Silly things that matter when making ads memorable

Silly things that matter

In addition to his extremely insightful column (inevitably a good read), New York Times Advertising Columnist Stuart Elliott answers letters from readers every week. Readers pose concerns or questions around the frequency and oversaturation of some ads, curiosity about the genesis of the creative in campaigns, and Mr. Elliott responds with the insider’s “scoop”, or the guru’s wisdom on how the ad business works these days, albeit from a US perspective.

This week’s selections of his responses to some pretty hilarious letters got me to thinking about what makes ads memorable in the first place. One reader wrotes inquiring how to find the jacket worn by the main actor in the current Farmers commercial, in order to buy one for her husband.

Mr. Elliott responds that the jacket in question was custom made with materials that were sourced locally by the California ad agency, RPA, who has crafted the very humorous campaign for Farmers’ Insurance, which highlights things that can go wrong (for which we presumably need insurance).

In the other letter, Elliott helps source the song used in a Budweiser beer commercial which a reader finds “catchy” and, being desperate to know what it is, resorts to writing the New York Times to find it! And Elliott doesn’t disappoint.  

Are these particular consumers necessarily going to buy more insurance or beer based on these ads?  Perhaps not, but one can be certain that “persuasion” was not the part of the ads that made them memorable.

Ads that achieve memorability do so because they move us somehow

Sometimes it is because they touch some really universal, deeply resonant chord: the surprising and heart-warming Guinness “Basketball” ads, featuring wheelchair bound players in an amateur pick-up game. Nate Scott of USA Today said: “This Guinness commercial will give you goosebumps!” 

Then there are the award winning P&G ads shown during the Olympics “thanking” Moms whose encouragement powered athletes to their victories.

But sometimes, literally, memorable ads just feature random things that stick in our heads, and make us smile, like the jacket or the music in Elliott’s readers’ letters. 

When developing a recent ad campaign, the UK mobile internet carrier Three recognized the insight that consumers basically like to share things. More often than not, the things that are shared that matter the most were simple things, the personal things, even the silly things that simply bring joy to our friends and family members. The resulting advert, Dance Pony Dance, viewed over 7,525,000 times on YouTube, celebrates just that, with a moon walking Shetland Pony, who, memorably, makes us laugh.

We have mentioned in other Marketing Society posts that rigorous research from advertising practitioners like Peter Fields and Les Binet, that supports the argument that brand building advertising has the greatest potential to drive long-term business effect, as opposed to advertising aimed at activation, which can drive business effect but tends to be short term.  Five star, brand building advertising, by definition , is the kind of memorable stuff driven by emotional connection.

As part of our on-going research on advertising effectiveness at BrainJuicer, we examine this phenomenon all the time. Our hunch is that the current crop of UK retailers’ Christmas adverts will demonstrate this beautifully, and we have some internal wagers on the winners and losers. We will publish our results of our Christmas Advert Roundup in our next contribution to this blog.

In the meantime, let us know the ads that have been memorable for you, at [email protected]. We would love to share them!

Susan is CMO at Brainjuicer. Read more from them in our Clubhouse.

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