The best advertising campaigns in history. The best advertising campaigns in history It's all about memory

Byron Sharp Chapter from a book
Publishing house "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber"

Once upon a time there lived two girls, Georgiana and June, in a small French village. Their parents had a beautiful orchard with many lemon trees. one fine day the family decided that they would make lemonade. over time, everyone became very skilled in the production of this drink. every summer, when the girls came to the village for the holidays, they sold the family lemonade to friends and neighbors.

But the sisters grew up, got married and moved to live in a big city. It so happened that they settled in different parts of the metropolis and, sadly, rarely saw each other. But both did not change the family business, continuing to produce and sell lemonade on their own.

Georgiana's husband owned a newspaper (and her sister June married a lawyer), and one day she decided to advertise her drink in his newspaper. the advertisement said, "Georgiana's Lemonade is a true lemon flavor." And sales began to grow steadily - she even had to negotiate additional supplies of lemons. in subsequent years, sales continued to increase, albeit slowly. Sometimes there were outbursts when some new store started selling her lemonade.

Meanwhile, June's lemonade sales also grew for some time, then froze at the same level for a long time, and then began to slowly decline. One Christmas, June brought up a conversation with Georgiana about it, and Georgiana advised her sister to advertise lemonade. June's ad contained an elegantly worded message: "June's Lemonade: Lemon Grace."

Today, the Georgiana brand is the largest in its market, with a share of just over 60%. It is sold in more stores, it is popular, it has many customers, and everyone says that this lemonade is preferred. Lemonade June is also not forgotten, it is sold and makes a profit. Its relative market share is almost 40% and sales are no longer falling. June's percentage of shoppers who say her lemonade tastes great is about the same as the percentage of shoppers who prefer Georgiana lemonade.

If you think this story is plausible, then you believe the ad works; there is logic in this, since billions of dollars are spent on brand advertising. Curiously, this amounts to as much as 2% of global GDP every year. However, things are not always as simple and straightforward as with Georgiana and June; The real world is full of mysteries and contradictions. If you take the big brands with the largest advertising budgets, their sales rarely increase when the advertising campaign begins, and they rarely fall when it ends. Most buyers claim that advertising has no effect on them. Even advertising agencies are extremely reluctant to say that advertising leads to sales; they are much more comfortable talking about things like building brand equity, emotional commitment, and added value. In contrast, opponents of advertising argue that it has a powerful manipulative power. "Advertising gives trouble to both pollsters and CFOs: the former because they think it works, and the latter because they believe it doesn't" (Bullmore J. Advertising and its audience: a game of two halves).

So what's going on? Who is right? What empirical evidence suggests that advertising drives sales? How does it really work? How can marketers use it? And how to measure the effect of advertising efforts? This chapter answers all the questions and presents a brand advertising model that is consistent with everything known about brand buying behavior and memory properties. Changes in ideas about advertising are summarized in Table. one.

Advances in neurology and psychology in recent times advanced understanding of how memory and the brain work. Recent discoveries in these sciences have important implications for advertising, as it works by shaping and refreshing memories. We now know that thinking and decision-making are largely unconscious and emotional. However, traditional advertising theories are based on an outdated notion that human beings rational behavior(sometimes he can be guided by emotions) when making a decision and that everyone's memory is almost perfect.

Before discussing how advertising works, let's see if there is any evidence that advertising has the effect of changing the level of sales (for example, giving a slight impulse to buying behavior). This is an assumption of marketing science, and it complements the above point of view. This has never been discussed before, but nonetheless, such information helps to understand how advertising works and why it is so difficult to reliably measure its impact on changing sales.

How do sales respond to brand advertising?

The purpose of brand advertising is to influence buying behavior consumers. And don't let anyone convince you that the goal is something else. Billions of dollars spent on advertising are actually spent on building and protecting sales. Logically, this can only be achieved by influencing buying behavior, constantly strengthening and restoring the likelihood of sales.

This idea disgusts many of those involved in the creation of advertising. The reason for the rejection is that they associate sales impact with a certain type of advertising (like "Sales start this Thursday" and "Crazy discounts - now and only now!"). These types of ads increase sales, while branded ads can have only a very modest visible effect (or none at all) on sales figures. This observation leads to the suggestion that advertising is doing something other than influencing purchases. And so, in order to justify the cost of this article, marketers refer to such concepts as brand equity, commitment and loyalty, and often try to throw in as much fog as possible. As a result, financial top managers, as well as CEOs, especially if they are firm realists, suspicions immediately arise that the money allocated for advertising is flying away.

There is compelling empirical evidence that brand advertising does generate sales. True, the impact of advertising on sales trends is very difficult to fix. The reasons for this are not yet fully understood. Ignorance means that some people who study the impact of advertising on changing sales (such as econometric modeling consultants and academic researchers) come up with the wrong results in their calculations.

There are two reasons why the impact of advertising on changing sales levels is so hard to see in weekly and monthly sales data (i.e., sales never jump up in response to an ad launch or boost, and just as never dive when an ad wanes). This effect is often overlooked for the following reasons.

Accordingly, statistical models of changes in advertising spend and changes in total sales show some relationship. But if we look deeper and divide consumers into those who have been exposed to advertising and those who have not been exposed, we will see the previously hidden true effect of advertising on changing the level of sales. The value of data at the individual level is shown in Fig. 1, and these data show that despite sales declines (due to competitive pressure), brand ads did generate sales among consumers who saw them.

Rice. one. Households buying the brand, in $/1,000 households

When other random factors influencing sales are tightly controlled, the effect of advertising looks more significant, as expected; another thing is that it is very difficult to do this with aggregated data, which makes it incredibly difficult to detect the effect of viewing ads in changing the level of sales.

Advertising promotes sales even when the indicators do not change - is it easy to accept this truth if it contradicts common sense? when sales figures do rise, it still sends the wrong signal about the true impact of advertising. The movement of sales figures within a weekly or monthly period does not give an idea of ​​how advertising affects them - this is only the tip of the iceberg, and it is hidden, and we cannot judge what part of it is the visible top.

This is not always the case; in some cases, the effect is immediate. An example would be an ad that notifies the audience of an event that is limited to a specific timeframe, such as "Thursday is the last day of the sale!" . But advertising in general affects people who will not buy this product for several weeks, so such exposure is aimed at future sales levels. In this way, the effect of advertising is distributed over weekly sales in such a thin layer that any change in its intensity does not lead to visible changes in the sales trajectory. Author Broadbent offers a very accurate analogy for this case: “Brand sales are the height at which an airplane flies. Advertising spending is the engine of this aircraft: as long as the engine is running, everything is going fine, but as soon as it stalls, the fall will eventually begin.

Advertising and price promotion promote sales in different ways

We know that for all brands, even the largest ones, the consumer population consists mainly of inactive (occasional buyers) consumers. Most adherents of the Coca-Cola brand purchase this drink once or twice a year. At the other end of the buying spectrum are consumers who choose Coca-Cola from morning to night every day. Let's think about how the buying behavior of a person who drinks Coca-Cola several times a day will change after watching an advertisement for this company. That's right, it won't change. So who is the brand advertising aimed at? Millions of people who buy Coca-Cola on occasion, and those who hardly ever thought about this drink and who buy it occasionally. Such consumers may forget that cola even exists and not make their one-time purchases. That is why well-known established brands need to advertise: to retain their customers (against the massive advertising of competitors) and provide themselves with opportunities for growth. Coca-Cola ads try to capture some of our attention and remind us that it is a drink of joy, that we used to drink it and liked it: that is, mainly to remind us of what we already know. By doing this, the brand is trying to increase the (very low) probability for us to buy Coca-Cola tomorrow. If the ad works, the probability of us buying that brand tomorrow will change from almost negligible (say, one chance in 300) to less negligible (say, two chances in 300). Such a change in probability is so small that we hardly notice it, which is why most people believe that advertising does not affect them. Its influence is just too subtle. But if everyone who sees a single Coca-Cola ad increased their propensity to buy the drink from one in 300 to two in 300, Coca-Cola sales to that group of consumers would double! Thus, even advertising that does not try to convince anyone of anything or throw new reasons for buying can have an impressive effect on sales - without leading people to change their opinion about the brand, and even completely unnoticed by them.

This explains why established brands invest heavily in advertising. The bigger the brand, the more money he has to spend on advertising, even if he is of advanced age and well known to everyone. This also explains the statement of most people that they do not believe in the influence of advertising. in addition, we now understand why the effect of advertising on sales is very different from the effect of price incentives. Simply put, price promotion has an immediate effect on weekly sales figures, while the effect of advertising is spread very thinly over future periods. of course, such changes in advertising weight are difficult to see, and it is much more difficult to measure correctly.

Any marketing intervention, if it has achieved its goal, works to increase the likelihood of buying a product. Successful advertising attracts the attention of many consumers and influences them; it reaches consumers of all types, not just those who are easily attracted (for example, active regular buyers of a brand who immediately notice its advertising because their memory structures associated with the brand are better developed and do not tend to weed out these messages). In particular, successful advertising attracts millions of consumers who are very unlikely to make a purchase in the coming week or month. If the brand's ad attracts them, if it is remembered, if it refreshes, reinforces, or forms connections in their memory that increase the likelihood of noticing the brand, or if it comes to mind when they are in a buying situation (i.e., enhances the brand's visibility and mental accessibility), then advertising will somewhat strengthen their predisposition to buy the brand. This is the effect that advertising has on sales. However, most of these additional purchases will not be recorded in the current week's sales figures, because hardly any of the potential consumers will buy the brand in this particular week. It's just that they don't shop as often, even with a freshly heightened buying propensity. Of course, most of these purchases will never happen, because before the consumer decides to choose a product from this category, he will be “fired” by advertising (or some other marketing activities) competitors and negate the impact of your advertising. But this does not mean that there was no influence from advertising at all; a slight impulse that strengthens the propensity to buy, at least a little, but protected the sales of the brand from the marketing encroachments of a competitor. In the end, instead of a competitor's ad winning him additional sales, it will simply bring your brand back to where it was before.

Imagine two people who were exposed to a Coca-Cola advertisement and after that their propensity to buy a bottle of the drink the next day increased from 1 in 300 to 2 in 300. This means that they will now buy Coca-Cola every 150 days, instead of once. in 300 days as before. Thus, these additional purchases are delayed for quite some time. long term. This is the meaning of the statement that the impact of advertising on the level of sales is distributed in a thin layer over a long period of time.

The coverage achieved through price promotion looks very different - it is very limited, as it is tilted towards the more active regular buyers of the brand. moreover, the effect of price promotion on sales is not dispersed over time. Promotion at the point of sale affects only those who buy a product from the category exactly in the week of the corresponding promotion. Therefore, the full effect of the price promotion on sales is reflected in weekly sales figures. This is why price promotion clearly shows its effect; sales increase when the corresponding promotions start and decrease when they end. You can probably count on a more long-term effect if the purchase and use of a brand bought on a share increase its visibility. But the facts are inexorable: the long-term effect of price stimulation is minimal. Advertising affects the likelihood of a purchase by affecting memory, and memories tend to persist. Plus, discounts affect buying behavior because we all love bargains. If we see that one of the brands that we have noticed and use is on sale, the chance that we will prefer it to other brands in our shopping range will immediately increase. However, immediately after that, the probability of making purchases will immediately return to its original level. So price promotion works only when it works.

This is good news for those who are looking to measure the effect of price promotions on sales (the full effect on sales changes can be seen and measured in weekly sales figures), but bad news for those who are looking for ways to measure how sales will change under the influence of advertising. This means that you should not mix the effectiveness of advertising and price promotions in the same econometric model in an attempt to quantify their relative impact on changing sales.

But the other good news is that you can see the sales response to an ad even if the market is stable and there is no change in the total sales of the advertised brand. This requires the so-called data of a single source: information periodically collected at the level of the same individual individuals, what exactly each of them bought and what advertising was exposed to over a certain period of time. The benefit of this information can be explained by imagining how a direct marketer evaluates the effect of a direct mail campaign on a selected set of households in Chicago. Will he use national sales data? No. What about sales data in Chicago? Also no. He will study the buying patterns of the households to whom he has sent his promotional materials. After all, no one expects a change in shopping plan to occur in non-advertised households, right? And yet, in order to correctly calculate the effect of advertising on actual purchasing behavior, he will want to correlate sales to these households after exposure to advertising with a reference (reference) level of sales and a history of previous sales to these households or sales to similar households to which advertising was intentionally not directed. Single source data allows the same logical approach to be applied to assessing the impact of television, print and other types of advertising.

Over 40 years of analysis of data from a single source has provided solid empirical evidence that advertising stimulates sales among those who are covered by it (and that some advertisements head and shoulders above others). These results have consistently been recorded across a wide range of brands, product categories, countries, and datasets. This is good news for those advertised. And for advertisers looking to measure the impact of their announcements on sales to determine which creative approaches and media strategies work best.

In a review of the results obtained from the analysis of single source data on advertising that effectively affects sales, Jones J. Is advertising still salesmanship? notes:

We will not go into a detailed study of the results of a single source study on the effect of advertising on changes in sales. Let's better generalize the important conclusions confirmed by the results of application of other reliable methods, like, say, experiments.

A creatively written text, even if it doesn't try to convince, can still be very effective in influencing the level of sales.

A media strategy with a wider reach is especially effective; reach is more important than frequency. Continuous advertising is more effective than flight advertising followed by long periods of advertising silence, since the former prevents the destruction of memory structures.

All of these findings are consistent with the negative binomial distribution of brand buyer ratings (see Chapter 4). And especially with the idea that it is important to appeal to all categories of buyers and provide advertising with a continuous time range (do not take long breaks). Advertising works by reaching out to the masses and slightly pushing them to buy. And for the most part, it's invisible to us; sometimes an ad strikes a “Got to buy this” response, but even that intent only slightly fuels our buying propensity, as we often forget about that intent or are distracted by something. This should serve as a reminder that advertising works by affecting memory.

What is not noticed (and not processed) will not have an effect

An advertisement cannot remain in memory if it is not understood; memory structures will not generate sales unless they are associated with the advertised brand. The bulk of ad impressions fail to overcome these two barriers, which means money is wasted. But it's even worse if these ads conjure up competing brands in consumers' minds. Less than 20% of TV ads are noticed and properly branded by viewers (i.e. over 80% of ads are wasted). It's terrifying. It's so unsettling that you can already imagine how large corporations will organize special task forces, perhaps within the marketing division, to eradicate this problem. Target groups are tasked with conducting scientific research, developing principles and guidelines, and honing advertising planning and evaluation techniques that will ensure that all brand advertising successfully overcomes the aforementioned barriers to target audiences. However, the reality is that most organizations sometimes do not evaluate the effectiveness of advertising at all, no one will ever pay for this with space and no one will be charged with the responsibility of fixing this problem. It turns out that in the field of advertising losses there is no serious research and no attempts are made to improve the situation. Apparently, everything would have been different if it had been about material losses or product flaws.

It's true that advertising can work even if we don't pay much attention to it. We are endowed with the ability to notice some things at an almost subconscious level; for example, when talking to someone in a crowded society, we will still hear, despite the background noise, if we are called. But that part of our brain is constantly monitoring environment does not mean that this background information is allowed to invade our long-term memory. It would be better if advertising could generate more conscious attention and processing of incoming information.

The consciousness of people screens out a significant part of advertising messages. The challenge is to override the brain's scanning mechanisms and strike a spark of emotional reaction to accept the meaning of the advertisement, such as "I'll pay attention to it." This means that the primary task of advertising agencies is to generate outstanding creative ideas that will be noticed by the viewer and encourage him to scroll through them again and again in memory. The advertised brand should become the center of this mental work of the viewer. The mental work itself should evoke associations associated with the brand. This is a difficult task, which is why most advertising efforts fail. And this also explains why the latest discoveries in neuroscience and psychology are so important to us: we need to understand how attention and memory work.

It is now known that only a very small part of our consciousness, if not none at all, can be characterized as the work of pure reason. Emotions are the main source of human motivation, and they significantly affect attention, memory and behavior. It is not surprising that advertising so actively appeals to the senses. For example, emotions are clearly visible in ads when the audience sheds a tear while watching a commercial about cancer research, or laughs along with the characters in a commercial about beer, or is shocked, horrified, and then relieved when they talk about insurance on the screen. People watch movies, listen to music, read books mainly to experience emotional experiences. They like it when advertising gives such reasons, then they notice it and pay more attention to it.

It's all about memory

Apart from the very small amount of advertising that requires a direct response from the addressee (including contextual search), it should, in principle, work through memory. This is an undeniable claim, although all too often marketers and academics forget the essential role memory plays; and instead believe that advertising works by persuasive arguments or creating emotions towards the brand.

Memory is the link between advertising and mental choice. Even a regular product (margarine, for example) is purchased no more than eight times a year on average, and a particular brand is typically selected once or twice a year. It can take many months between viewing an ad and the moment when the viewer finds himself in a buying situation and has the opportunity to recall the brand appropriately (perhaps under the influence of the ad). To influence people's behavior, advertising must work with their memory.

Building brand visibility

Advertising works primarily by refreshing and, from time to time, shaping memory structures. These structures increase the chances that the brand will be remembered and/or noticed in a buying situation, and this in turn increases the chance of brand acquisition. Related to trademark memory structures include an idea of ​​what the brand does, what it looks like, where it is available, when and where it is consumed, who is consuming and with whom. Memories are associations with cues that can bring to mind a brand. They can also give the consumer the idea of ​​taking the brand out of the fridge and making it for dinner.

Convince consumers

Some ads generate intent to buy by eliciting responses like "This is a must buy" or "I wonder if this is really worth trying/checking out." Other announcements, intended to convince, are very dry and appeal exclusively to reason. They are found, for example, in text ads, guides, new product offers, newspapers and advertising leaflets. Advertising in directories, like text ads, is informative, laconic, and systematized according to the interests of its audience. For example, in the ad "Plumber X guarantees to come to your call on the same day", in all likelihood, there is all the "persuasion" that you need if the boiler exploded at home. steam heating. However, in order to convince New Product consumers need to be informed about what is being offered. Excitement about something new creates a window of opportunity: newness always stirs up emotions, and this is enough for an advertisement (with information that appeals to reason) to be noticed.

However, persuasive arguments will be more effective if they explicitly appeal to the senses. Compare the following two advertisements.

Goodyear tires hold the road well and shorten your stopping distance.

Today, your child's life can depend on good brakes. Goodyear tires shorten your stopping distance and keep your loved ones safe.

Persuasive advertising works less often than we think by looking at advertising texts and models. in addition, advertising, which strongly affects the level of sales, does not need to convince. We conducted a series of studies in the UK on different forms of advertising: ordinary people, professionals from advertising agencies, and students evaluated TV commercials and magazine ads. Only 40-50% of ratings indicated that the ad is suggestive or states that the advertised brand is different or better, or what is being offered helpful information. We assume that in these cases there is no simple basis on which these advertisements could successfully convince anyone of anything. Other researchers also point out that most advertisements contain very little verbal or visual information about the advertised brand.

Actually, the mechanism of persuasion does not explain why the vast majority of advertisements are given at all. Many brands are already successful. They can't say something the market doesn't already know about; something that their competitor couldn't say, or something that would be meaningful to their customers. However, we tend to assume that persuasion advertising should have a greater effect on sales. Although this is not true. Memory structures, even if they don't create intent to buy, still generate sales. Decades of research show that the majority of purchases tend to be made by people who had no intention of purchasing anything at all. Intentions are also, in a certain sense, memories, and like memories, they can also be reproduced with distortions, therefore they have a weak motivating power. The same can be said about brand preference or attitudes towards it. Some advertisements elicit reactions such as "this is good" or "this is good for me". Again, the conventional wisdom is that such persuasive advertising should be more effective in generating sales. An advertising-inspired brand attitude, as in the examples above, is usually very weakly motivating. Partly because the consumer rarely thinks about it when shopping, and also because all people have a large number of brands that they like (and choose).

So it's completely wrong to conclude that advertising that affects brand intent or attitude works better. This fact undermines the credibility of most of the academic research in this area, which has derived rules for advertising effectiveness by examining how consumer exposure to advertising influences their stated intentions. (Often, such studies are conducted in laboratory conditions far from reality, when the intervals between exposure to advertising and statements of intent do not correspond to reality, and the respondent's attention is deliberately focused on the proposed set of statements.) Similarly, in many cases, pre-testing of advertising (studying the response of respondents to advertising ) is biased in terms of intent or shift in intent because it is biased towards specific types of advertising content and very often leads to erroneous conclusions about the effectiveness of a particular commercial on sales.

Many companies have fallen into the intent/preference paradigm trap. They instruct their advertising agencies in this vein and evaluate the effect, guided by this model (sometimes without giving a report). As a result, their ads are replete with compelling arguments (often with very little benefit) that viewers reject, misinterpret, or ignore. moreover, the advertising of such companies does not refresh or does not form the proper mental structures, since the management requires in these advertisements to emphasize the selling message. Such advertising is not capable of conveying to consumers in a uniform manner distinctive features brand. Accordingly, one advertising campaign after another is released, and everyone is so different in style, appearance and everything else, as if they belong to different brands.

It is somewhat comical that companies that have adopted this model of the advertising mechanism invariably construct what they call “image advertising” or “knowledge-enhancing advertising” from time to time, but do not expect sales growth. But of course, that's exactly what you should expect such advertising to generate sales - after all, the purpose of advertising is precisely this.

Summing up what has been said, I will note that advertising works mainly due to memory access; it also happens to form memory structures and creates brand preference or purchase intent. Advertising supports and builds brand visibility through creative solutions. Brands don't have to worry if they have a compelling message; even when it exists, it still needs to be woven into the fabric of brand associations and cues, visibility, and lasting value.

Marketers need to understand what memory structures their brand has already built in the minds of consumers. They must use these structures and do whatever is necessary to ensure that the ads they create refer to them. Then you need to do research and determine what other memory structures might be useful for their brand (for example, factors that encourage purchases from the category that the brand belongs to), and then work on building these structures. For decades, leading brands have excelled at building proper memory structures. A great example is the same Coca-Cola. Many years ago in the United States, Coca-Cola was sold in pharmacies, and therefore it was associated with visiting these outlets teenagers on hot summer days.

Today, the drink is associated with many different memories: the beach and Coca-Cola; nightclubs and Coca-Cola; pizza and Coca-Cola; parties and Coca-Cola; a trip to a cafe and Coca-Cola (Australian advertisement for Coca-Cola - original long black); branded bottle, bright red color, delicately curved white ribbon, etc. These memories increase the likelihood that Coca-Cola will come to mind in any given situation; these memories make it easier for people to notice the drink in the store and absorb the brand’s ads.

How else can advertising work

As already mentioned, advertising works in two main ways: through persuasion (changes consumer minds) and through visibility (evokes and shapes memories). There are other mechanisms, but they are more subtle and often secondary to visibility and/or persuasion. these secondary mechanisms include bonding, status signals, and priming.

Create a connection

When a company spends money on advertising, it means they are financially sound and/or have quality products (this is especially important in the service industry). A striking example- promotion of corporate values. That is why companies go to great expense to attract celebrities in their advertising; so they sponsor major events, say the Olympic Games. Some consumers decide, perhaps subconsciously, that the advertiser is not so stupid as to spend a lot of money without being confident in their product and without planning to establish themselves in the market for a long time and in earnest. in addition, consumer experience suggests that highly promoted products and services are usually of good quality.

Economists support this expense, arguing that the amount spent on advertising is often more important in terms of its commercial impact than the advertising itself. This does not mean that advertising has no economic function or that those who see it are irrational. Rather, viewers respond to cues that are implied rather than explicitly stated in the advertisement.

Economist John Kay argues that most people are inherently skeptical about the veracity of advertising and that they automatically ignore advertising claims about product quality that cannot be objectively assessed. In this state of affairs, Kay argues (in a somewhat exaggerated way), the only thing that advertising can convey to consumers is the quality and quantity of the advertising itself.

Status Alerts

When we use certain brands, we show others, and even ourselves, what kind of people we are. Advertising provides the ability to send these kinds of signals. Only a few people drive Mercedes-Benz cars, but everyone knows that these are very expensive cars. This is what advertising says, and this means that people who have a Mercedes signal to others about their high prosperity by driving a car of this brand. But they would not have been able to send such signals if the general public did not know what Mercedes cars look like and how expensive they are.

However, marketers often overestimate the effect of status signals. Some product categories are not heavily loaded with symbolic meaning, and consumers think that having a certain brand will change the opinion of people they know about them. moreover, the symbolic nature of brands stems more from their use, observation, and word of mouth than from advertising.

The implication of this is not that the brand will benefit enormously from advertising that makes it look cool. It is much more reasonable to understand that brands with symbolic meaning and even very expensive luxury brands often need active promotional support. Luxury watch ads don't just appeal to billionaires, partly because most people aren't billionaires, and partly because most people who buy luxury watches aren't billionaires.

Priming

A well-known psychological phenomenon is that people tend to prefer objects and brands that they have seen more often. This is the "meeting" effect. as recent studies have shown, it can occur as a result of advertising contact, when consumers themselves are hardly aware that such contact has taken place. Research has also shown that recent encounters with associative cue stimuli can increase the likelihood of making a purchase. For example, students returning to campus after the Halloween celebration preferred orange-colored brands. Or when customers were shown numerous pictures of dogs, they were more likely to choose Puma among sports shoe brands (because people associate dogs with cats, that is, with a cougar). This extraordinary effect is poorly documented outside of experimental conditions, so it is not clear how strong it is in real world conditions. It is also not entirely clear how competitors' cues interact and whether it is possible that they cancel each other out. Probably the effect of exposure (priming) is just a visibility effect. This is further evidence that advertising is able to influence the level of sales without energetic appeals.

Effective Advertising

• Reach all buyers in your product category.
• Avoid long breaks in advertising.
• Get consumers to notice you.
• Create clear associations with the brand - the brand's distinctive assets advertise it indirectly; it is absolutely necessary to mention the brand name (verbally and / or visually); it is important to show what the product looks like and how it is used.
• Create memory structures that increase the likelihood that the consumer will remember the brand and notice it faster.
• If there is any really compelling information, please provide it, but on the condition that it does not interfere with the achievement of the above goals.

The lack of visible sales response to advertising has been recorded by the most astute marketers for decades. in addition, this phenomenon has been well documented in academic research on changing advertising weights (Hu et al. An analysis of real world TV advertising tests: a resent update; Lodish et al. How TV advertising works: a metaanalysis of 389 real world split cable TV advertising experiments), as well as advertising elasticity (Tellis G. Generalizations about advertising effectiveness in markets). These studies gave rise to the widespread belief that advertising has almost no effect on the level of sales - and this is a misunderstanding.

Likewise, sales figures don't crash overnight if ads stop, which is half the reason marketers find it so hard to insulate their budgets from trying to slash them.

Ads with a very powerful "novelty" effect are typical for categories where buyers show little interest in the product until they start active targeted searches, for example, mortgages, insurance, furniture, computers, cars. In these categories, customers usually do not notice most of the advertising until they are ready, but on the eve of the purchase they are many times more receptive. For this reason, advertising in these product categories shows an immediate effect. It could just as well be argued that ads in these categories have a weaker long-term effect (little effect on customers who are not ready to buy). However, even here, it occasionally sweeps away the barriers of indifference and influences those who are not yet ready to buy. You can't judge the effectiveness of advertising in terms of influencing sales based on how much they increased in a particular week - the effect extends into the distant future, when "processed" customers finally decide to purchase a product from this category. Such advertising can be especially effective in terms of increasing sales, but the impact on weekly numbers is no higher than average. This, in particular, applies to funny advertising that catches the attention of non-customers; for example, Apple's "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" commercials or HSBC Bank's "different perspectives" commercials.

Of course, other people are affected by competitors' ads and other factors, so Coca-Cola's ads, for all their power, may still not show an impact on shifts in total sales.

The effect of price incentives can be noticed simply because changes in consumers' propensity to buy are quite significant, because we spend a lot of money per client, while advertising per person spends very little, so its effect is expressed in a slight push of the consumer. under the elbow to buy the brand.

Of course, some of the memories created by advertising can last a very long time. The brightness will fade, but they themselves will not evaporate, they are always easy to refresh. You can't forget that the two golden arches symbolize McDonald's, Google is a search engine, etc.

Some authors, especially in the UK, believe that it is possible to put a semantic sign of equality between persuasion and the effectiveness of advertising in terms of the impact on the level of sales. This creates confusion and leads to the claim that only persuasive advertising can generate sales.

Branding excites and intimidates at the same time. The idea of ​​creating a new company, with a new identity, from scratch is dizzying, but at the same time, many small companies and startups are doomed to failure. You undauntedly continue your business, but subconsciously understand that one day your business may begin to fall apart. But I will reassure you: just because your company has begun to lose momentum or decline does not mean that you are doomed to failure. In fact, the business world is full of stories of leaders who led dying companies and put them back on the path to success. All it takes is a little insight, a willingness to adapt, and full dedication to your company.

Below are some examples of brands on how this can be done:

lego

LEGO has always been a top notch brand. But in the 1990s, the brand tried to reinvent itself for a new era by creating entirely new lines for special bricks. In theory, this was a good idea and companies needed to change, but unfortunately, new products did not resonate with children, and in the early 2000s, LEGO began to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. What could they do? The company decided to go back to basics, promote the original line of LEGO bricks by catering to the imagination of children, and even increase its presence in the media with video games and movies. Today, brand reach is greater than ever.

VW Beetle

The Volkswagen Beetle sold well in the 1970s, selling over 15 million models, but that popularity was short-lived. Only a few years later, the Beetle left the market and remained in oblivion for several decades. Only after the revival of "retro" fashion trends and subsequent nostalgia, Volkswagen decided to upgrade the model for a new audience. By combining the charm of the old model with new features, the company was able to revive the sales of the Beetle.

Starbucks

The caffeine chain brand has not always held such a strong position in the market. The company was founded in 1971 in Seattle as a local outlet for the sale of coffee beans. After years of modest sales and outreach, with no clear promise of capitalizing on long-term expansion, the rebranding and franchising campaign has brought coffee shops to cities across the country.

Apple

This story can be called the best brand comeback of all time. While Apple experienced success in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the rise of the Apple II and Apple III computers, creative differences Steve Jobs was forced to leave the company in the mid-1980s and the brand began to gradually fade into oblivion. That all changed with the return of Jobs in 1997, when he spearheaded a massive rebranding of the company that turned Apple into a minimalist and futuristic tech giant.

Findings:

1. If something doesn't work, change it. This should be obvious, but many entrepreneurs miss this point. There are no compromises here. Change is necessary for continued growth.
2. Differentiation is the key. Many companies leave as they are no longer different from other brands in the market. If you can make yourself stand out, with a new brand or new target audience you can inhale new life to your company.
3. Challenge the norm. Most of the above brands were able to get new life because they made unconventional decisions, or because they defied conventional logic. Don't be afraid to go against the norm when you're rebuilding your business.

Entrepreneurship is full of mistakes, challenges, and periods of hard work, but these brands have proven that going down doesn't mean going out. Bring your business to life with creativity, perseverance and dedication.

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Red Bull Energy Drink

When the drink was brought to the general market, its main competitors were Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Everyone had a similar concept: they toned and stimulated.

Then Dietrich Mateschitz took a risky step: artificially inflated the price by 2 times, compared to competitors, reduced the volume of containers, shaped like a battery, and began to place cans in stores not in the beverage department, but in any other.

Taxi Mike

A striking example of incredibly simple and effective marketing is the promotion of the Canadian taxi Mike. Instead of publishing brochures about himself, Mike prints real guides to cafes, bars and other places in the city. That is, all those entertainment places that Mike will help get to.

HBO television channel

HBO's marketing campaign ahead of Game of Thrones season 3 was seriously thought out, consistent, and massive. The main theme of the new season was the big shadow of the dragon, which caught people's eyes over and over again. First on the covers of magazines, then on the pages of newspapers, it was even projected onto buildings, creating a sense of the reality of what was happening. Thus, not thinking about the dragon and not waiting for the release of the new season was simply impossible.

Marlboro cigarettes

The whole point was that consumers pulled cigarettes out of soft packs without taking them out of their pocket, which means that others did not see the brand. Unacceptable disgrace!

Flip tops - that's what the current cigarette packs are called - had to be taken out, and the new one always attracts attention.

Manufacturer of furniture and household goods IKEA

Curved paths, along which you have to go around the entire store, were invented for a reason. Walking through them in this way, you see each product at least 3 times, and from different sides. Subconsciously, this increases your desire to buy a product, even if you did not need it initially.

Harley-Davidson motorcycles

The manufacturer of the most famous bikes in the world has been holding the 1st place in terms of the number of "branded" tattoos for decades. It all started with the fact that Harley announced impressive discounts on bikes for those who come to buy a motorcycle with a tattoo in the form of their logo.

Alka-Seltzer medicine

Pampers diapers

Procter & Gamble's lead chemist, Victor Mills, who helped his daughter take care of the children, had to repeatedly pull wet diapers from under his grandchildren, wash and dry them. Of course, he did not like the process, and he wanted to somehow make his life easier. Then the idea of ​​a disposable "diaper" came to mind. After several experiments with different materials, Mills developed a new product for P&G, which they began to produce under the Pampers trademark, which became a household name.

Chocolate bar Snickers

In Russia, the first chocolate bars Snickers appeared in 1992 as a snack that replaces a full meal. Former Soviet consumer long time could not get used to the fact that for lunch instead of soup you can eat a chocolate bar, and bought Snickers as a “sweet for tea”. After the BBDO Moscow agency took over the creative service of the brand, Snickers was already defined as a delicacy for teenagers who, for the most part, like sweets and do not like soup.

Starbucks coffee shop

Not so long ago, Seattle’s best, a coffee shop chain competing with Starbucks, appeared in the United States. She began to position herself as "not-Starbucks", doing everything in reverse: not this coffee, not this furniture, not this music, not this atmosphere, not this service. The coffee shop attracted those customers who did not like Starbucks for some reason.

And the Starbucks chain did an impossibly simple thing: it just bought a competitor that interfered with it. And this is a completely expected move. But after buying Starbucks, he did not close coffee shops. Rather, on the contrary, he became even stronger to do everything in it not like in Starbucks, intensifying the competition between these two brands even more.

As a result, people who liked Starbucks went to Starbucks and carried money to its cashier. And those who did not like this coffee shop went to Seattle's best - and also carried money to the cashier ... Starbucks. Thus, the company not only coped with the flow of part of its client audience to a competitor, but also captured an additional audience of Starbucks haters that it would never have received otherwise.

The most popular brands today were once unknown startups. They were able to achieve success with the help of a good idea and the right images. Consider advertising campaigns who have become known throughout the world for their high performance and influence on advertising business generally. These examples have already become classics, many of them are reflected in textbooks for advertisers and marketers.

Generation Pepsi

How to promote new company to the market if you have an incredibly strong competitor, and the products you produce are almost identical? It's simple: highlight your own and focus on it. This is exactly what Pepsi did. Losing in competition with, which was a more conservative and established company, Pepsi decided to promote their product exclusively as a youth drink. In 1964, under the slogan "Live brighter, you are in the Pepsi generation," beautiful, young and reckless heroes showed how those "who think young" look and have fun.

After lit up in the advertisement of the drink, such as Michael Jackson, Brittney Spears and others. It all started with those who were and remain the main consumer of artificial soda - teenagers. Advertising campaign The "Pepsi Generation" made it possible not only to make the brand one of the most expensive in the world, but also to turn the idea of ​​​​advertising upside down. For the first time, the focus was shifted from the benefits of a particular product to its accompanying values- beauty, fun, youth.

Ronald McDonald character

What clown knows 25 languages ​​of the world? What clown does half of the world's inhabitants know? Which clown has his own charity?

We are talking, of course, about the famous Ronald McDonald. Since the distant 1963, when people first saw this clown in Washington, Ronald McDonald has personified the most popular fast food in the world. To date, Ronald is the most recognizable clown, among all fictional characters, he ranks second after Santa Claus. It is Ronald McDonald who is responsible for all charitable activities of McDonald's, in 2003 he was awarded the position of "Head of Joy".

Cowboy Marlboro

In 1902, entrepreneur Philip Morris named his company after the street on which it was located - Marlboro. In the 1920s, these cigarettes were positioned exclusively as women's, and the image of a femme fatale holding a cigarette was used in advertising. This went on for a long time, until in the 40s it came out, telling about the real dangers of cigarettes. Then in the company Marlboro decided to add a filter to cigarettes and drastically change your positioning. as new advertising image a man was chosen.

Cowboy image was recognized as the most successful and since then has not left advertising campaignsMarlboro. This is an example of the fact that constancy and fidelity to the idea is sometimes better than change.

"Just do it!"

One of the most famous advertising slogans belongs Nike. It is the advertising campaign "Just do it!" made the Nike brand famous all over the world. In advertising, the emphasis was placed on the emotional component - determination and courage were actively sung. were thoroughly saturated with the philosophy of the winners, which was repeatedly confirmed by athletes who achieved victory in Nike shoes.

"The holiday is coming to us, the holiday is coming to us..."

I created my advertising image. The company's marketers succeeded in the impossible - to promote the invented image so deeply into the minds of consumers that it became part of the world culture. We are talking about Santa Claus from Coca-Cola. Santa Claus in a short red fur coat - an invention of advertisers Coca-Cola (Famous character previously wore a long brown fur coat).

As soon as Christmas time comes, adults and children are waiting for the red truck to bring them a holiday mood and a sense of happiness to the song.

"It's priceless. For everything else, there's a Master Card"

At a time when everything is bought and sold, important human values ​​remain, which are emphasized by ("priceless") for the Master Card brand.

The company, which is responsible for the materialization of the world, calls to appreciate everything that is most important, to make short moments of life unforgettable: to bring joy to parents, to see the smiles of loved ones, to look into the happy eyes of a child, and for everything else there is a Master Card.

The examples given show possible options for creating successful companies from scratch, using both classical and

History knows a lot of examples when seemingly crazy ideas turn consciousness and change the world. As a rule, at first they are not taken seriously and even meet aggression from others. Six hundred years ago we did not know any America. Two hundred years ago, people were afraid to be photographed, as the mystical apparatus allegedly took away the soul! And some hundred years ago, we did not even suspect that we would soon fly to the moon. There are examples of this in the history of marketing as well. We will talk about especially brilliant ideas in this article, because they forever changed our world.

How much?

More sex!

Yesterday

Minute of advertising

Competitors? No, haven't heard

Heroes need to be known

Focus failed ... or passed?

Give me two!