that you are the smartest here and know everything (which is impossible for any person in principle), incorrectly formulated tasks and requirements lead to the creation of a product that does not work as expected. If you want a car, and ask the contractor to arrange for you a “vehicle on four wheels”, allocating only a third of the cost of the cheapest car, don’t be surprised at the wooden wagon with the old nag - the problem is solved, the costs are minimized, you can only kick yourself wording.

This phenomenon has another negative consequence, which is reflected in the advertising market, and consequently on all its participants: disappointment. As mentioned at the very beginning, if advertising does not work, its budgets are cut. We have seen that often advertising does not work not by itself, but as a result of wrong decisions. However, if this is not realized, it is considered that advertising does not work at all. Further reduction of budgets only exacerbates the effect: fewer messages, lower quality, worse effect.

This is the vicious circle in which you need to try not to get. And, to try to figure out how to avoid it, where to look for the roots of problems and ways to solve them, this article was written.

6. Instead of summing up

The above can be reduced to simple thoughts: keep abreast of the times, do not be afraid of changes, because they will happen anyway - you either continue your journey aboard or stay behind; think carefully and prioritize everything; trust the opinion of experts; do not save on quality, as the miser pays twice; cooperate with colleagues, customers and performers, and demonstrate your superiority to competitors with the results of your work; Each time, re-evaluate the situation, so as not to aggravate it by repeating past mistakes.

Everything said in this article is not a revelation at all. Such thoughts can be learned one way or another both from books and from conversations with any expert in the field of advertising and business promotion. Many things are generally built on the logic of life. But for some reason, they are constantly forgotten. The purpose of this article was precisely the desire to recall, to re-illuminate some aspects of the work of advertising.

The article was written on the basis of personal experience and, of course, does not claim to be the ultimate truth. This is a point of view, which is proposed to supplement, revise, rethink, that one fine day not individual units, but the absolute majority of advertising products and campaigns become effective and responsible tools for product promotion, for which we would cease to be ashamed.