A lot of companies bet their money in advertising of short annoying spots that will stick in your head. But if I am saying annoying, I really mean those ones that bother you for days and stays in your head and you just wish that there could be a way how to get to the court and charge them with disturbing the peace in your home. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about these advertising they are all over the media and we as a consumers have get use to it.
The question is if these adverts even work? Surprisingly they do work but not in all the cases like in example of funny advertisement. Even the annoying adverts can be ruined by the lack of information presented for the consumers. For example this would be a case of web-side click4sky.com, which is selling online fly-tickets. They came out with several short commercial with little drawn guy who just can not believe the prices that the company offers and because he believes that it is just a lie he says: “if this is true than a lightning will strike me”.
There were several versions of this ad. It was just so annoying commercial and it had one big mistake. The guy, to whom something always happened, totally took away focus from the name of the company. People remembered the guy but not what for he stands for. After all it was really annoying commercial which did not have even any effect. Waste of time, money and many people’s nerves.
On the other hand there are advertisements that are extremely annoying but still they are successful. Great example would be radio advertisement for company Mobelix that sells furniture. They made hundreds of radio advertisements, which bothered the drives more than the traffic, but what this company did differently than in the case of click4sky.com was that the main theme of the advert was the name of the company. Listening to it over and over made you to remember the name deeply in your mind and it worked I have sofa from there. Unfortunately for us annoying adverts works and they still will be here but again you have to be careful the way how it is used.
Hi Michal, reading through your posts made me revisit the part of my brain that is reserved for annoying commercials. See, I too am a victim of the foxy advertisers! ;-)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I was wondering in connection to the main topic of your blog - humor in ads that is - how thin is the ice the advertisers get onto with these kind of ads. For humor is sooo subjective! And I am not even talking about the cross-cultural differences, but also among the different subgroups within one society (that is, a national market for the advertising companies) - or even a regional one. Especially in today's diverse world, where significant number of ethnic, racial, religious and other minorities live side by side in one area, receiving the same TV channels... You know, what is regarded funny for one, can be offensive for another.
The watchful eye of political correctness is yet another factor advertisers have to take into account when creating their humorous commercials. Of course, the laws regulating advertising are different in their flexibility across countries, but it seems that creating a really funny ad that does not lay ground for a legal suit has become way harder... What do you think?