New Zealand’s road death toll

America has a gun problem, but New Zealand has a road problem. In 2017, 380 people died on New Zealand’s roads. That’s up from 327 in 2016 and up by almost 50% since 2013 (253 deaths).

The only reason to advertise is to generate a result. I’ll be the first to say that this is often difficult to measure. There are numerous factors at play in every case, from the environment to competitor activity to consumer apathy. But regardless, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any advertiser saying they don’t care about the outcome of a campaign. Money is spent on advertising to generate results, and for the vast majority of businesses, this takes the form of a financial benefit. But sometimes, the benefit is far more important than money.

And that’s where the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) comes in. The NZTA website states that it spends $13 million per year on advertising and that this bolsters the funding of $300 million spent on police strategic enforcement.

With their $13 million budget, the NZTA uses advertising to “raise driver awareness of road safety issues and change unsafe driver behaviour”. The NZTA also states “…while an advertising campaign can affect public awareness and attitudes and influence behaviour change, advertising alone does not result in reduced crashes, deaths or serious injuries – it has never claimed to”. That’s a terrible viewpoint.

Advertising is one of the most powerful influencers of modern times. Remember when monolithic international advertising agencies got people to smoke cigarettes?  These advertising agencies literally got people to kill themselves! Is it too much of a stretch to imagine that advertising could save lives instead?

All the NZTA’s attitude does is breed apathy, and apathy skews priorities. Let’s not forget that the end goal here is to save lives. Nothing else matters. Or is there something else more important?

Consider this:

In 2014, New Zealand advertising agency Clemenger BBDO, the NZTA’s advertising agency of choice, won three Gold Lions, two Silvers, and a Bronze award at the Cannes Lions. Clemenger BBDO also won 21 awards at the New York Festival and One Show International Awards, and a Gold in the Australian Gold Awards. Clemenger BBDO also won a number of local ad awards including Gold at the Beacon Awards, plus the Ad of the Year, one Grand Prix, four Golds and three Bronzes at the Axis Awards. That’s 38 awards in total.

In 2014, 293 people died on our roads. Effectively, Clemenger BBDO won just over one advertising award for every seven people that died.

The Clemenger BBDO website claims that “Everybody at Clemenger BBDO has the same job; to do the work we do better. Better means more interesting, more creative, and more effective”. Creativity is a sliding scale and in the world of advertising, it often means your peers judge how creative you are. But effectiveness can be measured by everyone involved, including you and me. Was Clemenger BBDO’s 2014 advertising campaign for the NZTA effective? No, it wasn’t, and there hasn't been an effective campaign since then and the numbers prove it.

Lowering our death toll isn’t all about creativity nor does it necessarily require it. Clemenger BBDO is in a very privileged position to work with the NZTA. I know lowering the death toll is a difficult task but Clemenger BBDO has hordes of resources, links to their international partners, and some serious manpower. So what's the problem? It's important to note at this point that Clemenger BBDO's history shows a few tobacco companies on their client list. Big companies like Lucky Strike feature. If Clemenger BBDO could work magic with tobacco why can't they work magic on our roads?

Let’s look at the biggest statistic again: an increase in the death toll by 50% over five years. Would Clemenger BBDO’s other clients, such as Fonterra, DB Breweries, and New World, accept a 50% drop in sales over a five-year period? Regardless of the reasons why it happened, BBDO would be out on their arse.

So what’s the solution? 

1. The NZTA bans all road safety campaigns from being entered into advertising awards.

2. The NZTA stops using agencies and moves everything in-house. I can hear your groans of dissent from here but it could work.

3. Make a $13 million movie. Taika Waititi to direct for an affordable fee since it's his social responsibility. Let’s imagine it would pull in $150 million. What could be done with those profits to stop the carnage?

4. Place 380 white crosses outside the offices of Clemenger BBDO. Perhaps if their creatives were reminded every day that creativity and awards didn’t matter, they might change their approach to saving lives.

Those are my ideas, let’s hear yours.

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One of the ads that contributed to Clemenger BBDO's awards haul.

Does Product Placement Work?

We live in a time where TV shows and movies can be watched on demand. Installing ad blockers has become a priority, and fingers itch to press “skip ad” as quickly as possible. While traditional advertising still exists in this digital age, advertisers always find their way to shove their brands and products into people’s minds.

One way that’s been tried, tested and overused is through the magic (and by magic we mean paying the big bucks) of product placement. Let’s look at some movie product placements from the slightly obvious ones to the ultimate smack-bang-in-your-face-please-make-it-stop product placements.

Slightly subtle product placement.

Jurassic World – Starbucks

Good on you, Starbucks! Sort of. It’s only during this final battle scene when you can see ye olde Starbucks logo with its mermaid oh so many times. To be fair, there are also other brands in the mix like Pandora and Brookstone but coffee comes first every time, right?

Kingsman: Secret Service – McDonald’s

You’d think they’d be served food for the gods because of who these characters are supposed to be but what do you know, it’s Maccas!

Justice League – Mercedes

Batman’s superpowers are finally revealed! “I’m rich." And since he's rich, he drives a Mercedes. Why don’t you?

Well that was a bit of a stretch.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Pizza Hut

Ahhh yes. Turtles who eat pizza. As long as it was given a purpose in the beginning of the film, right? But hey, there’s no hate whatsoever here. Everyone should be able to eat pizza freely!

iRobot – Converse All-Stars

For a movie whose setting is in the year 2035, Converse’s placement definitely stood out. “Converse All Stars, vintage 2004.” Well played, Converse. Well played.

Get off my face please.

The Internship – Google

Need I say more? The entire movie was a two-hour long commercial for Google. I’m guessing Google was feeling lucky with this one.

You just had to, didn’t you?

Too Many to Mention – Coca Cola

Hi Coca-Cola. We all know you. Most if not all of us know how bad you are for us. But you’re damn good at branding. So the question now is, do you actually need all these product placements?

We have a winner! The Ultimate Product Placement Whore: Michael Bay

Michael Bay films – 555 Product Placements in total.

We’re not the only ones who've noticed. We see right through you Michael Bay! Not sure if that deserves a pat on the back or a plea to get on with the storylines.

At the end of it all, advertisers think we all exist to consume their messages. They will always advertise by any means necessary – even if it costs a minimum of 250,000 USD for a second’s worth of screen time.

Try as you might, you can’t just ad block your way through life.

How to measure advertising?

There is a rather insidious belief out there that advertising can change the way we think. I say insidious because I think that belief is promulgated largely by the advertising industry itself.

The proof lies in many places but let’s look at drink-driving as an example. When it comes to advertising, the NZ Transport Agency has incredibly deep pockets and they produce heaps of advertising. They have a plethora of leading advertising agencies working for them but people are still dying on our roads, with 2017 being one of the worst.

Advertising campaigns for this subject have merely tapped into existing latent beliefs that drink-driving is fundamentally wrong. But a lot of people don't care and advertising won't change the way they think. This is true of smoking, hunting, global warming, gun control, social welfare, shark finning, recycling, whaling, drug abuse, animal welfare, veganism, and homophobia.

Which brings us to this advertisement for Rainbow Youth. Have you seen it?

It’s saying that the use of the word gay (in a LGBTIQ context) is still too often used in a derogatory sense and we need to change the way we think of it and the way we use it.

Well, society has already done the first: the word gay has long since lost its original meaning. Gay will remain a description, a slight and a celebration. Like the LGBTIQ community that embraced it, it is stronger for its diversity.

Rainbow Youth has stated on their Facebook page that the derogatory use of gay “contributes to much larger issues - homophobia, biphobia and transphobia”. In essence, Rainbow Youth has said that the derogatory use of the word gay is a gateway to hatred. But somewhere in New Zealand, someone disagrees, and changing their view, especially through advertising, is an immense challenge.

Setting aside the approach taken by Rainbow Youth’s advert, one must ask how its success will be measured? It’s likely that there is no baseline measurement for how often the word gay is used in an offensive manner, so there’ll likely be no comparison at the completion of the campaign to measure its effectiveness in reducing homophobia.

Yes, there was a lot of national and global media coverage and the ad was viewed a million times on Rainbow Youth’s Facebook page, but is it creating meaningful change or is it merely preaching to the converted? Does anyone really know?

Research Now, an online market research company, surveyed 2,715 global marketers in June 2017 to examine how they measured the effectiveness of their campaigns. Their research stated that "The outcome of a campaign isn’t going to mean anything if it wasn’t set up correctly in the first place". Honestly, you don't need a research company to tell you this. I read through their full report and it's no surprise that an increase in sales rated as most important for the measurement of advertising. Measurement is easier (slightly) when you're measuring how many burgers or sneakers you sell in a month but when you're trying to change the way people think, it's a lot harder.

Surely Rainbow Youth, as a representative of the LGBTIQ community, deserve to be able to move forward with more effective advertising in the future by being able to analyse, understand, and adjust their campaigns based on what has been done before? Don’t say it can’t be done because the LGBTIQ community have overcome tougher challenges.

Advertising on TV - a quick heads-up

Maybe the title of this post should be “Just a Quick Heads-Down About TV”? I’ve written about the subject of multi-screening before on this site but it’s time to revisit the subject, mainly because I’ve been revisiting the subjects of my ongoing social experiment.

I’ve been living out of a suitcase since July 2014, travelling the world with a lady from Seattle and living the digital nomad lifestyle. We generally rent a place for the duration of our stay in a specific city but we’ve also spent a fair amount of time staying with our families and friends. It’s the best way to actually spend some quality time with them, so for days, weeks and even months, I’ve been able to be the observer in a variety of households in different countries and in wildly different cultural and even economic circumstances.

The one thing they all have in common? No one, and I do seriously mean no one, watches any advertising on TV. Full stop, end of story. This is where this post could finish.

But I’ll continue for a while…

If there’s the ability to skip ads, then the ads are duly skipped, in exactly the same way they are when you’re waiting for that YouTube video to load with your pointer poised over the “Skip Ad” button and watching the countdown like a hawk.

If the ads can’t be skipped, while watching high-profile live sporting events for example, then the channel is either changed, or a second screen is brought into the mix. Channel switching during the ads is becoming less of a thing in an age where everyone has a smartphone or tablet with them while they’re watching.

It’s quite a strange sight to see a group of people from multiple generations sitting around a TV set with their heads resolutely turned down and their eyes locked on the screen of their device. Some idly scroll through their social media feeds, others watch videos, while some play Candy Crush or whatever the latest trendy game is. Often the TV volume is muted so they don’t have to listen to the high-volume yammering of the ads.

Regardless of what they’re “watching”, they’re not watching the ads. Is this a scientifically verifiable study? Obviously not, but it seems to be the case wherever I go, and for whoever I ask. So why are advertisers “going back to TV”?

They must be measuring the results and are totally happy with the bang for bucks they’re getting from the TV component of their campaigns, right? Or are they just stuck?

"Glued to the TV" will never exist ever again.

When it comes to advertising, no one seems to have the definitive answer just yet. Social isn’t the universal panacea it was meant to be, and “making things go viral” is about as reliable as the American democratic process. Print is dying, dead or surging depending on who you ask, and buying online banner ads can be much the same as throwing your money out the window and hoping someone throws money back in.

So in that cold and inhospitable environment, is it any wonder that advertisers are turning to comfort food aka television advertising? When you just don’t know what to do, you do what you always did. At least you won’t lose your job.

Then again, things can be done differently. Case in point, I look at what my brother – the bossman of this agency – did for a client recently.

After a massive overhaul of the brand based on a deep and insightful look at the market, with some clever thinking applied, the client is hundreds of millions of dollars ahead of last year. Not slightly ahead, not doing okay, they’re absolutely killing it. Why? Because they went back to the real basics. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses, understanding their market and then treating the customer with the respect they deserve while communicating the right messages as effectively and as innovatively as possible.

That’s what works. Another million bucks spent on TV pushing the same old, same old won’t put you hundreds of percent ahead of last year. Hell, you’ll be lucky if you don’t go backwards trying to communicate with people who aren’t even watching your expensive ads. Think about it...