Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Anytime I hear anybody say that advertising is dead I just shake my head. It isn’t dying, it’s evolving. Pamela N. Danziger captures this sentiment for me in her book ‘Let Them Eat Cake‘

Just because most advertising doesn’t work to generate sales doesn’t mean that luxury companies should necessarily stop advertising. Rather, they need to create ads that resonate and are relevant to the passions, desires, and fantasies of the consumer. The brand’s ads must tell a story that will be so involving that the consumer becomes part of the brand story…The key word is relevance…delivering meaning to the consumer’s life today and having an expansive vision in order to continue to deliver meaning to the consumer in the future as the consumer’s life changes.

I as a consumer make a ridiculous amount of purchases every year. When I enter a supermarket or convenience store, most of my purchasing decisions are made in 30 seconds. I don’t want to have direct conversations with the companies that make every product I buy. If I only spend thirty seconds making the purchasing decision then I certainly am not going to spend a hell of a lot longer talking to each individual company whose goods I am about to buy.

Quoting Jo Tyler, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and Penn State, Danziger gives an example of a brand she feels is creating advertising relevant to their target customer.

The brands are the story. When they talk about their brands, it is always in a larger context with lots of detail, be it a backdrop or situation…So when the director of marketing for women’s athletic shoes at Nike talks about the brand, it isn’t Nike hanging out there in isolation. It’s always against the backdrop of the story of the consumer who wears these shoes and what happens to her when she wears the brand. The story is how the brand affects who the customer is, how she defines herself, how other people think about her. The story may be about athleticism or about performance or about style…By adding deeper and deeper layers of content, or more story threads, the Nike brand is transformed into an expansive brand with more relevance to more people now and in the future by continually telling new stories in new ways.

It’s funny that she should use Nike as an example in light of a recent ad that the company produced in response to the Don Imus controversy in the United States. Don Imus, a shock jock on a US radio station, was fired for comments about a women’s basketball team including refering to players as ‘nappy headed hos.’ The controversial clip is below:

Nike, the team sponsor, published the ad underneath in response to Imus’ comments and it speak volumes about the company’s relevance to consumers and facing a controversial story head on.

We have moved past the traditional thirty second spot. People are starting to think about how to spend their advertising budgets more effectively. This doesn’t simply mean taking your TV spend and putting it all into Internet advertising. Instead companies are taking the time to examine how their customers are making their purchase decisions and engaging them at specific life moments in order to be relevant. As such the creative concepts are becoming more refined. If the advert doesn’t strike a chord with the target audience, then it doesn’t matter whether it’s a full page advert in a national newspaper or on a blog because no-one will pay attention to it.

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