Useful | Creating better adverts

I think this picture captures the essence of what marketing communication needs to do.

Empowering people to be accepted. Loved by the people they want to be loved by.

Everything we do. Everything we buy. EVERYTHING, has an element of helping us to be accepted. To fit in.

Impress enough to climb the social and professional ranks. Avoid the ridicule that would drop us down – or worse – exclude us. If something doesn’t empower us, it’ll be rejected.

That’s what good marketing communication does. Convince people that whatever is being offered will help them to fit in.

And that’s it. Nothing more. And nothing less.

If you’d like some tips on how to pull that off, scroll down, or click here.

Doing ads.

Many people working in advertising and marketing say that there’s a correlation between how much money you spend on advertising relative to your competitors and how much of the total market that you get to sell. Suggesting that it’s more important how loudly you shout your message rather than what the message is. And they’re right.

You’d hope that the reason for this would be that everyone’s ads are so good that people find it difficult to choose between such excellence. And so the loudest voice wins. Unfortunately, the polar opposite is the case.

Studies show that well over 80% of TV ad campaigns are useless. And if campaigns that appear within a medium that is one of the most effective get little to no recall, let alone response, then God help the campaigns placed within any other medium.

Unfortunately, most ads work on little more than mere exposure effect. Basically, the product names that get shown the most getting more sales. Nothing to do with more effective messaging, and horribly inefficient.

Why are the results so bad? You can find a lot of the reasons in the Useful tips lower down the page on this site, but the most common reason is a poor understanding of the people that the campaigns are supposed to be influencing. If you don’t understand those you’re trying to influence, you have little chance of knowing what will influence them, and so influencing them with ads becomes very difficult. And inefficient. Too often than not, marketers simply bombard people with harmless wallpaper that’s more or less ignored. Until it’s finally shown enough times, at great expense, that it seeps in.

This lack of effect leads marketers to believe that people don’t care about brands and advertising (nothing could be further from the truth). To counter this, rather than work to understand the audience, and how to push their buttons, they take the lazy way out and do something ‘controversial’ in order to stand out. And they end up with a BudLight.

This is particularly dangerous when advertising and marketing people can’t remove themselves from whatever target audience they’re supposed to be communicating with. Too often, they end up talking to themselves while leaving the actual target audience cold. Or pissed off.

A sure-fire way to know if you’re about to spend a small fortune talking to yourself is if you ever hear the words ‘gut feel’ from your ad agency and/or marketing department. That means they’re using themselves as the subject for their target audience research.

Understanding these fundamental flaws, that are ubiquitous throughout the marketing and advertising industry, provides a significant competitive advantage for any brand that avoids them. It allows them to take huge chunks of their competitors’ business with a fraction of their ad spend.

How we do them.

We look at whatever we’re advertising and understand how it could make someone fit in. For example, no one buys a facial moisturiser to moisturise their face. They buy it in order to fit in with other people.

If you analyse the sales results generated by different ads for different facial moisturiser brands, those that suggest the product makes a person not only fit in, but increases their position with the hierarchy of the group, always win. Hardly surprising. Every salesperson worth their salt has known for decades that selling the sizzle is far more effective than selling the steak.

Just telling people that a product exists, what it does, and/or how much it costs will produce some effect, but no one needs to hire an agency to do that for them.

We find out as much about those that the product can work for, including who it is that they might want to use the product to fit in with – or at least not look like an idiot for choosing that product.

And we know that those people are most likely not us. In fact, chances are that they wouldn’t want to have anything to do with us – or anyone involved with advertising and marketing – just look at every year’s Veracity Index – https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/ipsos-veracity-index-2022. So, we do everything totally objectively and not look at things through a mirror, because, at best, that will severely limit the product’s appeal and handicap its growth.

Just like Oatly have done. By only talking to themselves and people like them – while irritating everyone else – their marketing team has inadvertently created a niche product. This makes it extremely costly to grow sales, because the number of ‘them’ in each country is so limited that the only way to do it is to spread geographically.

During our analysis, we usually find that the market for the products we work with is much wider than our clients initially thought, and that a lot more people could be switched on to it. But each of them may have quite different triggers that will make them consider it. For example, when working with Nicorette, we found that some would use it to allow them to fit in with their kids – because they believed that their kids thought that they stank (sometimes the kids tell them). While others would use it so they didn’t need to look like loser addicts by having to sit in the smoking box at the airport, or stand out on the street in front of their office.

Interestingly, very few bought a nicotine replacement product as a result of some of the most common strategies these brands use – developed by advertising and marketing people who didn’t do their homework on the actual audience, but looked at their non-smoking-selves instead. The audience rejected brands that targetted ads to smokers within specific no-smoking areas, because the brand became the oppressor. Far better to speak to them in smoking areas that they’d rather not be in where you become an ally. Someone who could help them escape. They would also avoid brands that spoke to them as if it was a cure for their smoking sickness – smokers don’t see themselves as suffering from a sickness, and they resent anyone who might suggest that they do.

Once we’ve found the opportunities – both the product’s appeal and who it will appeal to – it’s relatively easy to exploit them. We’ve removed the guesswork from what to say, how to say it, and how to get the message to those that will generate the best return.

There is never any need to guess. No need to do anything ‘bonkers’, as a certain excruciatingly dim boss of a rather large agency that rhymes with ‘Ogilvy’ blathers on about in social media and books. There’s never any need to do anything ‘counter-intuitive’ – because who’s intuition are you trying to counter? Nor should you ever need to be ‘brave’. Neither mean you’re being creative. You’re just gambling with your eyes closed because you’ve not done your homework. And I’m afraid no one in any agency has a superpower that makes their counter-intuition or bravery any better than yours. You’re just setting yourself up for failure, and the inevitable excuse that, “It will do something over the long-term.” It might do something after it’s had a ton of media money spent on it, but by then you won’t be seeing much of a return on your advertising investment.

And we always entertain – because entertainment is something that everyone finds Useful. In fact, it’s the thing that most people find most Useful in their lives. And if we’re going to be funny, we make sure we know what the audience finds funny. We aim for their funny bone, not ours.

And we make damn sure the media and the message are working together. One is never decided without the other. The idea of separate media and creative agencies was great for the agencies’ senior managers’ incomes, as it increases the number involved with an advertiser’s business – along with the total amount of agency fees, but it has caused more harm to the efficacy of advertising than pretty much anything else. The media task is incredibly simple, especially in small countries like Sweden that can only support a very simple media market.

No one is allowed to develop any creative work for any medium if they don’t understand the visibility of that medium and what it’s capable of doing. Not following that rule is how all of those posters that look like press ads get posted every single week. Ads that waste at least 75% of the media spend because hardly anyone can read all of that tiny copy – even if they wanted to.

It’s also why so many short commercials are run on linear TV by people who don’t understand that they deliver far worse returns on investment than longer ads. These people think that every rating they buy on TV is actually seen – they’re not – the peoplemeter audience measurement system isn’t that good. These people don’t realise that short films need to be shown far more times than longer films just to be noticed. Campaigns using shorter films costs more to get the same effect because not only does airtime for shorter films cost a lot more per second, but reach curves for higher exposure frequencies take a while to get off the ground, and then flatten really quickly.

It’s how hatred towards online ads is bred, because too many creatives and media owners focus too much on the click, and so everything becomes an immediate product benefit and/or price hard sell (you rarely see much sizzle on the web) that is repeated far too many times. A good ad only needs one well placed exposure. A crap ad needs none.

So we always try to design any ad to make sure it works after being seen only once. Because that’s all anyone is likely to give you. Few read, or even pay attention to an ad twice to give it a second chance.

Ads need to work fast. One handy trick to help make that happen is to start the development of any ad as a poster with no more than 8 words – because posters get less than a second of anyone’s attention on average. If it works in that format, then it can become anything else – TV film, press ad, web banner, etc. Hard to do, but that’s why we get paid the big bucks.

For more on how we think when we do ads*, check out the tips. They’re always being added to, so check back now and again to see if we’ve added any new pearls.

*One other thing, when I write ‘ads’, it’s shorthand for all forms of commercial communication, to both paid for and earned audiences. It’s all advertising to them. And us.

Useful tips.

Below you’ll find a few ideas and tips, gained through decades of experience, and a few years of looking in from the outside, that might help you to get a bit more power out of your marketing communications.

Don’t try to change them. Empower them.

Probably the most important thing to remember when working on any marketing activities for any product targetted at anyone. It doesn’t matter what else you get right. If you get this wrong, it’s all wasted.

Never look at your target audience through a mirror

One of the most common problems. Usually caused by ‘gut-feel’ and perpetuated by the fact that if you work in advertising and create a campaign that appeals to yourself, then it’ll appeal to your peers, and your peers give out awards. In the meantime, your client’s target audience will ignore it.

Make them laugh or make them angry

Or both. Often the bigger the laugh from one section, the more the other section gets annoyed. It’s the quickest way to connect and get them engaged. Most campaigns don’t manage a laugh because they don’t want to risk anger, and so all they achieve is wallpaper.

You're almost never them

The Bud Light debacle happened because the people given the marketing task made every mistake outlined on this website.

They hired someone because of what she was rather than who she was. So she thought she didn’t need to do her homework. She thought her gut-feel was enough. A gut-feel based on her beliefs, experiences, and what she’d consumed in her media.

Surrounded by people who wouldn’t dare go against her stupid ideas and appear ‘fratty’ or ‘out of touch’ because they hired her because of what she is.

What’s funny is, if is this had not gone so spectacularly badly, but only dragged the brand down by an amount that could be covered up by the good stuff Bud Light does, it probably would have been handed an award or ten by other marketers.

People care about brands and advertising. A lot.

The text in the picture comes from a review of the latest book by Jenni Romaniuk, who works at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Fuckwittery. It appeared within our local advertising trade publication – Resumé

The translation of the first sentence is: ‘People don’t care about brands or advertising’ (the rest blathers on about how the guy writing this review likes that this is the basis for the book).

This became popular to say within ad agencies a few years ago. It was a convenient excuse for why so little of what the industry produces does anything.

The review appeared about a week before the Bud Light mess kicked off.

Still think people don’t care about brands and advertising?

Measure the harm your marketing is doing. Especially your digital marketing

Marketers and their agencies believe that their campaigns only do varying degrees of good. Given that adblockers have been the fastest adopted tech in the history of the planet, there is clearly a very big potential to do harm. If you don’t measure the harm, it’ll remain hidden, and you’ll never know how many sales you lost and are unlikely to ever get back because you won’t be able to address the problem you created.

I regularly see the harm done to brands by poorly thought out campaigns. Online campaigns are the worst offenders. Cheap to produce, and so not much thought given to them before they’re released into the wild. The damage is easy to see and quantify in lost business, but it seems few monitor it, and even fewer take action. Probably because they don’t know how.

People will only respond positively to your commercial communication if they find it useful

Relevance isn’t enough. In fact, striving for relevance can be harmful. Relevance too often leads to irritating communication. Too rational. Too intrusive. Too repetitive. Too creepy.

Showing up to a social event with an agenda can get awkward quickly

And social media is a social event.

Chasing relevance on the web can wash the cool out of your brand

Stalking people on the web after they’ve searched for something that you think is close enough to what you sell carries a high risk of removing all of the cool from your brand.

Many advertisers’ definition of relevance is too rational. People often aren’t buying what companies think they’re selling.

There’s no such thing as an irrational purchase

They can all be explained. Most of the time the explanation is that a purchase will help the buyer gain approval from someone else. Even if it’s just the voices in their head.

Digital media seems easy for those with a little knowledge, impenetrable to those with none, and sickening (or vastly profitable) for those with a lot

It looks like a scary mess, but, in fact, it’s all now neatly packaged with a few handy targeting and deployment tools attached. Which is why so many advertisers are now doing it themselves. Unfortunately, the shiny packaging only serves to obscure a far nastier horror story. And the more you know the worse it gets.

But who cares? You’re seeing a decent short-term return yeah? But careful with that brand. It’s more important now than it’s ever been before.

The ad industry destroys its product when it imposes what it thinks it believes in

It’s not just the usual, more obvious preaching (i.e. SAS, Gillette). It’s the subtle stuff. Like the industry’s aversion to so much ordinary human behaviour (even their own).

Remember ad industry, most of your clients’ target audiences could teach you a thing or two about morality and good behaviour.

Making someone feel good is the core of being useful

Being useful isn’t just about rational solutions. It’s whatever makes your customers and potential customers feel good. About themselves. And about you.

Useful leads. Relevance follows.

Being useful is helping with confidence, inventiveness, initiative, and empathy. Being relevant too often becomes needy, servile, obsequious, and self-serving. The benefactors of someone useful strengthen their belief in them. The benefactors of relevant soon doubt the wisdom of their choice.

Be the red sheep

Stand out. Be noticed. But still be what you are, because that’s what you’re good at and what you can deliver

Combat ad fatigue with useful adverts

Instead of damaging your brand by stalking your customers with what you think are relevant messages, why not learn more about them, find out what what they’d find useful, and do that instead?

Over 80% of ads are useless

Various studies, including a recent one by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, and another by du Plessis in 1994 show that over 80% of ads can’t be usefully recalled. The current methods aren’t working. And never have. We need new methods. Useful methods.

When pre-testing image ads, ask them what they think their mates would think about it

Image is all about how you’re perceived by other people, so ask what they think those other people will think about your ad. Not only will the answer be more useful, it’ll also be more honest.

All the data in the world is useless without a good question

You can find a lot in data, but you won’t find it without a hypothesis. And to set a worthwhile hypothesis, you need some knowledge and experience of what you’re researching.

Linear TV channels are ageing faster than their audiences

Over the past six years, the average age of Kanal 5’s linear TV audience has aged 13 years! For TV3 it’s 9, and for TV8 and Sjuan it’s 10 and 11 respectively. Even TV4, which has always been pretty old, managed to age 7 years in that time to reach the grand old age of 58. This is significant, because if this trend continues it will soon make linear TV in Sweden entirely useless to the vast majority of advertisers. Most are targeting people up to the age of around 40. It’s already difficult to buy an effective level of reach against this group on linear TV at a price that generates a return on the media investment. In the not too distant future, it could become impossible.

A great product and excellent service keeps the cool firmly attached

The colours don’t fade from Woolpower knitwear, they use colour-fast dyes. The cool doesn’t fade either, because they sell great products and offer a great service.

When the zip broke on my five year old Woolpower jacket and I asked them if I could buy a replacement, a very pleasant women asked simply how long, what colour, and where should she send a free zip. It only cost them the price of a stamp and a zip to get a ton of love in the form of additional goodwill and sales.

All the data in the world is useless without an open mind

If you know best, then don’t bother with data. It’ll save you a lot of time, bother and heartache. It’ll still cost you money though.

The more we live our lives on a stage, the more important the props become

They define the roles we want to play. Before social media these were confined to what used to be called ’conspicuous consumption’ items, like cars and clothes. But now it’s everything. So, whatever you’re selling, you’d better be working on your image harder than ever before.

Buying brand image advice from an industry with the second worst brand image - just above politicians - seems like an odd thing to do

A bit like hiring Stevie Wonder to design your interior decor. Just goes to show how difficult it can be sometimes to work out the reasons why people buy stuff.

Why would anyone hire an agency that can’t give a compelling reason for its own existence?

The trade press reported the launch of a new agency this week. When asked what they want to achieve, the new owner said this: “We want to help our customers create growth. We want to achieve this by putting more energy into working creatively with the customer’s offer, thereby creating the right conditions for proper communication.” Maybe they should put some more energy into working creatively with their own offer.

Why would anyone hire an agency that can’t give a compelling reason for its own existence 2?

In a recent trade press interview with a new media agency boss, the following exchange occurred:

“What will be most difficult for media agencies in general in the next few years?”

“People in the media agency industry need to take a step back and really think about what adds value to the customer. Much of the work that agencies used to do earlier can now be done automatically.”

This is Prof. Karen Nelson-Field

Her work has been popping up in the trade press recently telling us how much more effective TV is as an advertising medium compared to video on sites like Facebook and YouTube. Which is obviously the most obvious thing in the history of the obvious. However, rather than stopping at the obvious we should use her results to confirm what should be equally obvious, but rarely seems to be. Specifically, that the methods used to measure the audience for the media that we advertise in have very little to do with how many people consume the ads we put in them. And that the methods used for different media are so different that they can never be directly compared. For example, just think how cheap TV would be if we measured its audience for our ads using the same method we use for newspapers and magazines (if you’re scratching your head at that last sentence, contact me and I’ll explain).

Advertisers are noticing that agency groups aren't very useful

It’s about time the ad industry learned how to create effective commercial communications consistently. To date, it’s been pretty useless at what it gets paid to do, with very few truly effective campaigns (and most of those coming about by dumb luck).

It has survived by a) having control of the means to produce and deploy campaigns, and b) having limited accountability due to limited measurement. But digital has changed all that. Now anyone can produce and distribute commercial communications, and easily gathered response data is showing that the well paid agencies don’t do any better than some kid on a laptop in his bedroom. The creation of commercial communications can currently be likened to the room full of monkeys on typewriters coming up with a Shakespeare sonnet now and again. There are now a lot more monkeys, and how much you pay them doesn’t seem to increase the chances of success. It’s about time the industry figured out how to knock out a sonnet on the first, second, third, fourth and fifth time of asking. Or at least know how to recognise those who can. Applying useful communication principles would fix a lot of its problems.

If you ever hear yourself say the words 'med glimten i ögat', prepare yourself for the fallout

Because a significant percentage of your target audience will misinterpret what you’re trying to say. And usually in the worst possible way. If you still can’t help yourself, then do some research so you can foresee how bad it’s likely to get.

Gut-feel (magkänsla) has wasted more marketing money than possibly anything else in the history of advertising

Would you let the kid across the aisle take the controls and fly you and your children to your destination using nothing more than gut-feel?

Gut-feel is applying your past experience with something to something completely different. You’ll hear stories about people saving the crash by using their gut-feel. You don’t hear from those that caused the crash because they used their gut-feel. They either don’t want to admit it, or they’re still smouldering. I’d happily bet Useful’s entire revenue for this year on my research and data based campaigns generating more sales and brand strength for an advertiser than any agency’s unqualified gut-feel.

Know when you're sponsoring amateur hour and understand the risks

Outside of the Internet, few companies advertise on unedited media produced by kids who spend a little too much time in their bedrooms. And if they do, they understand the risks and price it accordingly.

Base your copy testing decisions on the cost of lost sales not the cost of producing the ads

TV ads are often pre-tested because they’re expensive to make. Banners, radio and print ads not so much. Though the latter can miss just as many opportunities, or cause just as much damage as the former.

The average coupon response in 1986 was 2.5%. Today, digital response is about 50 times worse

It’s mainly because advertisers have lost consumers’ trust through 20 years of useless online adverts. Thirty years ago there was enough useful information in the ads that people knew what they were letting themselves in for. Today, it’s seen as a crap shoot with the dice loaded heavily against the consumer.

Measure the harm your marketing is doing. Especially your digital marketing

Uniting against is easier than uniting for

‘It’s easier to unite people against something. Much more difficult to unite them for something. It’s the entire basis of the success of Virgin, Sverigedemokraterna (in fact, pretty much all political parties), organisations like Sea Shepard, and activists like Greta Thunberg. Highlighting others’ problems gathers a bigger crowd more quickly than offering your own solutions.

Understand your own cognitive dissonance so you can understand your target audience’s

I was at a seminar run by some web ‘experts’ yesterday who were describing some campaign they did where they were bombarding people who’d visited their client’s website with banners and e-mails. I asked them how many sales they reckon they’d lost as a result of their campaign. You could’ve heard a pin drop due to the roomful of cognitive dissonance. I explained that given that adblockers are the fastest and most widely adopted technology ever in the history of the planet, that the potential for doing harm with digital marketing is not insignificant. It stayed uncomfortably quiet in that room before the subject was awkwardly changed. And I was suddenly as welcome as a fart in a space suit.

Multiple posters bought in the same location are a waste of money

Unless the creative execution calls for it. You’re much better off placing a single poster in as many different locations as possible. If you feel the need to place multiple posters in a single location in order to be seen, then your creative execution isn’t useful to your audience.

Know when you're doing direct response or fame advertising

Direct response is selling off the page/screen. There’s an immediate reason to buy offered in the communication. This usually isn’t the reason people should trust you (or at least it isn’t the entire reason). This is provided within the fame communication. This makes you famous for something that you can be trusted to deliver. It can be as simple as strengthening a reputation for actually delivering the goods on offer, or as complex as delivering cool.

Direct response communication can sometimes deliver the fame (especially with value brands), but more often than not it can’t.

Putting the message in the first 2 seconds of your online video ad isn't going to work

Apparently, on average, people watch less than 2 seconds of online video ads. What do you think they’re doing during those two seconds? They’re desperately trying to find the off button. The only way someone could be less receptive to your message is if they were dead.

Don't pay for badly handled ads

The medium is also the message. If the medium you’ve paid for your ad to be exposed within doesn’t expose it in accordance with what has been agreed (or if they do something as stupid as what you can see above), don’t pay for it.

40 to 45 seconds is the most efficient linear TV spotlength

The combination of the flaws in linear TV audience measurement, how reach is built with TV, and the way TV channels charge for different spotlengths mean that 40 and 45″ films are the cheapest in terms of the cost per awareness point generated.

Most of the audience you buy in any medium doesn't automatically exist

How many are brought into existence is dependent upon how useful your creative work is to them. For example, on average less than 50% of TV ratings are seen, though this can be drastically increased with useful creative. Useful creative is even more important in print, online, posters and radio when trying to convert bought audience into actual audience.

In a world where there are more media outlets than content, it’s easy to come up with gimmicks that wow the media (and the ad industry)

It’s a lot more difficult to come up with something that your potential customers will find useful. In fact, chasing industry accolades with ’clever’ ideas often causes harm to your business because too often it appeals to the media and the ad industry a lot more than it appeals to your potential customers.

Getting a 94% discount in Swedish media isn’t that hard

I did a deal recently with a medium, that many advertisers believe they can’t even get their advertising into, that not only achieved this discount, but also secured quality exposure towards my client’s very specific target audience with minimal wastage. And in return, my client committed to spending less than half the average advertiser’s spend with that medium. It had nothing to do with any great negotiation skills and everything to do with a ratecard that makes no sense whatsoever. Never be put off by media price lists. They’re worse than meaningless.

Always buy audience or response; never spots, pages, sites, banners...

If you don’t know the audience you’ll be getting for any media buy (who, how many, when, and within what environment they’ll be delivered), then you shouldn’t be buying it.

You know it's easy to work out an average market price for commercial media right?

It’s just supply over demand, or revenue divided by audience delivered. Both aren’t that difficult to find out. Know this and you know if you’re being ripped off. And if that’s a bit too tricky, give your friendly neighbourhood media auditor a call. They’ll usually be pleased to give you their average pool prices.

If you can't find a use, use language

Apple use it all the time with product upgrades. And if it can make them the most valuable company in the world… And did you know that 8 out of 10 advertisers say they prefer Useful?

Don’t try to get people to like you by telling them that they’re wrong

What do Hillary Clinton, the Remain side of the Brexit vote, and Lidl all have in common? Their communication told people that don’t like them that they’re wrong. And the results have been predictable. All would’ve done a lot better if they’d confidently communicated what their fans like about them instead. Don’t believe me? Hillary, Remain, Lidl…you’re wrong. How does that feel?

Phrasing lies as questions allows communicators to get away with murder

Companies, organisations and individuals have been destroyed by carefully constructed questions. While others have gained huge success. Here’s a couple of examples: Are today’s agencies really so lacking in basic communication expertise that they’re wasting billions of dollars of their clients’ money on useless advertising campaigns? And how quickly will Useful be able to fix these advertisers’ woes? Contact me, and I’ll give you an answer. You might not want to use this trick, but you should be ready when others use it against you.

The audience you pay for when you buy outdoor posters has less than a second to see your ad

The vast majority of people you’re paying for are inside a vehicle. And that includes bus stop sites. If your execution can’t be seen and understood in around three quarters of a second, you’ve wasted most of your media money.

Buying all of the ad pages in a magazine (or breaks on a TV channel, etc) is a waste of money

The only place it gets you noticed is the advertising trade press. If your target audience weren’t impressed when they saw your first ad, they’ll be pitying you by the time they see the fourth. And if they were impressed with your first ad? Well, you can work out the rest. There are far more effective ways to convert a bought audience into a real audience (hint: Useful creative).

Don't be a snob

Communicate with confidence, but don’t look down on your target audience.

Write about them. Not you.

Don’t try to be an artist. Write like a popular musician. Write about your audience. They’ll think you’re writing about yourself. But it’ll feel like themselves. They’ll relate to you. And you’ll make a connection.

There's never been a better time to get the over-fifties

The over-fifties have all of the money (and will accumulate even more of it as interest rates rise), and they’re easier to reach with commercial media than ever, because they’re consuming more than ever. There’s also over 12% more of them than there was 10 years ago and they’re now almost half the adult population. They’re less responsive to advertising, so you need to know what you’re doing when communicating with them (but that’s easy enough to learn – we can help you with that), but once you’ve got them. You’ve got them. And the cost to get them is a fraction of younger audiences. If you’re not targeting the over-fifties, then start now.

Incredibly, someone got paid to produce this poster rather than banned from ever doing it again

Everyone passing this poster is in a car. They have less than a second to see it. This is not new information. It’s been known for decades. Yet agencies continue to put ads on this expensive medium that can’t possibly be comprehended. And it happens every week without fail.

Running more than one creative execution will generate more effect from the same media spend

Show a bunch of people two (or more) different executions rather than one and you’ll get a greater positive response. Even if you have the exact same message, but done in different colours (some people prefer green, some red, some yellow, etc).

Are they really working for you?

In Bob Hoffman’s book, BadMen, he discovers some disturbing facts about the digital media industry and the agencies who were supposed to be policing it on behalf of their clients.

Any media market that needs a 70% discount to achieve an average market price is likely to be corrupt

When there’s an unusual amount of air in a ratecard, someone’s probably getting a bung.

Native advertising is seen as deceptive

43% of adults in the US say they feel disappointed or deceived by native ads, with this percentage increasing with age. A fifth of people say they think worse of a brand that uses native ads, while only a tenth are more positive. So common sense is right sometimes.

A lot of people doubt themselves. Removing that doubt is very useful.

Why do so many people buy experience gifts from experience gift companies when they could buy far better experiences for a fraction of the price if they spent five minutes using Google? Because they doubt themselves. Especially in unfamiliar situations. Experience gift (and many other) companies know that removing doubt is very profitable. Good fame advertising is a key component in building enough trust to remove doubt, making it extremely useful to insecure consumers.

”We don’t make mistakes, we just make updates”

This is how digital works. Its speed has led people to want to be first rather than right. Beta campaigns go live and are subsequently adjusted to try and improve their performance. It comes from a belief that the stuff put out there can’t do any harm. But of course it can. It’s why observation and response rates are so dismal on the web.

If you’d feel uncomfortable if your daughter worked there, then maybe you shouldn't place your advertising there

Given that the media you use contributes to your message, then it’s a good idea to avoid using any media owned by companies that try to protect revenues by turning a blind eye to harassment and other inappropriate behaviour towards their employees. It’s not just that you wouldn’t want to be seen to be supporting such morally bankrupt organisations, but any such company is likely to take care of your campaigns as badly as they take care of their staff. In fact, taking a stand is likely to enhance your brand more, and for a fraction of the cost of a campaign bought within their media.

Don’t do VR for VR’s sake

Because you’ll fail. It’s never real enough for most people. All of the spectacular imagery and whizz-bangs in the world don’t excuse the fact that you’re wearing a box on your face. However, if you use it because your audience finds it useful, then they might overlook its flaws.

The drive for total immersion is hindering the development of VR

As a professional user of VR since 2003, I’ve yet to find affordable, true VR technology. And I don’t see it arriving any time soon. In the meantime, manufacturers should produce ’almost’ VR devices and applications that work honestly with today’s consumer VR-tech limitations. They need to realise that dumping the sealed face-box and allowing users to see their hands, and have the option to see through the screen, produces a greater level of immersion for almost all VR and AR applications. This has the added benefit of allowing products to be designed that are not only more useful, but also don’t look so daft.

No one wants an online fridge

If I had one krona for every time someone has told me about the imminent arrival of the online fridge during the past 20 years, I’d have over 500 kr. But it’d be in old money, so it’d be as worthless as their predictions. The online fridge has become a meme for just how wrong you can get it (and keep getting it) if you don’t do proper studies to really understand a market. It also demonstrates how shiny new things can blind your common sense. Really, how often does the average person buy a new fridge? And how many that do get a new one get to choose its specs rather than get it with their new house/apartment? And even if they did choose its specs, how important is ’online’ (not very, because it’s not very useful).

Increasing share-of-voice often has no positive effect on brand share

Often when you analyse SOV vs share of market (SOM) using a dynamic difference model (which removes the effect of advertisers spending it when they’ve got it) you won’t find a correlation. Categories where you’ll see a positive correlation between share-of-voice and brand share are 1) those where there is very little brand preference, 2) spends overall are relatively low (so greater SOV is translating into higher reach rather than frequency), and 3) brands and categories where the advertising itself is consistently poor and relies almost exclusively on mere exposure effect to work. So if you do find a close correlation between your SOV and SOM, it might be time to reassess your creative strategy.

Viewability problems aren't just a digital thing

They affect all media, but the ad industry doesn’t seem to get its knickers quite so twisted over analogue media viewability. I’m willing to bet that the creators of well over 90% of the ads you see on TV, on posters, on the radio, in cinemas and in the press have absolutely no idea what the average viewability is within the media that they’re spending a lot of your money to “appear” in. Try this. Next time you’re discussing the development of an ad campaign, ask the agencies responsible for both creating it and deploying it how many of the ratings bought within the media they’re suggesting you use are actually seen or heard on average. Also ask them how they’re seen or heard (i.e. how long are people exposed, how far away are they, when is the audience delivered, etc). If you don’t get a definite answer that doesn’t include the word ‘depends’, then ask them why on Earth they think they’re qualified to create ads for those media.

Packaged media is the killer of campaign efficiency

In order to make it easier to sell their inventory, many Swedish media owners sell their audience in packages. Advertisers always end up with a bad deal when they buy them. Poster packages are far too large, generating a ton of unnecessary frequency with too many sites crammed into too small areas. Run-by-station bought commercials, and programmatically bought web ads are often shown within inappropriate content and to the wrong people (or just not shown at all in the case of the web). Why pay a media agency to buy inefficient packages? Life might be like a box of chocolates, but you should expect more from your media exposure.

The most successful YouTubers use useful communication

It’s interesting to see that ad campaigns produced by the most richly resourced agencies are being out-performed by ‘amateurs’ on YouTube. How could this happen? It’s because the YouTubers can’t afford to buy an audience. They need to attract one. And they quickly worked out that the best way to do that is to make their communication useful. Both the content and the execution.

Don't be dishonest

General disappointment with the performance of digital media has put a focus on those who’ve been representing the interests of advertisers. And it seems many, if not all of the media agency groups have had their hand in the till. To be fair to Ronnie Biggs, he never managed to steal anywhere near as much as they have.

Trying to be good with insufficient understanding can kill

Getting it wrong when promoting a tin of beans is unlikely to see any loss of life, but the consequences can get serious when tackling social issues.

More useful creative generates a better return than more media

If you’re unknown, a ton of media will make even an average advert do something by simply raising awareness of who and what you are. But don’t be fooled into thinking you can get away with this for long.

When writing for the youth, dare to be naive, superficial and idealistic

Equally, try not to be all of those things when writing for a more mature audience.

On a poster, don't write any more than...

…8 words. Unless the poster is something like a cross-track in a tube station, or is located inside a bus or train (not on a bus stop) it won’t be read. And even with those sites, the majority of the audience you’ve been charged for will only glance at your ad as they walk by – not many stand/sit right next to it. So be brief. The same goes for most web banners.

Try to understand your target audience

This is an ad for people with bad eyesight.

Don’t use your ads to try to answer all of the questions

Answers depend on context and who the questioner is. And as every salesperson knows, questions also start a dialogue. And dialogue leads to sales. Always create more questions than you answer.

A fear of offending clients leads to useless ads

Useful ads come from a strength of vision for the obvious, and the courage to express it. Neutrality paves the way for polite invisibility. Data based evidence gives you the strength.

Despite the headlines about ad fatigue, more people are ad-dicts than not

You just need to know what you’re doing (use useful communication techniques) because more people are trying to fit in with more people than ever before.

The environment within which you place your ad is important

“Mummy! Look! Moo cows!”

“Oh yes. And there’s a Max up ahead. Are you still hungry?”

“No.”

Are your creatives superheroes or people who can’t put their pants on right?

Research is rocket fuel to real creative superheroes, but kryptonite to pretenders.

An agency without Orvesto? Completely senseless.

If creative is the brain, and media the voice, then Orvesto is the eyes and ears. It’s tricky to get the response you need if you don’t know who you’re talking to. It’s just as difficult if you know who they are, but not much about them. And it’s downright dangerous if you don’t know them, but assume you do (prejudice rarely turns out well).

And the dimwit who wrote a story a year or two about his own inability to fill in the questionnaire is just that. He never bothered to check how the data was collated, analysed, and double-checked for accuracy. He just looked at everything through a mirror.

Work with people who are used to putting everything on the line. And are still alive.

The consequences of a poor marketing communications job are usually much easier for agencies than their clients. When there’s more at stake for those entrusted with your campaigns, you’ll see a better return.

Inform yourself and dodge the bullshit

The business is famous for it. It’s expected even. But can you spot it? It’s likely to be coming thick and fast. Even a little knowledge helps you detect it and provides a shield. If you’ve read this far in this list of tips you should be well protected by now. See why here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103117305127

The young live in the future. The old live in the present.

Good to know when you’re trying to sell them stuff.

Paying your agency a commission on media spend makes no sense

They’re supposed to be getting you the maximum effect for the smallest spend. How can they do that if their income depends on how much you spend?

...it’s even worse if you’re a multi-national advertiser

Centralised, multi-national commission based deals mean that agencies in smaller markets (of which there are dozens) make a lot less than those in the few large markets for doing the same amount of work (and don’t expect the lead agency to spread the money around evenly for you – they rarely do). This means that most of your agency’s people working on your business around the world don’t want to work on your business.

...and never pay your agency a percentage of discounts they achieve on your behalf

This is why media discounts are so ridiculously high in countries like Sweden. If you paid me 10% of discounts achieved, I’d be keeping more of your money than I’d be giving to the media I bought for you.

Death and sex

You may need to dress it up a bit more these days, but a lot of what motivates us is a fear of one and a craving for the other.

How to improve these companies' advertising efficiency by at least 100%

Can you work it out?

Opinions are usually formed by relationships and cash

Sometimes by logical, independent analysis and internal moral compasses, but not so often.

Never show it until it’s done and you’re happy with it yourself

It’s tempting to show what you’re working on while you work on it, but don’t. It’ll end up diluted or destroyed. Do your first draft. Set it aside for as long as you can, then review it and revise if necessary. Only then should you get someone else’s opinion.

Beauty is judged through the lens of relationships and bank accounts

If their friends like it, or they might make something out of it, they’ll love it (or at least they’ll say they do). It’s how ugly things get made.

Go away and do something else for a bit

Take a few years off, or go part-time and do something completely different to advertising. Deal with different types of people and different organisations. You’ll learn a ton of useful stuff. You’ll question how things are done. It’ll put a magnifying glass on the nonsensical things that the ad industry accepts as standard procedure. And you’ll become a far, far better ad person.

The same goes for your adverts

…because beautiful is useful.

If you don’t know your audience intimately, you won’t know what tickles them

This is a real ad. And it worked brilliantly, making this restaurant wildly successful. If its writer didn’t know the restaurant’s potential customer base intimately it would never have seen the light of day, and The Rupali would just be another struggling curry house amongst thousands of others.

Always write ads for the target audience, never yourself (if you’re not a member of that audience).

If you can’t work out an agency’s brand, don’t trust them with yours

If an agency can’t decide who they are, then they’ve little chance deciding who you should be. Best to give them a miss

Have your media agency tell you exactly how much of your media budget became their income (including kickbacks and commissions from the media, because they're part of your budget)

I was once asked by a friend to check over his contract with one of the larger Swedish media agencies. After looking at it, I asked him how much of his 10M SEK media budget he thought they were keeping. He told me around 500K SEK. It was over 2 MILLION SEK!