{"id":1558,"date":"2022-02-10T13:59:01","date_gmt":"2022-02-10T13:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=1558"},"modified":"2022-02-10T13:59:01","modified_gmt":"2022-02-10T13:59:01","slug":"make-em-laugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/make-em-laugh\/","title":{"rendered":"Make ‘Em Laugh"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A much quoted Advertising Association number from long ago was that 51% of consumers preferred TV ads to the programmes in which they appeared. I don\u2019t have up-to-date data but you can bet your life the equivalent number is now lower. A lot lower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In his excellent book \u2018Why Does The Pedlar Sing?\u2019<\/a> Paul Feldwick quotes Martin Boase, Founder of BMP, a wonderful agency that metamorphosed into today\u2019s Adam and Eve DDB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul has Boase saying: \u201cWe believe that if you\u2019re going to invite yourself into someone\u2019s living room for 30-seconds you have a duty not to bore them or insult them by shouting at them. On the other hand, if you can make them smile, or show them something interesting or enjoyable \u2013 if you\u2019re a charming guest \u2013 then they may like you a bit better, and then they may be a little more likely to buy your product.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is such a good quote. Within it are multiple principles: be likeable, entertain, don\u2019t shout, all of which lead to more sales. We seem to forget much of this these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mediatel News this week contained a piece<\/a> from that well-respected brand marketer Jan Gooding entitled \u2018Ads aren\u2019t welcome any more\u2019 in which she uses similar language \u2013 \u2018be an interesting guest\u2019, \u2018I despair at the unwelcome intrusion, and \u2019go away, you\u2019re not welcome here..\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feldwick joined Martin Boase at BMP in 1974; Gooding is writing 48 years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why are we so poor at learning lessons?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve written before about the lowering of creative standards in advertising. There are no doubt many reasons for this but if you look at the wider world you would be quite wrong to assume that we are living in an age of zero creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take music, art, film, theatre, literature. Are we going through some sort of barren age? I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The talent is and has always been there. Whether it\u2019s attracted to advertising is another question which, if the answer is \u2018no\u2019 may have something to do with what follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think one reason why so much advertising these days is so dreadful, so shouty, so unwelcome is we\u2019ve become unbalanced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We used to be unbalanced, but the other way. \u2018Media\u2019 and everything connected to it was ignored, the numbers seen as justification as opposed to offering any insight or direction. Creativity was all; the five-minutes-for-the-media-presentation-before-lunch story was real, and not funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of us may not have liked it, it may well have lead eventually to the break up of the full-service agency model but at the end of the day there were more good ads out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now it\u2019s the other way around. Decisions are made on media numbers that sometimes aren\u2019t real, and on the occasions they are real are (often wilfully) misused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those selling throw around data like confetti. Like confetti they float away on the breeze or are swept up, only to be replaced by the next lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The arguments, like the data are transitory. If you don\u2019t like this one, wait around \u2013 another one will be along in a minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have no collective memory, no interest in learning from the past and so we just keep making the same mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We would rather talk of new technology per se than of what we might do with it, how we might use it to benefit our clients and the customers they rely on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We want everything done fast, and cheap. We want to use data, and indeed we should, but we then stretch and bend it into all sorts of weird shapes for which it was never intended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We place algorithms and systems ahead of people\u2019s judgement because they\u2019re faster and cheaper, forgetting that these are tools, hugely valuable in the right hands but equally dangerous if they\u2019re misunderstood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin Boase, and Jeremy Bullmore, Leo Burnett, Bill Bernbach, David Ogilvy, and many more from that time were craftsmen. They built things that lasted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should ask ourselves not only will this campaign or this ad be seen, for how long and how many times but will it be remembered, will it last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we can make \u2018em laugh, entertain them, be welcomed we have more chance of being remembered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A much quoted Advertising Association number from long ago was that 51% of consumers preferred TV ads to the programmes in which they appeared. I don\u2019t have up-to-date data but you can bet your life the equivalent number is now lower. A lot lower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1559,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions\/1559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}