Why don’t brands tell stories in their advertisements nowadays?

From the perspective of viewing experience, the advertisements that the public likes must be those that tell stories. This type of plot-based advertisement is commonly known as "heart-touching". Whether it makes you cry or laugh, it is simply moving you. The outside world's perception of advertising creativity is closely related to advertisers' storytelling skills.

According to the best-selling book " Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind " published two years ago, human cohesion and development all rely on stories, but we have to admit that storytelling advertisements are gradually disappearing, and the so-called "heartfelt" advertisements in recent years are actually just standard products. Overall, advertisers’ storytelling skills may be seriously deteriorating.

A good story that disappeared

Think back first, how many heartfelt commercials can you think of that have moved you?

Not to mention advertisements from foreign countries and Hong Kong and Taiwan (we’ll talk about these regions next time), in mainland China, you may not find too many advertising cases that will impress you. In the past two years, perhaps you can barely think of China Merchants Bank’s “Tomato Scrambled Eggs”; earlier, perhaps you can think of Dove and SK-II’s female-themed commercials… Well, have you noticed that we talk about “heartfelt” every day, but we don’t remember any “heartfelt” works.

Going back further in time, it seems easier to think of some "heartfelt" advertisements, such as CCTV's series of public service advertisements, from "Father Hides Dumplings" to "Mom Washing Feet", and to the earlier "Sanyuan Milk" directed by Jiang Wen. They are all able to resonate with people through excellent storytelling techniques.

Over the past few decades, the number of memorable story-telling advertisements in the mainland seems to be decreasing. It is undeniable that the media environment has undergone tremendous changes during this period, from a media monopoly environment to a media fragmentation environment, but the problem that must also be faced is that advertisers' storytelling ability is not as good as before.

Why are ads no longer as good at telling stories as they once were? If we look at the marketing information that is flooding our friend circles now, on the one hand, there are H5s of interactive games , and on the other hand, there are various fission-style posters, but there are very few "heartfelt" marketing stories. Compared with previous traditional advertising forms (TVC, newspaper advertisements, etc.), today's social communication information does not emphasize plot-based content. That is, the ability to tell stories has become less important in promotion .

On the other hand, the story-telling content that floods the WeChat Moments mostly exists in the form of self-media pictures and texts, which is contrary to the idea of ​​large-scale repeated delivery of advertising information across platforms.

30s ads have become a rare species

People's attention distraction is caused by two changes: one is the distraction of the media channels themselves, and the other is information overload. In short, the fragmented environment has made 30-second video ads a rare animal.

In this age where attention is easily interrupted, it is actually difficult for us to focus on a piece of information for 30 seconds, let alone an advertisement. In fact, whether in video clips or on TV, we rarely see 30-second (or longer) ads. More common are 15-second, 10-second or even shorter ads, and it is almost impossible to tell a story in such a short time.

The shortening of users’ attention span and the shortening of advertisement duration are physical limitations to the disappearance of “heartfelt” advertisements.

So how can advertising convey brand value in a very short time? What it actually relies on is the massive repetition of simple information. I have said in previous articles that the first principle of brand communication is repetition.

Extreme examples include the controversial advertisements of BOSS Direct, Mafengwo , and Zhihu during the World Cup . They highly refined the brand value and then achieved a "brainwashing" effect by repeating it extensively in commercials. Although crude, it was extremely effective. The repetition of brand value points is not just advertising slogans, but also visual elements, such as large-scale coverage of the VI main color. Nowadays, the main colors of most brands are very bright and easy to identify. Everything is for communication efficiency.

In order to stand out from the many short and fast messages that users receive every day, simple and direct repetition has become the main idea of ​​advertising production today, and storytelling ads have gradually declined. Advertising films have gone from drama to semiotics.

WeChat does not welcome long videos

This is not to say that WeChat does not welcome story-telling content, but that "heartfelt" advertising films are actually difficult to spread in the WeChat ecosystem .

McLuhan (Understanding Media) once said: "The medium is the message", and Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death) added: "The medium is the metaphor." The general idea is that the form of the media will have a huge impact on the content in the media.

For example, the era of oral communication concentrated knowledge in the form of language. Due to the immediacy of oral communication, people were unable to think deeply when receiving knowledge and information, so the knowledge disseminated was relatively shallow and superficial. The invention of writing and printing made the dissemination of knowledge and information more suitable for thinking, so mankind entered an era of rationality, and the dissemination of profound knowledge mostly relied on books and text. The invention of television made the dissemination of information fall into an entertainment era, and television media was more suitable for the dissemination of performative and entertaining content, so the content broadcast on television had a serious entertainment tendency.

We can apply this idea to the current WeChat ecosystem. As mentioned in other articles before, WeChat public account graphic and text messages are designed with a magazine design concept. Therefore, it will be very awkward for us to watch videos in the public account and there will be many problems in the experience. It is precisely because of the magazine-like concept of WeChat official accounts that the (short) video section in the WeChat ecosystem has not made any progress.

WeChat pictures and texts/friend circles are the most important media channels for advertising communication today, but under the WeChat picture culture concept, video advertising is not easy to spread. There are two main ways we are exposed to video ads (video pre-roll and TV), but both lack a social sharing environment.

"Going too hard" will still make people tired

As mentioned before, the first element of brand communication is information repetition. We all know the human memory curve, and the importance of information repetition to memory is unquestionable, but drama-based advertising cannot make information repetition more pleasant.

Not to mention that story-telling ads are too long and have overly complex and scattered theme elements, no matter how attractive they are, users will lose the sense of novelty after watching them once, and will have little motivation to watch them again. Just like watching a movie , no matter how good the quality is, few people will go to watch it a second or third time.

I have the impression that a few years ago, Nongfu Spring made a bold attempt at video stickers, and released some commercials for a few minutes (I think it was more than two minutes, I can’t remember clearly), but users could choose to close them after watching for five seconds. Now this type of "can be closed after 5 seconds" patch can occasionally be seen on domestic video websites.

Although the quality of Nongfu Spring’s commercial was very good at the time, it was more than 2 minutes long after all. I believe that many people, like me, only watched the commercial once in its entirety, and then simply waited for 5 seconds and clicked to skip. Even good movies are hard to get people to watch twice or three times, let alone advertisements.

It is a false proposition that users will actively watch story-based ads repeatedly. Therefore, forced repetition still cannot solve the problem of users' psychological resistance. After all, no matter how good a story is, it will make users bored if it is repeated a lot.

In today's crude advertisements, the brand slogan can be repeated more than ten times in 10 seconds, and the efficiency of information transmission is difficult to match by story-telling advertisements. The ads went from being linear to being spooky.

Remember the content but forget the brand

It is already very difficult to make advertising content spreadable, but there is still a problem with story-based advertising: users tend to forget the brand.

Because in story-based advertising, brands hope to impress users through stories and convey brand spirit and values, but the focus is still on the story itself, and brand exposure takes a back seat. Just like a movie, the focus must be on the story itself, not the idea behind the story.

“If you have the sea in your heart, everywhere is the Maldives” has been widely circulated because of its content, but few people know that it was a promotion by Tuniu. If it was pushed back to an earlier time, who was the brand owner of “Diamonds are forever” is a classic question. The topical influence of story-telling content is undoubted, but its brand effect is always controversial.

For story-based advertising, even if it has an impact, there is still the problem of having hot topics but no brand traffic . On the surface, the story and the brand are weakly correlated, and the entire brand communication model is a huge user funnel. However, there are very few story-based ads that have both content influence and strong brand association, and there may not be one for several years.

Summary

The disappearance of storytelling ads has made ads more "technical" and the depth of content has become thinner, from storytelling to simple and direct symbol repetition. To sum up, there are four reasons:

1. The fragmentation of attention leads to the shortening of advertising time, making it difficult to unfold a story;

2. The main communication medium (WeChat communication environment) is not compatible with the long video format, making it difficult to spread;

3. Story-based content easily loses its freshness, and a large amount of repetition cannot eliminate users’ psychological resistance;

4. Story-based ads focus on plot content, are mostly weakly associated with brands, and are not efficient in conveying information;

Source: Zheng Zhuoran