Tag Archives: Doobie Brothers

Nov 17 2012

Weasel words

Advertising advertising

Advertising advertising (Photo credit: Toban Black)

Without advertising, many of the services we enjoy would either no longer be free or they would cost a lot more. How would you feel about paying for every Google search you make? Or would you pay a monthly fee for Facebook? How about Twitter? How would you feel if your daily newspaper cost twice as much or if your satellite TV bill was similar to your mortgage?

To most people, advertising is something they put up with and maybe sometimes complain about, but the alternative to advertising is often unpalatable. However much you complain about advertising, if it wasn’t there, you would pay more if that advertising wasn’t there.

Most of the adverts we see nowadays are a good deal more advanced and agencies have budgets that could only be dreamed about before. Most modern adverts resemble mini blockbusters with an all-star cast, an expensive soundtrack and cinematography that wouldn’t look out of place in a blockbuster premier.

With the advent of social media, advertisers are hunting for the holy grail – they want an advert to become viral. If they can make their story entertaining enough, armies of Facebook and twitter users will do all the hard work of making sure that the advert gets to a much wider audience and all at no additional cost to the advertiser.

I have a lot of respect for a finely crafted advert. I love the Honda advert where all the car components roll, swing or fall into each other in a complex chain reaction in order to switch on a piece of music. Allegedly, they filmed it without any CGI and admittedly after numerous attempts, the final advert was one complete take. I also like the gorilla playing the drums for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and the man sliding through the city on a helter-skelter to a Doobie Brothers soundtrack for Barclaycard.

I hold a special kind of loathing for lazy or misleading adverts. Shot on a lower budget, they tend to go along the lines of “We’ve got some cheap stuff. Come and buy it.” They tend to be characterised by advertising weasel words. Typically, phrases like “up to x% off”, “everything must go”, “massive reductions” or “biggest ever sale”.

Up to 50% off means that the price could have been reduced anywhere from 0 – 50% and guess which end of the scale most products will lie. I thought the whole point of retailing is to sell your stock so everything must go is more a statement of the seller’s fervent desire. I’ll be the judge of how massive your reductions are and when you say it’s your biggest sale ever, how exactly are you measuring that? By the vendor’s expectations?

If I ever commissioned an advert, I would definitely strive for the viral audience by putting some effort into it. Your audience will appreciate the experience rather than endure it and you never know, they might tell a friend.

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