{"id":1852,"date":"2025-01-27T08:37:45","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T08:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=1852"},"modified":"2025-01-27T08:37:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T08:37:45","slug":"how-to-avoid-being-pathetick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/how-to-avoid-being-pathetick\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Avoid being Pathetick"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Taken from \u2018The Attention Economy: A Category Blueprint\u2019 by Dr Karen Nelson-Field. What follows is based on my 1\u00bd page contribution to an excellent 371 page book<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a week is a long time in politics, and a day is an age in the wacky world of online media, I\u2019m not sure what 266 years and a week is. On the 20th<\/sup> January 1759 Dr Samuel Johnson published an article in the 40th<\/sup> Edition of The Idler (insert your own joke here as to the modern equivalent of The Idler; maybe it\u2019s the WPP Work-from-Home Manual). In it he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Whatever is common is despised. Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetick.” <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

We have always known that some ads work better than others, and that for ads to work at all there has to be not only an opportunity for them to be seen, but for them actually to be noticed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even I do not personally remember Dr Johnson, but I do remember a study done by the agency I was working at in the 1980\u2019s, Leo Burnett, whose legendary Media and Research Director, Dr Simon Broadbent took himself off to individuals\u2019 homes and spent a few evenings sitting in their living rooms watching family members watching television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even back then, in a simpler time, before the invention and emergence of online media forms, it was obvious that different TV shows attracted different levels of attention, so did different editorial contexts in print media. But the obsession with opportunities to see, the biggest possible gross numbers and the lowest cost-per-thousands meant that Simon felt it necessary to put a more considered, nuanced view to our clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No creative sets out to bore the audience into ignoring his or her work, whilst in media the best of us have tried to plan with attention levels in mind ever since we first learned what an audience was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media vendors conducted studies \u2013 into how TV attention levels fluctuate between programmes and within ad breaks within programmes; into how ads on inside covers are noticed more than those appearing on pages within the magazine. But these were about justifying higher prices for premium positions, as opposed to any genuine wish to understand consumer behaviour, and to use that understanding to feed into the content the agency created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the complexities of the media market, where a video on one channel is simply not viewed in the same way as a video on another \u2013 despite them both being \u2018videos\u2019 \u2013 has coincided with a deepening of the division between media and creative practitioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This in turn has led to a desire for over-simplification, for an obsession with lowest common-denominator numbers even when even such basic data is subject to misuse, misunderstanding and mis-definition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need to take a breath and remind ourselves what exactly it is we\u2019re trying to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are trying to place a piece of commercial communication in front of the right people in such a manner as to increase the chances of it being noticed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every commercial communication is different, every channel is different, every audience is different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An individual watching TikTok watches content on it differently from the way he or she watches YouTube, Netflix or broadcast TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that individual\u2019s behaviour is different from his neighbour\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re playing three-dimensional chess, with audience, channel and creative variables and with each and every combination producing different outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, these days we don\u2019t have to rely on an ad legend sitting in peoples\u2019 homes. We have access to massive amounts of data and decades of expertise. Simon would have loved it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are though no easy answers. There are patterns and similarities but there are also exceptions, which is where competitive advantage lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Headline averages can only take you so far; they\u2019re a guide, a benchmark to aim to beat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Better to treat every campaign plan as unique, to consider all channels as different, and plan how and where you first create and then deploy your communication assets accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your advertising will improve, and it will be noticed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will trend towards \u2018the sublime\u2019 and away from \u2018the pathetick\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taken from \u2018The Attention Economy: A Category Blueprint\u2019 by Dr Karen Nelson-Field. What follows is based on my 1\u00bd page contribution to an excellent 371 page book If a week is a long time in politics, and a day is an age in the wacky world of online media, I\u2019m not sure what 266 years […]<\/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\/1852"}],"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=1852"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1854,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1852\/revisions\/1854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}