Now, what is it exactly that we’re trying to sell here?

Whilst idly leafling through a certain publication at lunchtime [Management Today, since you asked], I realised that I had subconsciously skipped every single ad in my quest to find some editorial content of interest.

In short, I was consuming the medium of print like a normal human being.

Nothing particularly remarkable about that. And nothing particularly remarkable about the fact that not a single piece of advertising had caught my eye.

After all, we’ve banged on enough on this blog about how much vacuous wallpaper stuff there is around these days, so it’s hardly surprising that every execution went unnoticed, despite me working on the front line of the business and all that jazz.

Anyway, I thought I’d go back through the issue to see if any of the ads had redeeming features.

Nope, not really.

You could tell that whoever was involved had clearly put a lot of time, effort and money into making these ads. They were for big corporations with big budgets, not tinpot outfits with tuppence ha’penny to spend.

The ads weren’t exactly bereft of an idea or bereft of craft. They just weren’t very good.

I think part of the reason for that [and it might be just my own personal view of what makes for great advertising here] is that very few of the ads were actually focused on selling anything tangible, like a specific product.

They were more concerned with conveying some sense of the kind of brand that they wanted you to think that they were. A spirit, an attitude, a feeling, a way of life, for you the punter to buy into hook line and sinker.

Now, that’s all well and good. Nothing wrong with that you may say.

However, in the medium of print it’s a bloody difficult thing to capture and express something that is capable of building a real emotional connection with an audience.

So many companies these days seem intent on using advertising to convey a brand positioning rather than flog a product. That’s misplaced energy in our view as it’s an arse about face way of creating enduring relationships with customers.

We’re 100% with the grumpy sage Bob Hoffmanwhen he says;

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

The huge backward step of the new Apple campaign is an ‘Exhibit A’ case for the prosecution of putting brand over product. Style over substance.

I’m a big Apple fan and that campaign actually succeeds in making me feel less, not more, positive about them as a company. 

Fuck knows how it makes people feel who don’t currently have any Apple product. Confused? Ambivalent? Satisfied that they haven’t made such a smug choice?

I bet the one thing it doesn’t make them feel is any desire to go out and buy an Apple product.

I could cite plenty of other similar serial offenders on TV for the examples are legion in many an ad break. However, I’d rather not as even the act of recalling them is profoundly depressing and I'd like to finish this post.

Now, clearly there’s no right or wrong approach. We’ve said as much here.

But I can’t help feeling that there’s a lot of confused clients and agencies out there who have lost their way and ended up working back from communicating a brand purpose rather than starting with the question;

Now, what is it exactly that we’re trying to sell here?

You can often see the thought process on the page as these brand-y bollocks ads can’t avoid becoming anything but an expression of a meaningless, undifferentiating and clichéd corporate chest-beating straplines.

Going back to my one man print survey, here’s a few examples of some straplines I came across.

Go Further

Simply Clever

Brilliant For Business

Inspire The Next

Let’s Build A Smarter Planet

Amazing In Motion

Make It Matter

You what? The ads weren't for bleedin' NASA or anything.

I’d wager that only an idiot savant ad geek would be able to namecheck all the brands behind this cringeworthy puffery.

I’d also wager that they cut no ice with people in the real world and would be barely remembered at best or even attributed to the right brand.

The insular and self-obsessed worlds that many corporations operate in fail to recognise that most of these real world people don’t really give that much of shit about them in the first place.

Quite often in this business, it’s our job to do something interesting and make these people give that shit.

Starting from a standpoint of trying to communicate a brand positioning first usually means that this is actually less likely to happen.

It’s almost as if agencies have forgotten what the point of advertising is.

Which brings me back again to this key question.

Now, what is it exactly that we’re trying to sell here?