Ads that fail to promote what they're selling
- Henry Atkins
- Oct 25, 2017
- 4 min read
Adverts are designed in specific ways to get in your head. To connect to the target audience. But I've found that sometimes it falls flat on its face and usually fails.
Here are some commercials that try.
TESCO's 'Food Love Stories' campaign: Paprika Burgers
In case somebody read the title to this first example and already got lost on what a 'campaign' is, it's just another way of saying a series of advertisements, void of medium restrictions advertising a product or a series of products under a particular theme.
For example the Go-Compare man campaign where all their ads are represented by a singing opera man! (I'll talk more about this later)
This example is a series of commercials about supposedly regular customers who are making a meal from TESCO products with a brief narrative behind it.
I chose this one because so far it distracted me the most.
Bare in mind that the aim in advertising is to promote initially what your selling.
I won't ramble on because there isn't a whole lot to cover. A Mother is making his son his favourite dinner meal to celebrate the results of his recent exam which she builds up to be well-earned.
It's probably because I am, myself, a student and can relate that I find this "subplot" more interesting than whatever she's cooking. Don't get me wrong, it looks delicious but media tells stories. I can choose what to get invested in.
LV Commercials
These are a handful of the commercials LV made promoting their insurances and their rates. The theme is pretty easy to pickup. Things are or will be green, there's usually a green car and they play the same song every time. This is what I particularly hate about these commercials.
A tactic of advertising is trying to get in your head with catchy tunes and visuals which can immediately be associated with their brand when thought of.
I don't disagree that what LV are doing here isn't memorable by design. What I do find though is it negatively promotes them. This is similar partially to the song 'Let it go' from Disney's 'Frozen'.
Addictive but can get incredibly annoying as many of us may know from experience. Frankly, I'm glad that age is over.
However LV's theme isn't clever, it isn't pleasing to listen to over and over again and worst of all they haven't changed the tune or the accompanying footage of the commercials to suit each-other between Ads. Do you know who does though?:
Go-Compare had an extremely effective campaign involving an Opera singer known as the 'Go-Compare Man'.
Probably from the creative minds behind 'DOOM guy'.
Go-Compare did their campaign similar to LV except they have a few differences that carried them very far that, as the video implies, claimed that the Go-Compare Man has returned due to "popular demand". Those were not sarcastic quotation marks. I actually enjoy the Go-Compare Man commercials for the following reasons:
Every commercial changes the location, the scenario and the lyrics. This made every commercial practically an event! I would almost even go the extra mile to compare it with the John Lewis Christmas commercials except they don't come and go annually.
The short version of the difference between LV and the Go-Compare Man commercials is they handle the songs and footage differently.
The Go-Compare Man commercials uses the same melody (the official technical term of the music so kindly informed by my music student sister) but it changes the lyrics and footage to make each song an event.
LV uses the exact same song with absolutely no changes but uses different footage each time using the recognisable green car and green hearts except there is no connection between the song (the very song that serves no purpose but to be a simple backing-track) and the aforementioned footage to speak of.
That's pretty much all I can say about the creativity overall in both campaigns.
REDEMPTION [UPDATE]
During research on LV commercials I did stumble across their more recent efforts to promote.
And wouldn't you believe it that they have completely fixed what I was just moaning about. Sort of...
This is the only commercial out of all the recent ones that have even a more interesting scenario rather than just driving in a green car and everything else turns green. However all of the new additions to the library have remixed versions of the LV song. It's memorable and it doesn't get as stale this time as it did before. Breaking up the monotony as they say.
HSL Recliners
They have a series of ads which are mainly just short stories (emphasis on the short part) and then the teller reclines... that's it.
Sometimes that's all you need in an ad except the story is... unrelated.
The example commercial here is the first and to me, the most confusing out of all of them.
Methods of promoting your product can include clever writing, clever visuals and clever music all cleverly constructed toward your target audience (Recliners for older adults for example)
Addictive and unforgettable content is the reflection of these 'clever' things. However the reason these things are addictive or unforgettable are equally as important than just getting your brand across so people know it.
If your commercial is memorable because it's either been ham-fisted down your throat or it's just too strange to handle then you're doing something wrong. It's annoying and so your product becomes mediocore and stale.
If your commercial is catchy and consistent as well as creatively played with in other renditions of the same advert then it's loved more and people can recognise the company for paying better writers and producers and therefore recognise the quality of the product.
Some people can't explain why they enjoyed something like this alot of the time because advert are meant to manipulate you on a subconsciouse level unless your education has taught you to analyse like this.
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