Recently, I did a talk at Vision Bristol.
One of my points was that advertising doesn’t work without impact.
If we don’t cut through, if we don’t get on the radar, nothing can happen.
Whatever medium we use.
So we need impact.
How we make that happen, if we’re a huge, lazy company with a massive budget, is repetition.
A dull predictable message with enough money spent on it will cut through eventually.
Just out of sheer irritation.
But if we don’t have a massive budget, it takes a little more thought to get impact.
You have to separate your message off from your environment.
You have to stand out from your context.
You have to be different.
If you do this, two things happen.
Not only will you get noticed just by being different, but more important, you will appeal to Opinion Formers.
Opinion Formers are the mentally agile, the inquisitive.
They are the people who are usually leading any group, whatever the demographic, male or female.
They like to spot things first, they like what’s new and different.
Opinion Formers spread the message amongst Opinion Followers.
There are fewer Opinion Formers than there are Opinion Followers.
But a single Opinion Former may influence many Opinion Followers.
It’s a trickle-down effect.
This is how viral advertising happens.
Not just by using a particular medium, but by motivating Opinion Formers.
Therefore, for people with smaller budgets, this makes sense.
But you don’t motivate Opinion Formers with Opinion Follower advertising.
Opinion Follower advertising is dull, ordinary, just what they expected.
That advertising can only work if it’s got a massive budget.
To keep hammering Opinion Followers over the head.
It doesn’t make good business sense.
But it is easier to approve, because it takes less nerve.
Strangely, the higher up the ladder you go, amongst the people who approve advertising, the more daring they are.
This is because, the nearer the top they get, the more entrepreneurial they are.
They got to the top by doing things differently, by making decisions that stood out.
They know standing out works.
So they are more likely to buy advertising that stands out.
Standing out is entrepreneurial.
Standing out creates impact.
After I’d done this talk, I was checking on Twitter to see how it went down.
Someone had angrily sent me a message, ending ‘tosser’.
I replied, if they wanted a debate, they should do it without name calling.
They replied, sarcastically, that they used the word ‘tosser’ to get impact, as I’d said in my talk.
(Deep sigh)
It’s at times like this that I despair of doing talks.
It seems there are so many people who think it’s their job to twist and misinterpret what’s being said.
Let’s take it slowly.
I didn’t say impact was the be-all and end-all.
I didn’t say ‘nothing else matters’.
I said ‘nothing can happen without impact’.
Since I was talking to advertising professionals I didn’t think I had to add ‘but the wrong sort of impact can be harmful’.
Dropping your trousers and farting in front of a young lady will get you impact, but it probably won’t get you a date.
I didn’t think I had to explain that to fellow advertising professionals.
It has to be impact that’s relevant to the result you want.
I’ll say that again, because otherwise someone will manage to twist and misinterpret it.
“It has to be impact that’s relevant to the result you want.”
There isn’t a simple formula.
Every time, every brand, every product category, every media, is new and different.
It takes thinking.
Which is hard work.
And our minds don’t like hard work.
Tosser.