Guest blogger, Tom Turner gives his opinion on what makes great advertising.
I’m trying to buy a toaster.
It’s not until you find yourself ready to invest in the latest bread warming technology you realise the dizzying wealth of options laid before you. As I landed on my 113th toaster related website I came across one of my pet hates. Or rather it was forced upon me.
A pop up.
But not just any pop up.
One which told me “37 people have viewed this toaster in the last 24 hours,” swiftly followed by another informing me this particular model, somewhat understandably with its seductive curves and sensual wood effect knobs, was the “2nd most popular purchase from this section”… or some similarly irrelevant, yawn inducing statistic.
You know why this annoys me so much? Because the pop up is obscuring the image and I can’t see whether there’s a bagel button? No. Because I know exactly what they’re trying to do. And here’s the bit that really irks me – they’re doing it really, really bloody clumsily.
Photo by Natalia Dunai on Unsplash
I like my advertising psychology delivered with the subtlety and guile of a Derren Brown TV special. Not hurled at me like the tricky patter of a desperate 1980’s double glazing salesman called Derek who’s decided to camp out in my living room for the last six hours. (No matter how much we’ve tried to convince him, regardless of the discount he can get us after a quick call to his manager, a conservatory would almost definitely not increase the market value of our second floor flat.)
So, when I’m assaulted by the toaster pop-ups, what are they trying to do? Confirm my excellent taste in small kitchen appliances? Suggest to me that they might run out of stock? Well, both probably. Creating a real or perceived scarcity is a well-known sales tactic. (Think “HURRY, WHILE STOCKS LAST!”) As is making you think everyone else is doing something so you should be too, feeding off our human inclination to be socially compliant (it certainly worked for many of the successful anti-drink driving, stop smoking and ‘wear your seatbelt’ campaigns).
Don’t get me wrong. You won’t find a bigger fan of advertising that makes full use of rhetoric and persuasive language. That’s what it should be doing. But, come on, let’s try and apply it with some craft and panache please! I know it might be trickier to do, taking more work and a sprinkling of talent, but it’s going to be a whole load more effective in the long run.
Great advertising should work on a deeper level than just shouting about your product, shouldn’t it? It’s got to engage with the audience, identify a need and offer a solution in one seamless, almost undetectable, manoeuvre. And when it’s done just right, you know what? It’s beautiful.
Oh, and despite 42 other people doing so in the last hour, I still haven’t bought a toaster.
Tom Turner – award winning copywriter, voiceover artist and podcast host, www.failingwriterspodcast.com
