I was chatting to a planner friend last week, and we got on to the subject of how certain categories seem glued to their advertising conventions.
The best examples are probably magazine ads for cosmetics -it is invariably a DPS with lots of white space. There will be a close up of a model on the left hand page, a product shot on the right, some pseudo-scientific copy below that with the logo down in the bottom right.
The world has far too many car ads where we see the vehicle shot in three-quarter profile from a low angle (I've stolen a great slide from Russell illustrating this -below). Thankfully the TV work in the car category has improved tremendously of late -I hope I never live to see another aerial shot of a car swooping gracefully round a perfectly-cambered bend of lonesome-yet-artfully-lit road.
Other cliches: If you've got blokes in a beer ad, there are generally three of them (one is a lonely loser, two are gay). Petfood ads always have a feeding moment. A headache will visually manifest itself as a computer graphic superimposed on your cranium. There will be satin to be found somewhere in a chocolate ad.
Airline advertising is a personal favourite -the passengers are perfectly pressed and incredibly comfortable, the unbelievably gorgeous cabin staff will give you the glad-eye whilst serving you an immaculately presented gourmet meal. There will be a well-behaved child staring wistfully out the window and the George Clooney-lookalike pilot will undoubtedly pass by with a wink and a tip of the hat. There may be glimpses of exotic cities and you'll perhaps see a shot looking down on a shiny new plane flying through the sky (they often used to combine these last two by showing planes reflected in glass skyscrapers... but, er, not so much anymore...)
If you were a Martian trying to figure out why humans get on planes, and all you had to go on was the advertising, you'd think that we all did it for the glamour, the food and the uniquely restorative creature comforts. I'm not sure that flying has ever been relaxing, and it has been decades since airline travel was at all glamourous (yes, Virgin seem to successfully play off this perception, but perhaps the overall brand is sufficiently rock'n'roll to maintain the fiction?)
This campaign for Air New Zealand captured a much more potent truth about the category -that the real reason that you fly is to see someone, to do something -to have some sort of experience that would be impossible without physically being there. Rather than pretending to be a day spa, the airline positioned itself as a facilitator of real experiences. By exhibiting genuine insight into people's relationship with the category, they were able to stand out from the herd and to drive brand affiliation (importantly, they are the local category leader with a dominant market share -owning the generic benefit could be a dangerous strategy for a challenger brand).
For marketers, there is safety in following category conventions. It is a "proven" approach -it has worked in the past for similar campaigns and it is often further validated by pre-testing or other forms of consumer research. But this supposed certainty is fool's gold -by adhering to the conventions of your category, you're losing any opportunity to differentiate your brand, thereby (in most cases)
pretty much guaranteeing brand failure (Bruce Tait wrote a great paper on this a couple of years back which is well worth reading).
This doesn't mean that you simply look at what everyone else is doing and do something else (although that can be a start). It means looking for something deeper, more resonant and more meaningful than the commonly-held puffery (think Honda 'Grrr'). Sometimes you can even go one further and overtly puncture the myths (think 'Dove Evolution').
Whatever you do, do something different. Use research as a headlight rather than a rear-view mirror. Be brave, and help your clients to be brave too -remind them that Heineken's "refreshes the parts..." campaign failed pre-testing (I can feel a 'Great Failures in Research' post coming up -stay tuned). In the long run, your clients will appreciate it. And so will the public, who won't have to put up with another cliched airline commercial featuring supremely comfortable, well-rested models looking at clouds in the shape of dolphins.
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In a weird bit of synchronicity, the evening after that conversation I was reading Michel Houellebecq's 'Platform' where he goes off on a typically grumpy rant about the grim reality of airline travel:
"Taking a plane today, regardless of the airline, regardless of the destination, amounts to being treated like shit for the duration of the flight. Crammed into a ridiculously tiny space from which it's impossible to move without disturbing an entire row of fellow passengers, you are greeted from the outset with a series of embargos announced by stewardesses sporting fake smiles... Then, for the duration of the flight, they do the utmost to find ways to bully you, all the while making it impossible for you to move around, or more generally to move at all, with the exception of a certain number of permitted activities: enjoying fizzy drinks, watching American videos, buying duty-free products. The unremitting sense of danger, fuelled by mental images of plane crashes, the enforced immobility in a cramped space, provokes a feeling of stress...The crew do their level best to maximise this stress by preventing you from combating it by habitual means. Deprived of cigarettes, reading matter and, as happens more and more frequently, sometimes even deprived of alcohol."
Now, when does that Eurostar pitch get underway?
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