An ad industry executive tries to tell marketers that “they need to focus on awareness” instead of other metrics like engagement or conversion. That is perhaps the biggest load of shit I have ever heard.
You are probably aware of those annoying car insurance ads, but does that mean you’re going to switch to their brand or believe that if you have an accident they will “replace your whole car”? Of course not.
The ad industry has been woefully out of touch with consumer product brands for a long time. Consumers are not going down grocery aisles looking for specific brands anymore, they are trying private label brands or whatever is on sale. Even P&G is cutting back their digital ad spend because they realize that awareness doesn’t mean a damn thing.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]The people in the ad industry haven’t figured out that consumers are damn tired of their intrusive ads[/inlinetweet] and irrelevant targeting so let’s try and convince marketers that we need to focus on awareness even as sales decline. Typical ad agency garbage.
Are there some times when awareness is enough? You bet. If I see a new flavor of pizza or ice cream I’ll probably try it, but what the ad agency people seem to have forgotten is the concept of effective reach and frequency. Instead they try and tell clients that by spending more sales will correlate and increase as well.
There is no doubt that [inlinetweet prefix=”null” tweeter=”” suffix=””]advertising is going through a crisis moment[/inlinetweet]. More and more people are time shifting to get away from annoying ads and the increase in online ad blockers is increasing every week.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]The ad industry is painfully out of touch with not only consumers, but with clients[/inlinetweet] as well. Three of our clients have recently fired top ad firms out of New York because “they just aren’t getting it done” as one executive told us.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]Awareness does not lead to conversion for a lot of products[/inlinetweet], but the ad industry doesn’t seem to have an answer on how to address this problem. Maybe they need to look in the mirror more often.
