They concluded that one reason may be that companies simply have not realised what dull advertising actually costs. So it was time to find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
System1 has developed a model for measuring emotional reactions to advertising among viewers of British and American television commercials. The reactions are sorted into eight categories: contempt, disgust, anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and neutrality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A total of 160,000 British and American commercials have been tested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne reaction is surprisingly common in these tests \u2013 people feel absolutely nothing when they watch the advertising. They are completely indifferent,\u201d Jon Evans explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is so bad that roughly half of audiences in both the US and the UK feel nothing at all when they watch advertising. They remain emotionally neutral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it is even worse in B2B communication, where 60 per cent of audiences are unaffected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo does it really matter if you bore the audience?\u201d Jon Evans asked rhetorically, referring to Les Binet <\/strong>and Peter Field<\/strong>, whose analysis of the IPA databank showed that emotional advertising is twice as likely to generate large business effects as rational advertising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He also quoted Daniel Kahneman<\/strong>, who observed that \u201cthe pain of losing something is twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining something\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This led Jon Evans, Adam Morgan and Peter Field to reverse the usual question. Instead of asking how much emotional advertising gains, they wanted to investigate how much companies lose through dull advertising that triggers no emotional response at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow expensive is it to be dull? What is the exact cost in pounds, dollars or whatever currency you choose?\u201d Adam Morgan asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CLEAR EVIDENCE OF THE PRICE OF DULLNESS <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Peter Field once again analysed all the campaigns in the IPA databank and compared how much a successful but rationally dull campaign needed to invest in order to achieve the same impact as a more emotionally engaging campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The answer was that dull campaigns needed to invest 7.3 percentage points more than emotional campaigns. In the UK, this corresponds to an additional investment of approximately \u00a310 million per campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou can choose to be dull. But it is more expensive. That could lead to a rather interesting conversation with your CFO,\u201d Adam Morgan noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another way of calculating the cost of dull advertising was to analyse System1\u2019s tests of 55,000 US television campaigns over a six-year period. These campaigns were divided into four levels, ranging from the most interesting to the dullest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The results clearly showed how much more growth the most engaging advertising generated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But they also made it possible to calculate exactly how much more the duller campaigns needed to invest in order to achieve the same effect as the most engaging advertising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe answer was that they needed to invest a total of 189 billion dollars in order to achieve the same effect as the most interesting advertising. That is roughly equivalent to the entire GDP of Greece,\u201d Adam Morgan concluded, wondering whether one should laugh or cry at the findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He then pointed to four clear causes behind increasingly dull advertising and growing audience indifference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These were illustrated by \u201cThe Four Horsemen of the Dullocalypse\u201d: Performance, Optimisation, Average-ness and Procurement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PERFORMANCE MARKETING <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jon Evans argued that the developments of the past 20 years \u2013 particularly technological developments \u2013 have changed both the way we communicate and the conditions under which communication operates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Advertising has increasingly moved away from more engaging media towards duller ones. Television, where brands can tell stories and capture audiences, has steadily declined. Instead, advertising has shifted towards digital platforms such as Meta, where brands often have only a few seconds to reach people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA new generation of marketers has emerged from performance marketing and shifted communication towards repetitive, rational and dull advertising that tries to persuade people to buy immediately. Instead of the kind of showman advertising that we know works far better \u2013 advertising that creates memories, emotions and long-term effects,\u201d Jon Evans explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He then showed a clip from his podcast, where he interviewed Colleen DeCourcy<\/strong>, Chief Creative Officer at Snap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She was very clear about the limitations of performance marketing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou need a strong brand, a message that really sticks, or a point of view that people genuinely care about. The moment you stop investing in that, performance marketing stops working as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n OPTIMISATION <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhy are so many talented people spending their time producing so much nonsense? It cannot be because this is a stupid industry, or because people intentionally want to create dull work,\u201d Adam Morgan reflected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He believed optimisation and average-ness are two major reasons why apparently sensible decisions end up producing unintended consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To illustrate this, he pointed to a long list of companies that have recently redesigned their logos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOf course, the reasoning is often that brands need to work across many different platforms \u2013 tiny on some screens, huge on others. So they need to become simpler and easier to read. Which means redesigning the logo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But two things then happen. First, the character and distinctiveness disappear completely. Second, all the redesigned logos start looking almost identical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPerhaps this only applies to tech companies. Rational engineers. That might seem understandable. Surely it must be completely different in fashion,\u201d Adam Morgan joked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut it is not. It is just as bad there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/media.notabene.se\/2024\/07\/Reaktioner-scaled.jpg\")
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