A “guide” to wasting money on advertising: How to spend 100 yuan like 1 yuan?

There is a famous saying in the advertising industry : "I know that half of the money spent on advertising is useless, but the problem is that I don't know which half." This saying was proposed by "marketing pioneer" John Wanamaker and is known as the "Goldbach Conjecture" in the advertising industry, also known as "Schrödinger's advertising fee."

Since entering the venture capital industry, I have been accustomed to thinking about business from the perspective of ROI (return on investment). When I look back at some past advertisements, I can’t help but want to see whether the purpose has been achieved and think about how to improve and maximize value.

This article will use some advertising works that have been observed before to talk to you about how advertising costs are wasted, and how to recover the losses and maximize the communication effect.

Type 1: Poor performance

In today's world where competition in the eyeball economy is fierce and audience attention is so scarce, some advertisements do everything they can to get you to take a closer look, while some advertisements simply exist as background images, looking like passers-by, and even dress themselves up beyond recognition for fear that you will see them clearly.

For example, the following figure:

Located in the frame of the residential community elevator, if this ad is there, people with obsessive compulsive disorder will have to move out of the community.

The elements such as title, body, and accompanying text are quite complete, but the layout is too poor, with no structure and no focus. If you can’t see the main information at first glance, it’s useless to have all the information.

Perhaps the client wanted some "sense of design", or the designer wanted to highlight his personal talent and deliberately show the so-called liveliness and internet sense, so he sorted the text on the left, and then both parties reached a consensus: smart, orderly in chaos. In fact, this is a thankless task. Interestingness can be expressed through themes, copywriting, and picture combinations, but doing so will only increase the cost of communication.

As a masochistic advertising practitioner who cannot bear not watching advertisements, I stayed in the elevator for half a minute, trying hard to see clearly what was written on it, but in the end I was dazzled. This is a classic case of form over substance.

Waste index: ★☆

Comment: How important it is to hire a Virgo designer.

Follow-up: Fortunately, within two weeks, the new version was replaced as shown below:

People with obsessive-compulsive disorder who moved out said they moved back

The logo and theme are prominent, the colors are bright, and the landing point is clearer. The improvement effect is self-evident. You can compare them and I won’t say more.

Type 2: Media Waste

The way information dissemination has an impact is to trigger psychological reactions in the audience.

How to make you react? It is to tease your five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, which correspond to the five ways of conveying information: pictures, sounds, smells, tastes and skin contact. The more combinations there are, the greater the impact of the information on people. Usually video (sound + text + dynamic pictures) is a form that we are most exposed to and has a greater impact.

It would undoubtedly be a serious waste to only display pictures and texts on video media. As shown below:

I'll just stay quiet, I'm afraid I'll be embarrassed if I disturb you

Why put such an expensive building video in an office building if the final result is nothing special? It's like spending 500 yuan to go to a seafood buffet, eating two baskets of pork and leek steamed dumplings and leaving. The things are not being fully utilized. I feel sorry for the brand owner for three seconds.

If you observe carefully, you will find that many video media such as TV, outdoor LED screens, and pre-play stickers on video websites also have similar situations: you look at a picture quietly for 15 seconds, and after watching it, you feel no emotion at all, or even ignore it.

In information communication, content is important, and the content carrier is also very important. Before launching, you may wish to create content that maximizes the dissemination effect based on the characteristics of the media.

Waste index: ★★

Comment: Using jpg to pretend to be GIF cannot add buff to the communication effect. You could have eaten beef, but in the end you can only eat tofu.

Type 3: The path is blocked

I have added a lot of entrepreneurs on WeChat, and one thing I find difficult to understand is that some people’s Moments are only visible for three days. Usually after adding a friend, he will briefly introduce what he does. When you want to check his circle of friends to learn more, you can't see anything. This spirit of not creating opportunities for yourself and blocking the road is truly courageous.

Looking back at the advertisements, I found that there are many similar phenomena. They talk about how good they are, but when they want to buy something, they find that they can’t. It’s like Wang Po setting up a watermelon stall to show off, but after having her fun, she closes the stall and hides the watermelons. For example, the following figure:

Compared to blueberries, girls are more pleasing to the eye

We know that advertising has two functions: 1. Promote awareness; 2. Promote sales .

For fast-moving consumer goods, due to the high frequency of consumption and relatively easy access to channels, both awareness and promotion are usually reflected in advertisements.

This picture does not tell you what platform the product is sold on, nor does it allow you to collect coupons and purchase in the store.

I was wondering why I saw a black spot on the box when I was a child. When I zoomed in, I found that it was actually a QR code for placing an order!

Is the designer a descendant of Leeuwenhoek? Want me to scan a QR code with a microscope?

Here we should emphasize that when doing graphic design, writing long copy, doing activities, and H5, we must ensure that the user experience logic is smooth:

See (What is this? It's quite new, let me take a look)

↓

Participate (spend a few minutes to look around and play)

↓

Understand (Search inside, so that's it)

↓

Like (interesting, Yinquesiting, xswl, 666)

↓

Action (order, download, forward)

The audience is lost through the funnel in the middle, and there are very few people who can follow this logic to the last step, so it is necessary to ensure smooth landing, such as placing QR codes, increasing the size, dynamic finger clicks, gif arrows, guided searches , etc. It is not excessive to put too much effort in this part:

If the final action link (which we call the landing point) is not in place, all previous efforts will be in vain.

Waste index: ★★★

Comment: It’s like some things, when it comes to the final sprint, they inexplicably wilt. You can understand that feeling of loss, right?

Type 4: Strategy deviation

The first three types are all at the presentation and execution levels, and the most they result in is material waste. However, if the strategy goes astray and the general direction is incorrect, the final work will be wrong no matter how correct it is.

It’s like I want to promote that my noodles are long and wide, but what I end up spreading is that my bowl is big and round. For example, the previous case of Kugou: people are stupid and have a lot of money! The person who came up with this bird idea for Kugou should be dragged out and shot for five minutes!

This campaign made the theme #就是就是多歌# look like a city-wide wanted poster. All the material presentation not only wasted investment, but also did not help much for the theme #酷狗音乐 就是多歌#. It was a typical strategic deviation.

The link explains it in detail, so I won’t repeat it here.

Waste index: ★★★★

Evaluation: If you hit someone else's target, even if every shot is a 10-ring, you will still get 0 points.

Type 5: Business deviation

If the advertising strategy has gone astray, it can still be adjusted. Just avoid it next time. It will not affect the main business and is not a big deal. However, if the entire business of an enterprise goes astray, then advertising fees will really be a bottomless pit. No matter how much is invested, it will be useless. Even the combined efforts of Ogilvy and Leo Burnett could not save the situation. This is a strategic mistake.

In the past, Alibaba’s social networking and Tencent’s e-commerce efforts have all ended in failure. There are many reasons for this, including the times, corporate genes, and social environment, which are difficult to explain in detail.

In today's era, it is a consensus for enterprises to develop their strengths, avoid weaknesses, give full play to their core competitiveness, and establish barriers . However, there are also mavericks, such as the following figure:

Afraid of getting inflamed, drink donkey glue blood-replenishing granules?

If your child does not do well in the English test, should he drink Huiren Shenbao?

Which excavator school is the best? Hengyuanxiang, sheep, sheep, sheep?

If you have a cold, fever and runny nose, can you drink Sprite to cool down?

This advertisement can be seen everywhere in Beijing airports, train stations, elevator frames, business office posters and leaflets, etc. I believe you have seen it too. Not to mention the ambiguous text and the pictures that looked like those in third-tier real estate advertisements, I forced myself to scan the QR code and download the APP with all my patience. I wanted to know what the app was really about and how banks were entering the rental market. Maybe it can curb the rise in rent and house prices.

After the installation, I was confused: in such a big city like Beijing, there are only 8 houses available, and they are all in Shunyi. Moreover, the APP is full of bugs, slow to load, and provides a very poor user experience, just like 12306. I didn't expect that after such extensive advertising, the final landing point would be so terrible.

In today's modern business environment, seeing such a product is just magical. Its existence is like a middle-aged newspaper seller walking into Sanlitun and shouting: The Gang of Four has been crushed! It's out of place and out of tune, but it really exists.

The product is so bad that it doesn't matter whether it is advertised by 4A or hot stores. It is completely hopeless. No matter how much money is invested in advertising, it will be a waste.

Waste index: ★★★★★

Comment: Having money really allows you to do obscene things.

Final words

In the process of information dissemination, it is inevitable that information distortion to varying degrees will occur due to factors such as noise and the audience's limited decoding ability. But putting aside objective factors, many advertisements are wasted due to their own insufficient production level; even some leading companies still make mistakes in subtle actions. He has his reasons for being powerful, but not all his decisions are correct; brand communication is sometimes just icing on the cake. For example, in the liquor industry, the core is channel capabilities, and means such as expression bottles are not enough to cause subversion. But no matter how important it is, if we are doing it, we should do it to the best of our ability . This is the professional embodiment of media workers and our mission.

Since the end of last year, there has been a capital winter and talk of a downward trend in the industry. Many people around me complain that it is difficult to find and do a job, and that they want to develop but have no opportunities.

What I'm saying is, what are the opportunities? It is to solve problems and create value. There are so many industry and social problems, why are there no opportunities? I think there are probably only two answers:

You ignore the problem or even avoid it; you can't solve any problem at all.

I hope you can face the problem and work on it instead of putting yourself in jail because of the second reason.

The above are my thoughts on some problematic advertisements. I hope they will be helpful to you. What other wasteful advertisements have you seen? Please leave a message and share them.

​

Author: Su Laoshi

Source: Su Laoshi (sulaoshi886)