I don’t know which is sillier. The general public who believe that advertising can convince people to buy things they don’t need, or advertisers who endlessly search for the magic message to drive more demand for the things they’re selling.
Each somehow believes that ads condition people to consume.
They’re both wrong.
Advertising doesn’t do that. Life does.
What’s the single biggest reason that a shopper will buy barbecue sauce?
Running out of barbecue sauce.
Advertising will never convince someone who hates barbecue to love it. It can, however help someone in a grocery store to notice your bottle and say “Hey… I’ve been hearing about this. I think I’ll try it.”
Which means no matter how many gross ratings points you purchase this week, only a small percentage of barbecue lovers will also be purchasing this week. Your mission is to make ’em think of your brand the next time they go shopping.
Side note: both groups of silly people (general public and uninformed advertisers) believe advertising works, but only on other people. Never on them.
This was a very interesting post. Thanks for that. I just wanted to share something with you that I think supports the main idea. Some friends of mine and myself have been thinking about organizing a charity run using hot male models as participants. Donations would be collected through the sponsoring of one or more male models in the run. I went to a very good and well-established online male modeling agency, ondisplaymen.com to search for models for the race. And here is what I noticed. I tended to ignore those male models that were advertising themselves on the homepage. Instead, I searched the catalogue for models who did not advertise themselves. Advertising did not create demand.