Brand promotion: Brainwash advertising has no effect at all!

Every year there are always a number of brainwash advertisements (yes, I am talking about the 2018 World Cup advertisements from BOSS Direct, Platinum Travel Photography, Mafengwo and Zhihu) which dominate the screen and are unanimously condemned and criticized by everyone.

At this time, the creators of these brainwashing advertisements will appear on the stage and smile evilly:

"Go ahead and curse me. The more you curse, the happier I am. This proves that the advertisement is effective."

“Advertising is not about art or aesthetics, it’s about effectiveness.”

He seems to have transformed himself into a saint who sacrifices his own reputation and image for the commercial interests of his clients. He is heartbroken and shouts out loudly about the fact that the entire advertising industry is immersed in creative tastes but ignores client effects.

It's ridiculous.

Of course I agree that the ultimate goal of advertising is effectiveness, achieving market goals and product sales, but the biggest problem with brainwash advertising is not that it is garbage or brainless, but that it is ineffective.

So please stop misinterpreting it, okay? Stop talking about aesthetics and taste here, just face the problem - brainwashing ads have no effect at all!

01 Popularity does not equal effectiveness

This truth is so simple - just because I know you doesn't mean I will buy you.

But there are always people who pretend to be deaf and dumb. “Controversial ads are a good thing. If someone complains about you or scolds you, it proves that you have left a deep impression on them, that they remember it, and that the ad is effective.”

Yeah?

So let’s talk about this principle in detail.

In the traditional era, the consumer behavior model is AIDMA: attention - interest - desire - memory - action (purchase)

A consumer notices an advertisement while watching TV, and then becomes interested in the product in the advertisement, which further turns into a desire to buy. The consumer then remembers the brand, and thinks of it when he goes to the supermarket a few days later, so he buys it.

From this we can see that the biggest problem with marketing in the traditional era is that the two behaviors of consumers watching advertisements and purchasing products are disconnected and cannot be synchronized, so it is important to remember this.

Therefore, advertising in the traditional era places great emphasis on repetition. Brand awareness is very important. If you can’t remember it, you won’t think of it when you make a purchase, and the advertising will be useless.

In the Internet age, consumer behavior patterns have become AISAS: attention - interest - search - action - sharing.

There are two changes:

• First, if consumers become interested in a product after watching an advertisement, they can immediately search for and learn about the product and then place an order to purchase it. With online media and e-commerce platforms, the two behaviors of viewing advertisements and purchasing can be synchronized. This means that the importance of remembering decreases, and what is most important is to make consumers have an immediate buying impulse.
• Second, after purchasing and using the product, users can comment and share on social media, and this user word-of-mouth has a great influence on subsequent buyers. In the traditional era, consumers certainly had no channels or platforms to share, and could only tell a limited number of people around them verbally.

In the era of mobile Internet, the consumer behavior model has become SIPS: resonance - confirmation - participation - sharing and diffusion

The biggest characteristics of this era are the explosion of information and products. Accordingly, consumer attention is unprecedentedly scarce.

It is useless to just shout loudly to try to attract consumers' attention. Only when consumers resonate with and identify with you and confirm that you are in line with his brand, will they be willing to participate and play with you and share you with more people.

Through this change in consumer behavior patterns, we can see that it is useless to just make consumers remember the advertisement. The key is to make consumers have an immediate impulse, search and place an order immediately; at the same time, make consumers resonate and identify, and be willing to participate and spread (involve more people).

The latter two are obviously impossible for brainwashing advertisements to achieve, so let’s use data to refute them.

This is Zhihu's overall search index. It can be seen that since Zhihu came out at the end of 2010, the overall trend has been rising.

Let’s take a look at the period from the opening of the World Cup on June 14, 2018 to December 31, 2018.

Hey, why does it feel like I'm going downhill?

Master Ye, the creator of Zhihu's World Cup advertisement, publicly declared in his speech at the China Advertising and Brand Conference in April 2019: "Zhihu ranks first on Apple's social app list, rising from 119th on the overall list to 11th."

(Source: China Advertising Magazine WeChat Official Account "Ye Maozhong: Simple and crude, a fatal move")

Bullshit.

Look at the data:

On June 14, 2018, Zhihu ranked 116th on the AppStore overall list, which is correct.

However, Zhihu only ranked 9th in the overall list on June 27, and then fell rapidly. By July 14, before the World Cup ended, Zhihu had fallen back to 88th in the overall list and remained at 7th in the social list.

To see the effect, do we only look at the day with the best effect?

Let’s take a look at BOSS Direct Hire, which is highly praised by Red Productions.

So miserable!

After BOSS Zhipin launched its World Cup advertisement, the number of downloads has been declining.

Where is the promised effect?

I really should talk to my boss.

In terms of screen-swiping, topicality, and popularity, the investment made by BOSS Direct and Zhihu during the 2018 World Cup was undoubtedly good. But in terms of more direct performance indicators such as search volume and download volume, Zhihu and BOSS Zhipin are completely defeated.

Times have changed, and consumers have changed too. However, some people still cling to the same brainwashing advertising routines that have remained unchanged for 20 to 30 years, believing that advertising is all about brainwashing, repetition, and simplicity and crudeness, while ignoring the audience's reaction, perception, likes and dislikes of the advertisements, and still believe that they are effective.

All I can say is, it's so sad.

In fact, as early as the 1960s, advertising guru Leo Burnett said: "If you want to be different, you can go to work in the morning with a sock in your mouth."

If someone shows up at the office with a sock in their mouth, you do remember that person. But what you remember is "damn idiot", then no matter how impressed you are, would you be willing to associate with this person, trust this person, and be good friends with this person? You'll just stay away, right?

Brainwashing advertisements only aim to make users remember, but do not pay attention to what users actually remember. Will such advertisements be effective?

Hengyuanxiang’s twelve zodiac advertisement can be called the ancestor of brainwash advertising. So, I would like to ask everyone who is reading this article, how many pieces of clothing have you bought from Hengyuanxiang over the years?

02 The “effectiveness” of brainwashing advertising is based on huge advertising fees, and the return on investment is too low

If you say that it is not easy to remember the advertisements of BOSS Direct and Mafengwo, after all, there are many advertisements that you have not even remembered.

So to talk about the communication effect of advertising, we need to focus on two factors:

1. The ad content itself (e.g. a 15-second ad or a graphic design)
2. Media fees spent on promoting advertising content.

You don’t remember most of the advertisements because the money is not in place and the media budget is insufficient.

Why were these three advertisements so popular during last year’s World Cup? CCTV’s World Cup advertising package costs 165 million per person. After spending 165 million on advertising in just one month, how could they not make any impact? Are you a pig?

Besides, this is just the media fee. We haven’t counted the spokespersons for the two advertisements on Zhihu and Mafengwo, and the traffic and topic popularity of Liu Haoran and Huang Xuan themselves.

Why is it that “there are no middlemen to make a profit from the price difference, and used car sales are far ahead” is a household name? Is the advertising fee of 1 billion yuan a year a joke? Guazi Used Car’s annual revenue is not as high as its advertising fees.

My friends, don't joke with the RMB.

For an advertising campaign, awareness is the most basic and least technical indicator. Because there are a lot of indicators such as ratings, reach, gross ratings, etc., how much money to invest, how much exposure to get, and how many people to cover can be calculated at the beginning.

Brainwashing advertising relies solely on advertising to achieve its effects, and the effects are completely based on sky-high advertising fees. If the effects of brainwashing advertising are added to the denominator of the huge media budget, then its return on investment must be the lowest. Because it takes several times of money to make people remember it, and no consumer is willing to actively recommend and share the brand in the brainwash advertisement with their relatives and friends.

When you keep talking about the results, why don't you also tell us how much money you spent on advertising, how many customers you got, and what the average cost per customer was.

It is just rogue to say that brainwashing advertisements are effective without mentioning the advertising fees.

This is ignoring the company's advertising investment and taking all the credit for the advertising results. It is really shameless.

Master Ye threw out a picture during his speech, saying that Mafengwo's mobile index during the World Cup was far ahead of Ctrip and Fliggy.

When I saw this picture, I laughed unkindly.

Master Ye is really too cunning.

Use "Mafengwo" to compare "Feizhu Travel" and "Ctrip Travel". I would like to ask, since "Mafengwo" does not have the suffix "travel", why do you add the word "travel" to Feizhu and Ctrip?

(Friends, when you search for Ctrip, do you enter "Ctrip" or "Ctrip Travel"?)

We used Mafengwo to compare Fliggy and Ctrip, and they were slapped in the face.

Mafengwo spent nearly 200 million yuan, but it seems that there is not much difference between it and Fliggy, which did not invest in World Cup advertising. So where is the effect?

Let’s take a look at the download data of Mafengwo Travel APP.

Oh my god, that’s so miserable!

It has been declining since the start of the World Cup on June 14, 2018. What happened to the promised 316% growth?

At this time, Master Tang Seng would ask: Why? Why? Why?

03 Brainwashing ads gain short-term exposure but cause long-term damage

Brainwashing advertisements gained exposure, created topics and controversies by dominating the screen for a short period of time, and their popularity was indeed increased in a short period of time. However, it hurts user experience and emotions and leads to a lot of negative impact, which is very unfavorable for the long-term operation of the brand.

Advertising godfather Ogilvy once said: Every advertisement should be a long-term investment in brand image. But brainwashing advertising is completely harmful to brand building, let alone investment.

It's like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs and draining the pond to catch all the fish.

Of course, the companies that create these brainwash ads don’t care. They just take the money and leave, and the brand owners have to pay for the long-term consequences.

And let’s just talk about “remembering”. I agree with Tony Robbins’ point of view: people cannot remember information without emotion.

Even if it is a huge hot topic, people will forget about it after talking about it for two days and turn to pursue other hot topics. If a brand fails to establish a lasting emotional connection with consumers, it will quickly be forgotten.

(Do you remember which brand made the “Hahahahahaha” brainwashing advertisement that was all over the screen not long ago? Anyway, I thought about it for a long time but couldn’t remember it)

Finally, let’s take a look at the search index of Platinum Travel Photography in the past six months.

Did you see it?

As soon as the advertisement stops, it immediately returns to its original state.

What does this indicate? Brainwash advertising will not add any value to the brand. Think about the situation in which the entire 2019 Spring Festival was dominated by Platinum Travel Photography advertisements. After the advertising ended, the effect was exactly the same as before the advertising.

After the Spring Festival this year, AdChina selected the top ten Spring Festival marketing cases of 2019.

I picked a brand to compare with Platinum Travel Photography. I won’t pick top brands such as Pepsi, OPPO, Honor of Kings, and Land Rover. I chose Oppein.

During the Spring Festival, OPPEIN released a 12-minute heartwarming short film. According to the brainwashing advertising faction, this is too indirect, and it makes people doubt whether anyone is willing to watch such a long film.

This is a comparison of the WeChat indexes of OPPEIN and BOJIE Travel Photography in the past 90 days (1.18-4.17, this year’s Spring Festival is February 5).

It can be seen that after the wave of advertising during the Spring Festival, the communication effect of OPPEIN continued to increase. And with the end of the Spring Festival campaign for Platinum Travel Photography, everything is over.

According to the classic brand asset theory, brand is the most important asset of an enterprise. The components of brand assets include brand awareness, brand recognition, brand associations, and brand loyalty.

Good advertising should have a continuous cumulative effect on the brand, while brainwashing advertising only focuses on increasing brand awareness in the short term. In the long run, it greatly harms brand awareness and brand associations, and therefore it is impossible to gain any loyal consumers.

So, stop talking about irrelevant things and talking about whether advertisements should be creative, tasteful, artistic and aesthetic.

The ultimate goal of advertising is to be effective. The fundamental problem with brainwash advertising is not that it is rubbish, but that it is ineffective!

Author: Empty-handed

Source: Empty-handed