Why are there rhyming ads?

Why are there rhyming ads?

Are they clever or just a fad?

Do people actually remember these ads?

Or are they mere pastimes from some grads?

Do these make you buy what they’re selling?

Are they a waste of time or simply upsetting?

Do they amuse people just for them not to remember?

“Did you see that commercial? From whom? I don’t remember.”

What about results? Do rhymes catch attention to gain them?

Does it bring in customers who think, “That’s great! What a gem!”

We love advertising for everything it does.

It draws attention and gives product information.

But does it need to rhyme

to get your attention?

Customers are smart.

Don’t treat them like children.

Appeal to their heart

Make ads result-driven.

It’s ever-present, after all.

Through winter, spring, summer, and fall.

Advertising will always be around.

Whether it’s on your face or in the background.

So it’s probably best that you get something out of it.

Advertising that’s good and will create profit.

Most importantly, however, advertising creates change.

Advertising should cause action, or else it’s just useless and strange.

Advertising Trends in 2021

The advertising world is always changing, sometimes for better, often worse.

With emerging technologies, new marketing channels, and increasing competition in the space, it can be difficult to stay on top of all the latest trends. As a marketer or business owner looking to improve your advertising strategy for 2021, here are three trends you should be paying attention to:

1. Empathy

"Advertising is the only profession where you can inflict pain on people without having to be in their presence." David Ogilvy

I always knew I wanted to be a creative, working in the world of advertising and marketing, but it wasn't until the pandemic that I realised how important empathy is. In order to win new customers through advertising, you need to empathise with their needs and worries so that you can deliver services and products that show you care.

The virus has taken many lives and left a trail of destruction in its wake. In the face of such a crisis, businesses have to be aware that consumers need reassurance that they are cared for and valued even if their health is compromised. Empathy-based advertising campaigns can help provide this reassurance for customers who may feel scared or isolated from society.

2. No more pitch requests

In my experience as an advertising professional, I have seen that the most effective advertising agencies are not those with an extensive portfolio of clients. No, the best companies aren't flashy at all and they don't rely on commissioned work. Instead, they spend their time focusing on one client's company to ensure maximum ROI.

The reason for this is that there are many times when companies will send out pitches without any knowledge of what their potential customers want or need. They just take a shot in the dark and hope that something sticks. This results in wasted hours spent trying to divine what you want instead of actually working towards your goals. The pitch doesn’t work simply because it’s presented and measured in a boardroom and not on the salesroom floor.

Get to know the people who work for the potential agencies you’re interested in working with. After all, people do business with people. Get to know the agency heads first and then worry about their work.

3. Advertising is a privilege.

Many marketers don't realize that advertising is a privilege and not a right. Marketers have the responsibility to earn consumers’ trust. Consumers are bombarded with ads on TV, on mobiles, in stores, and online so they need to know that you're being transparent about your product or service. Advertising has changed over the years, but one thing remains constant - consumers have their guard up.

Preferences and Advertising

What if I told you that your preferences came from random choices?

New research from Johns Hopkins University confirms that we build unconscious biases all throughout our lives when we choose between things that are essentially the same.

The way I see it, this is where advertising comes into play. The research was undertaken with babies, and though the scientific data proves their behaviour is random (at first), the reality is the options these babies were presented with were out of their control. To put it simply, your preferences will be different if someone else raised you, or if you grew up at a different place, or if you were born during a different era.

I see it as an ongoing cycle that’s heavily influenced by advertising. Sure, natural progression and technological advances play a big role in these things, but little did you know, even those were advertised. Someone somewhere told another person thousands of years ago that they can use fire to cook meat – classic word of mouth.

Take grudge purchases for example – the fine line between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ is what separates your preferences from mine. However, preferring one thing over another when choosing between similar things, most of the time has everything to do with advertising. I recently got a car and sooner or later, I’m going to need my tyres replaced. The only tyre brand I’m really familiar with is Bridgestone. That makes my choice for this specific grudge purchase easy. However, if another tyre brand presents me (someone who doesn’t know the slightest thing about car tyres) with something I value more as a person (like durability since I don’t want to be constantly changing my tyres), I might just go with that other brand. If you advertise something that matters to me, it just might pique my interest.

Advertising is meant to draw attention. Most of the time however, it comes gradually and over a long period of time – like how it comes to children. Your exposure to brands dictates an unconscious, random choice and your behaviour towards them creates your personal preferences. If you are exposed to the same choices (advertising), these options are going to be what’s familiar to you. You know these options because you either see them all the time, you’ve seen people around you use them, or you resonate with their message.

The beauty of advertising is found in the unique story a product or service has over other options (competitors). The single, most important message you share when you advertise is what can change a potential customer’s pattern of behaviour and eventually lead to you being the brand of choice. When you share and advertise your story, you’ll find that like-minded people will be attracted to what you have to offer.

The COVID-19 Acceleration

One of the most common claims since the Novel Coronavirus kicked its way into our lives earlier this year is that COVID-19 is an accelerator.

Trends that were already slowly happening have been pushed into high gear far faster and more intensely than anyone could have expected, while other trends have been created out of nowhere.

The hugely increased power of Amazon? The rise of remote working and learning? The surge in social justice activity? Tens of thousands of Kiwi ex-pats returning home? The insidious effects of the COVID-19 crisis and the associated responses (or lack thereof) drove each of these developments.

Many millions of people have suffered immeasurably this year. The long-term effects of the pandemic will be with us for decades to come in ways we don’t yet understand. On the other hand, however, some people and organizations have made out like bandits. Take Jeff Bezos for example. He’s done pretty well. He added 13 billion US dollars to his net worth in one day earlier this year. Yes, that’s 13 thousand million US dollars! Or how about Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom? He’s made more than US$12 billion since March, with his net worth rocketing up a massive 400%. People in the right place at the right time with the right vision always do well even in troubled times.

New Zealand has fared better than many other countries, but we haven’t been unaffected by the COVID-19 crisis. The worst may be yet to come, as the local and global ramifications of the pandemic are felt. Right now, compared to many countries, we’re doing okay, but still, there are lessons to be learned from the current situation. For example, how individuals, businesses, and even governments respond to a crisis, or even just striving to have enough money to ride out the next storm.

But with the mindset that we’re living in “The Time of the Acceleration” (yeah I just made that up), there are some questions that business owners, C-Suite executives, advertisers, and marketers should be asking themselves:

“What’s coming next?”

“How could it affect my business?”

And “What else is going to be accelerated?”

The last question is an important one.

Regardless of our personal feelings and attitudes towards the pandemic and the way governments and people are reacting to it, no one person can control the big picture of what’s going to happen next. A simple case of human error could plunge New Zealand back into lockdown, and no business owner or marketing manager can do anything about that.

But it’s possible to predict the coming trends. Actually, it’s not just possible; it’s now critical because bad things will happen to the businesses that don’t get their predictions right. Remember Kodak? A once-mighty company that assumed film cameras would always be hot demand items. They were caught short by how quickly the digital revolution changed photography, and the result was bankruptcy. Things are moving far faster now, especially in the brave new world that is 2020.

Here’s an example: “Contactless” is a word that’s suddenly become a more significant part of our lives than anyone could have imagined. I’ve seen the Uber and Lyft pick-up lot at Los Angeles International Airport pre-pandemic and post, and the two aren’t even vaguely similar. The former was insanely busy, and the latter was a ghost town. Drivers are vulnerable to viruses, but automated vehicles aren’t. I’ve recently spent a fair amount of time with a Tesla Model 3. The autopilot was far better than I ever thought it could be, despite being driven on a small tropical island with mediocre roads and lousy mobile network coverage. This functionality can and will only get better.

Waymo has just launched a fleet of fully self-driving taxis in the American city of Phoenix. This is just the first phase – other companies will launch similar projects, and there’ll be lots of them. Don’t be in denial that self-driving cars and trucks are coming. If your business involves cars, drivers, deliveries etc. you’re in the firing line in one way or another.

If drivers are vulnerable to a virus, then so is everyone else from the people who stack shelves in a supermarket to the doctors doing surgery in a hospital. Corporations have long looked for ways to improve their bottom line. That often comes down to efficiency, which translates into “fewer people”.

This is obvious all over the retail sector. There are self-service tills at the supermarket, increasing numbers of customers order their fast food on terminals or Apps, and passengers check-in for flights using touchscreens and then drop off their bags. Where did humans go? Serious question - are these companies less likely to find ways to cut staff and replace them with automation now?

Global supply chains are shifting, politics is transforming, the climate change discussion is only getting started, and the ongoing social experiments known as social media and fake news continue unabated. And of course, AI and machine learning are the big change-makers looming over every industry.

What are the second-order effects of this acceleration? It’s easy to not worry about any of it unless it directly affects your business, but at some point, a newly sped-up or brand new trend is going to ripple (or rip) into your industry, and only the prescient ones ahead of the curve will thrive.

The mindset of predicting accelerated trends doesn’t magically end when the pandemic does. Whether “they” discover a vaccine, or we all get immune, or we decide to just deal with it, let’s assume that one day, COVID-19 won’t be the defining factor, and we’ll get back to what passes for normal.

So, what else is being accelerated?

Cities, states, and countries around the world are eyeing the old internal combustion engine and its associated tank of fossil fuels with a beady eye. Sooner or later, you won’t be able to buy (or more importantly, sell) a conventional motor vehicle. But are we talking sooner or later? California and the City of London are looking at 2035 as a cut off date, with other counties such as Austria and Norway aiming to go for it even sooner.

That’s going to affect car and truck manufacturers in a big way, but they’ve got the resources to pivot. What about the many industries that support the motor vehicle sector? If you own a small chain of petrol stations, well, you might want to be considering this, as I’m sure many are. What about suppliers of car parts? What’s their pivot in a world of vehicles with far less moving parts to wear out and break?

On the other side of this coin lies the fact that electric cars run on electricity (obviously). Less obvious is the fact that no power grid in the world is up to dealing with every vehicle being switched to electric power as fossil fuels get phased out. Massive investments in infrastructure and technology are needed. Can your business capitalize on this paradigm shift? If not, should you be starting one that can, or should you be finding a job in an industry that won’t be dead in 10 years?

I’ll go into all of this in more detail in future posts but to cut a long story short, enormous changes are coming at multiple levels, they’re coming fast, and they’ll affect us all. If you think your business or your job isn’t going to be affected, you’re probably wrong. And if your marketing team or advertising agency aren’t looking at these issues and bringing you the information you need to make better decisions, you’ll likely end up struggling somewhere down the track.