“I Hate Ads…”
I find the outbursts about hating ads a bit funny, but the point made.
However, the problems people have with ads are just not articulated or expressed properly. People don’t hate ads, they celebrate ads when they please their sensibilities…what people hate is the archaic approach to advertising, selling spaces, intrusions.
An intrusive ad is annoying, and intrusive anything is annoying, no one wants to be interrupted while enjoying a good experience, or a good story. Advertising needs a new seamless approach and better storytelling, curation. The general approach is to get information in front of people by disrupting spaces.
Aisha Hakim (Founder of The Fellow App, a mentoring tool for women) said the following in a conversation on Twitter, which is what inspired me to write this article — “ It’s very hard to convince clients they shouldn’t be trying to say everything and the kitchen sink in 30 seconds, which consumers tune out as white noise.”
She is not wrong, it is true, logo design also has similar challenges.
We need to find a way to charmingly take back control and let the results speak for themselves, and if the charm doesn’t work then we simply take it. Clients lost trust and decided to guarantee their own results, a lack of confidence is a lack of trust, they lost trust in the industry, the experts.
Perhaps, marketers no longer strategize, they just look for the placement opportunities, or sometimes there are just tedious clients, likewise tedious consumers, but the brand needs to become the leader in that regard and engage the minds of their people.
Disruption is supposed to result from innovation, which means a new solution to an existing problem has been discovered through research and development (R & R&D). An ad should not necessarily be disruptive, ads often disrupt in negative ways, especially when a nicely designed building becomes a plethora of ad spots.
An ad should be like product placement, relevant, contextualized, and seen without disrupting the experience. Ads should be curated or written in as part of the story — Copywriting.
