Is it a general trend that brand advertisements are getting smaller and lower-end?

As various year-end bonus information launches the ultimate attack on us for the year, more and more people come to their senses and realize that 2020, shrouded in the shadow of the epidemic, was not a year of decline for all industries, and some people made more money than ever before. For example, in Ouyang's (pseudonym) advertising studio, employees' year-end bonuses have more than doubled compared with previous years.

It is a pleasure to make money, but the successive failures of his peers also make Ouyang, who has always put entertainment first and is often "politically incorrect", a little scared. Financial products and lending software advocate pre-consumption, triggering complaints from the entire network; Durex and Okamoto’s copywriting failed and they were collectively boycotted; Cotton Era was suspected of insulting women and its reputation plummeted; online education became a hot topic due to false advertising and was criticized by official media... In short, weird advertisements have been on many people’s blacklists in the past year.

Ouyang analyzed the failed cases and found that almost all the advertisements he had planned were in the minefield of public opinion. However, it is these awkward advertisements that have been criticized that have met the KPIs of the sponsors with their high ROI (return on investment), and have supported their teams and a large number of marketing companies.

“You may think those loan ads are stupid, but sponsors and users like them, so the effect is good. It is controversial that ads have become low-brow, but it is also good business.” Ouyang wanted to make it clear to Mr. Hard Candy.

“This is creative! ”

When the “Small Theater Self-Defense Technique” was first moved from Douyin to Weibo, Quanmianshidai had not yet realized how serious the matter was. In response to netizens’ questions, the official Weibo account of All Cotton Times responded: The video is an advertising idea, only to highlight the cleaning function of the product.

The young and beautiful girl was followed by the male protagonist. She hurriedly took out a makeup remover towel to wipe her face, and "transformed" into a rough man to scare away the stalker. Full of prejudice and malice, what kind of advertising creativity is this? As soon as the IQ-lowering remarks came out, the entire Internet was condemning Quanmianshijie for its vulgar aesthetics and even worse values.

Ouyang doesn't think so. Of course, he also agreed that using the tail line as a meme has no bottom line, and it is not unfair for the brand to be criticized. But in information flow advertising, awkward reversals are a common creative idea. These controversial advertisements may even be used as learning cases by peers.

"The value of traditional advertising lies in defining the brand, and the copywriting and visuals emphasize artistry and professionalism. But the value of information flow lies in precise conversion, which requires content that has a sense of the Internet and is hot to quickly attract users' attention." Ouyang analyzed that the advertising creativity of Quanmianshidai comes from the "evil magic of makeup", "How can I refuse someone who pursues me? Remove makeup on the spot", "How does it feel to watch your girlfriend remove makeup?" and other silly and popular memes.

In fact, many beauty bloggers also deliberately emphasize the contrast between before and after makeup in their videos to create a sense of impact and attract audiences. However, self-deprecating humor can only be effective in a certain context and with the consensus of both parties. When self-mockery turns into mockery of others, it becomes an offense.

Ouyang has also made an advertisement for makeup remover products. The "creativity" is basically the same as that of Quanmianshidai, but it takes a positive energy approach: Aquaman's boyfriend cheats, and the heroine brings her best friend to fight the mistress. A bottle of makeup remover was poured over, and the beautiful woman turned into a beautiful flower in an instant, and the man regretted it deeply.

The micro-business clients are not famous and the advertising channels are secretive enough. Not only was Ouyang's advertising not condemned by public opinion, but during the period of advertising, the average daily transaction volume of related brands also surged by more than 2,000 orders, and a rough estimate of the profit was no less than one million. With this sales data, it’s no wonder that Quanmianshijie is getting anxious.

Fast-moving consumer goods are secondary. Since focusing on information flow advertising, nearly 70% of Ouyang Studio’s clients come from the financial field. Compared with the failure of Quanmianshidai, the successive incidents of 360 IOU and JD Finance made Ouyang even more uneasy. "The sponsors who wanted to grab the Spring Festival traffic have run away, and they have to wait until at least the next quarter to make any investment," he said regretfully.

As expected. Almost all loan advertisements on the market share a "hot idea". Now, with the painful lesson before their eyes, no one dares to take the risk anymore.

The so-called creativity is actually the routine of cool novels: the simple protagonist is discriminated against by beautiful girls, nouveau riche, and urban elites because of his poor family background. With the enthusiastic help of "righteous passers-by", he comes into contact with financial products, borrows money to cash out, and starts a happy life from then on. The brand has changed, but the plot can still be copied, except that the protagonists have been replaced from migrant workers to nannies, sanitation workers, and couriers.

The advertisement is crude and idiotic, but each point about the struggle of the lower classes, the counterattack of the grassroots, and the punishment of evil and promotion of good can touch the emotional points of middle-aged users. With hundreds of thousands or even millions of views, it’s hard not to be impressed. Ouyang Studio even collects these cases specifically, discusses them in brainstorming sessions and topic selection meetings, and extracts materials that can be repeatedly used. When recruiting screenwriters, he specifically wrote in the job requirements: Those who are good at secondary creation will be given priority.

In this line of work, integration of ideas is a necessary skill. According to Ouyang, information flow advertising has the characteristics of low unit price, fast update and high demand, and has extremely high requirements for content production speed. The company and its clients sign contracts for dozens of videos, which are released in installments and on different platforms, and they get rich by selling them in large quantities.

Therefore, screenwriters must work quickly, and it is not surprising to have five or six lines per day. In order to reduce the cost of trial and error and ensure the effectiveness of dissemination, copying popular products and plagiarizing each other has become the norm in the industry. The audiences for advertisements in finance, online money-making games, insurance, etc. overlap, and their aesthetic tastes are consistent and stable, further reducing the necessity of originality.

"It's okay to make drastic innovations, but it's really unnecessary," Ouyang repeatedly emphasized.

Looking for female screenwriters

But the alarm bell has been sounded and political correctness cannot be ignored. Ouyang has not yet figured out how to shoot an information flow advertisement that is popular, effective, and has "positive values."

Ouyang started out as a wedding photographer, and by accident ended up working for an internet celebrity agency, where he was responsible for shooting short videos. In 2018, he resigned and started a media company with Lao Xiao (pseudonym). It has dabbled in short videos, live broadcasts, and short dramas, but the development has not been as good as expected. It wasn’t until I tried the information flow advertising business that my life became more and more comfortable.

The studio is relatively small, with less than twenty employees, and the gender ratio is seriously unbalanced. Except for the two actresses, the photographer, screenwriter, editor and producer are all rough men. When talking about the team, the word Ouyang used most often was "amateur". Most of the older employees are latecomers and have no professional background in advertising, so they rely entirely on practical experience.

Take Lao Xiao for example. He wandered with his parents since he was young, moved around and finally grew up in Guangdong. He is a typical grassroots urban immigrant. He was addicted to online games in high school, so he dropped out of school and went to Hangzhou, where he worked as a bricklayer, waiter, network administrator, and real estate agent...

Around 2015, Lao Xiao found a job in SEO optimization, helping clients optimize their online search rankings and the number of included articles. During this period, he mainly worked as a water army for the live broadcast platform, distributing the information of "Laoties shouting to get out of poverty" everywhere. Under the temptation of low threshold and high income, Lao Xiao himself rushed into the live broadcast room singing "I Drink Alone and Get Drunk".

Unfortunately, with the ban on rap, Lao Xiao, who has limited talents, had to change his track again and started shooting short videos with earthy plots. His previous working life was not wasted, as it now became an important material for his creation. He only films stories about little people, incorporates the discrimination and injustice he encounters into his videos, infinitely expands the depression and anxiety, and then releases them through the protagonist's counterattack.

Lao Xiao's "light of righteousness" warms the world of his friends and social people, and he has gained nearly 1.5 million fans. Lao Xiao simply strung the videos together and made them into two short dramas. Narrative routines such as grassroots counterattack, punishing evil and promoting good have been used to this day.

Compared with professional screenwriters, amateur Lao Xiao is more likely to adapt to the creation of information flow advertisements. To him, copywriting, storyboards, and editing are all unimportant. What matters is to first explain the customer's needs in an easy-to-understand way and then make it according to the user's taste.

In fact, "amateurism" is a common characteristic of information flow advertising production teams. Judging from the recruitment information, the entry threshold for screenwriters in this industry is low, and most of them are not professionally trained. Most of them are from games, online literature, and short videos.

"Serious screenwriters can't let go of their status and always want to promote humanistic care and artistic value. Even if they are so pretentious, it's useless if the sponsors are not satisfied and the users don't buy in." Ouyang spread his hands and added, "Besides, they have never experienced the rough life and can't write what Brother Wang in the village and Uncle Li in the town like."

Even so, Ouyang still hopes to recruit two professional screenwriters as soon as possible this year, preferably professional female screenwriters.

Recently, he talked about a series of advertising failures in a topic selection meeting. He originally wanted everyone to analyze them and try to avoid risks. Unexpectedly, what I heard most was not employees’ reflections, but complaints about being “too sensitive” and “overreacting”.

In the studio, many employees are both content producers and consumers of such content. They love to watch awkward videos on a daily basis, and it is difficult for them to realize that they are politically incorrect or have non-mainstream aesthetics. Especially in the absence of female screenwriters, Lao Xiao always creates from a single male perspective, which makes it easy for them to offend netizens due to stereotypes and encounter a public relations crisis like the Cotton Times.

"Let's try it first. It's too difficult to make a choice. After all, traffic is the most important thing for us." Ouyang sighed.

Who is watching the wild ads?

When JD Finance was criticized and became a hot topic, I still found it unbelievable. We know this product. It has contracted the Beijing subway passage and was endorsed by Xu Zheng and financial tycoons. It seems normal. Why are there still two faces? Online advertising is so low!

After some investigation, I found out that JD Finance had already placed a large number of information flow advertisements on various channels. It’s just that these contents were once very far away from us, and were only accidentally brought into the public eye, sparking heated discussions among netizens. Information flow ads are special products designed for target users. Those who might criticize these ads have long been filtered out as invalid traffic.

Ouyang told Yingtangjun that the target audience of loan advertisements is basically the same, mainly third- and fourth-tier users with low salaries and lack of family financial support, that is, the sinking market.

Both content and channels act as filters for these ads. The down-to-earth and awkward plot fundamentally screens out users who are picky and highly vigilant, and accurately caters to the psychological and aesthetic needs of potential users such as grassroots youth and stressed middle-aged people.

"If you can't put yourself in the shoes of the poor, farmers, and security guards, you won't be able to understand the selling points of these advertisements. The popular science message of 'don't eat breakfast on an empty stomach' is so outrageous, but our parents still want to watch it and forward it," said Ouyang.

It doesn’t matter whether the plot is logical or not, as long as it is output over a long period of time and repeatedly, it will leave a deep impression on users. Therefore, most financial brands choose to place information flow advertisements in batches, aiming for a brainwashing effect. The plot of the poor's counterattack provides an "imaginative solution" to the survival dilemma. There are always people who think of the lines "instant deposit", "30 days of interest-free", "your credit limit has been increased" when they are short of money, and may download a loan app for this reason.

In order to avoid increasing costs due to invalid user clicks or even causing social controversy, brands will compare and optimize channels when placing information flow ads. At present, short video express version, small games, and second-category e-commerce are their core channels.

Ad placement in a small game

These channels use the points system and money-making tasks to gather relatively scattered netizens in the sinking market. Their mainstream users and the audience of information flow advertisements overlap perfectly, which is conducive to the penetration and conversion of products such as lending software, insurance products, and online money-making games.

Ouyang firmly believes that the general trend is that advertisements will become smaller and lower in quality. In the past, they mostly received small customers, but last year they actually reached cooperation with well-known recruitment software and used car platforms. Nowadays, market budgets are generally reduced, and few brands or companies will rashly spend millions or tens of millions to bet on a marketing miracle. Low-cost, high-conversion information flow advertising is bound to be very attractive.

In fact, everyone is experiencing change. Nowadays, brands don’t have to shoot blockbuster commercials or compete for high-priced advertisements in variety shows, movies and TV dramas to announce celebrity endorsements. They only need to shoot a few short films, put a preview on the opening screen of major social products, and then let celebrities post on Weibo to call on fans to boost sales, and they can quickly complete the harvest. By the way, the products endorsed by celebrities are only disposable seasonally.

We can't understand why anyone would buy these weird and awkward ads. In fact, people are also very curious, how can brand advertisements unlock behind-the-scenes footage? The leeks are actually beside me, and the leeks are actually me.

Author: Entertainment Hard Candy

Source: Entertainment Hard Candy