Slipping in under the ad-avoidance radar

Fact - People avoid advertising.
Fact - 90% of people who can skip ads, do.
Fact - 65% of people feel they are bombarded with too many ads.
Fact - 69% of people are interested in technology that will help them avoid ads.

A quick Google search revealed that people are exposed to anything from 3,000 to 13,000 different media messages per day. Even if we conservatively assume its half that number, that amount of communication is still a mind boggling amount of information for people to contend with. So not surprisingly, people avoid advertising as much as possible. And new technology is empowering more and more people to become ad avoiders – consider the PVR!

So if you are an advertiser, how do you make sure consumers don’t avoid your ad and that your message is the one remembered ahead of the other 2,999 ads seen on a daily basis?

The answer is simple – you need to slip in under people’s built in ad-avoidance radar. How? By being smarter, more inventive and more collaborative. Your brand needs to become a part of the editorial environment, facilitate conversations and stop interrupting people’s already busy lives.

Product placement is a very attractive alternative, as are sponsorship and promotions. An important point to remember is that people consume media for the content. I don’t watch Prison Break to see what ads are going to be flighted, I watch to see if Michael Schofield manages to get out this week. So if a brand can become a part of that environment I am not going to change channels or hit fast forward on my PVR, I am going to take the message in. In essence, I am giving the advertiser my tacit permission to talk to me.

The added benefit to advertisers is that celebrities and cultural icons appear to endorse the use of the product. That is why Aston Martin paid a rumoured $15 million so that James Bond could drive their new DBS around the streets of Montenegro – James Bond is the ultimate in cool and if he drives a car like that you can bet your bottom dollar that I want to as well. Sad, I know, but clearly the strategy works! Coca-Cola has tied up a multi-million dollar deal with American Idol for the judges to drink the product on air and as much as we love to hate Simon Cowell, what he does absolutely impacts the choices of millions of people. And locally? Well just watch any episode of Egoli and you will see just how popular this is becoming with South African brands – everything from Plascon to Garden World Nursery has been featured.

Sponsorships work in exactly the same way, and when done well, the advertiser becomes a part of the editorial environment, meaning less ad-avoidance, and the positive association that the audience has with that particular programme, rubs off on the brand, which can only be a good thing.

And in the age of PVR, there is another benefit – when I fast-forward through the ads on my PVR (gasp, are media strategists allowed to do that?) I always overshoot the end of the ad-break and then have to rewind back so that I don’t miss any of the show. But with programmes that are sponsored, the advertiser gets a wonderful thing called a break bumper, which signals the end of the break and start of the programme. So now I know that whenever I see the Peugeot sting, I stop fast-forwarding. So even though I miss all of the other advertising messages, I certainly know what Peugeot want me to know about.

So are the days of the 30 second TVC and the 54x10 over? Not by any means – traditional advertising still works – advertisers would not be spending over R200 billion annually if it didn’t. But successful advertisers are supplementing their traditional exposure with new and innovative ways of being noticed more and avoided less.

This strategist thinks this is not only smart, but a necessity too!

By: Richard Lord, Associate Media Director, The MediaShop