We fought the feeling

Is it me, or is there barely any ‘ah ha!’ moments in modern advertising?

No, I don’t mean Alan Partridge impressions.

I mean, the moment you get the joke or hint or connection an advert has alluded to. It’s a really effective technique – a witty piece of copy, possibly even a joke, that nudges you towards the punchline.

It doesn’t spell it out. It doesn’t hang a fluorescent sign depicting an arrow above it. It’s just a casual nod of the head.

Then, when you get it, it creates a feeling of affiliation with the product in the ad.

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”…

Any of the famous AMV Economist ads…

Print stuff for Volvo in the 90s…

Chivas Regal…

I could go on.

The copy, and the ads overall, were effective because when you inevitably got it, it made you feel like you also possessed whatever attribute the brand was playing into.

Class. Intelligence. Care. Taste.

But not only that – this style of advertising meant you actually read it, understood it, and thought about it.

This still exists, but examples are few and far between. It’s almost like all of our talk about dying attention spans, means we just don’t trust people to get it. We don’t think they’ll stick around that long.

So instead, most adverts have become a race to hit people with as many key product benefits as possible within 3 seconds. We literally write them all down in note form, size 11 Times New Roman, and smack them in the face with it.

Or, if humour is chosen, it’s so obvious and direct it becomes unbearably cringey. It’s the advertising version of slipping on a banana skin.

So, as you may have gathered, I’m not keen on this. I deeply miss those adverts I mentioned, or at least the style of advert… and I deeply hate what’s replaced them.

I thought long and hard about what it all means.

Yes, it symbolises our obsession with the death of attention spans, and yes it’s a direct product of the fast and content-saturated world of social media.

But it’s also about something more.

We’ve forgotten, for the most part, about feelings. How products make us feel.

We have forgotten that for many products, how someone thinks it will feel or how it will make them appear, is crucial.

For many products, reason and product information never even factor into it.

Now, this shouldn’t be confused with brand loyalty, or a feeling products create in the brand purpose realm. No – that’s another kettle of fish.

The feelings I’m referring to are still rooted in selling something. They are the very feelings that purchasing and owning something will create and instil.

But in a world where these feelings are ignored, there is no room for adverts that require ‘getting’ something. How can we communicate our 5 key product benefits, if we are wasting time making the reader feel special? they almost definitely don’t say out loud.

We can no longer afford to rely on the consumer to get something… plus research says they almost certainly won’t anyway… so we just can’t risk it.

Plus, you’ve got all those product benefits you need to communicate!

(…despite them only being exciting if you literally make or sell the product…)

What we don’t realise is this:

• The “short attention span” is even shorter if you’re advert is boring.
• Decisions made in the human brain, are very rarely rational and fact-based.
• No one cares about the details of your product as much as you.
• Assuming people to be stupid and lazy, is unlikely to encourage them to listen.

“Our cars are even quieter than electric clocks – and those are really quiet”

Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?