Download Super Bowl XLVII and the “Creative Sells”

Super Bowl XLVII and the “Creative Sells” Advertising Myth
$37 billion
That’s how much revenue advertising agencies took in 2013, according to AdAge. If you’ve been around
the business for any time at all, you’ve heard the golden rule:
“Creative Sells”
It’s a phrase that’s been repeated so many times
that, for many, it’s become accepted as fact that
“great creative” will cause the masses to rise off
their couches and buy your product. $37 billion
was spent on “creative” last year. There’s even a
hit TV show all about the creative ad mystique.
There’s just one problem –
Credit: montgomeryq, deviantart
Creative doesn’t sell.
From the introduction of the new 2014 study released by Communicus Knowledge Center, based on
consumer research conducted before and after this years’ Super Bowl broadcast:
“Advertising should make people buy products, or at least build purchase interest. Judged
against this standard, four out of five Super Bowl XLVII commercials failed to deliver.”
Research available at http://www.communicus.com/topic13.php
Four out of five failed to deliver. That’s a failure rate of 80% for commercials that cost millions to
produce and millions to place. Commercials that aired before an audience of more than 100 million
people. 80% of the most highly touted ads in the world failed to move the needle. Not only did the clever
story lines, cute puppies and dazzling wit fail to generate any increases in sales, they also failed to
generate any measurable increase in consumer intent to purchase. Consumers were entertained, to be sure.
But not motivated to buy. Now imagine the impact of a low budget local ad buy.
It should also not be surprising to learn that the advertising industry’s most prestigious awards do not take
into consideration whether or not the ad campaign generated any results for the client. Instead, top honors
in the ad world are selected by ad industry creatives, and bestowed purely on – you guessed it – creative.
Sergio Zyman, former Global Brand Manager for the Coca-Cola Company, said this:
“Advertising isn’t about winning Effies or Gold Lions. It’s about making money for your
clients, some of whom are going to be pretty ticked off to see you up on stage holding
your first-prize statuette while their sales are dropping.”
“The End of Advertising as We Know It”
The seemingly infinite explosion of ad platforms in today’s media environment has forever changed the
methods by which marketers seek to connect with consumers. What many marketers don’t consider,
however, is the massive change in consumers themselves as a direct result of a 500% increase in consumer
ads since 1980. 500% more ads now confront today’s tech savvy consumers, in increasingly aggressive
and intrusive ways:
“Consumers feel overwhelmed by intrusive, irrelevant ads. The result: a backlash against
advertising – manifesting itself in the growing popularity of do-not-call lists, spam filters
online ad blockers, and ad skipping on DVRs.”
“The Consumer Advertising Backlash” Forrester Research
According to new research from Nielsen, ad avoidance by consumers is at an all-time high. So how
have marketers responded to the increasingly elusive consumer? Even more ads. In “Understanding
Advertising Clutter,” the Journal of Consumer Marketing reports:
“It appears that advertisers’ ‘solution’ to audience avoidance of their messages is to
increase the number of messages, so even the effort of commercial avoidance becomes
a source of audience frustration.”
Why is someone from public radio telling you this?
Over the same period of time that saw the dramatic erosion of traditional audiences and the rise in
commercial ad avoidance, the public radio audience in this market has grown from 75,000 to 184,000
weekly users, making our audience one of the largest and most demographically appealing. The same
phenomenon has occurred nationally, with growth from five million to almost 40 million weekly users.
This growth brings good news to today’s marketers – remember the 80% failure rate of those Super Bowl
ads? Well, public radio offers marketers an entirely different take on 80%:
Jacobs Media Underwriting Research Review
Your message on public radio works because it’s straightforward, factual, and acknowledges the
intelligence of the listener. Your message on public radio, which many of our users have described as
“elegant” and “concise”, works because it creates the emotional connection with today’s consumer that no
commercial ad can match, no matter how creative it may be. Public radio messages work because they are
a return to the fundamentals of effective advertising – a highly credible message delivered in an ultra-low
clutter, high integrity environment.
Public radio messages don’t win creative awards. They just work.
High integrity meets high impact.