The new seven deadly sins of brand advertising

In this article, the author shares the vicious circles he often falls into when creating brand advertisements, such as squeezing young people to death, forcing values ​​on others, having incorrect values ​​but pretending to have correct ones, being of no help to the business, and having unexciting stories but being extremely long... Let's take a look.

First of all, I'm not targeting anyone, I'm talking about myself.

1. Driving young people to death

Nowadays, when brands talk about TA (target audience), they must talk about young people. The customer group descriptions in all the client's briefs seem to be written by one person: 20-35 years old, white-collar worker, working 996, yearning for a better life, getting up in the morning with great ambition to take over the world, but getting on the subway, being completely subdued by the world, and becoming a walking corpse when they get home from get off work after a day's work... I always mention young people when I am in meetings and writing plans. There is no other way; young people only spend money and don't save it.

An old man who owns five apartments in Shanghai has less spending power than a white-collar worker with a monthly salary of 10,000 yuan. The middle-aged and elderly have money but don't spend it. Starbucks has launched new products, but the old man still grinds his own coffee and occasionally orders an American coffee when he meets someone to discuss business.

Old brands rely on young people to launch new products, and new consumer brands also rely on young people to emerge.

The small wallet is being made in ten thousand ways by merchants, and ten thousand brands are trying to squeeze the 10,000 yuan salary of young people, and the money is almost skinned bare.

Mr. Han Han has long said that young people must save money and not fall into the trap of consumerism, and spend at most 20% of their income. Now almost no brand talks about young people saving money, but financial brands do let young people manage their finances, but they are concerned about the thin principal of young people.

2. Hard value

NIKE can create value because it really understands sports and people who love sports, really observe life attentively, implements the brand spirit very resolutely, and always finds a group of talented copywriters to rack their brains and sweat to serve it. Live your greatness, run and you will understand, come out, come out, etc. It can create value in such a long-term, stable and high-quality way, which ordinary sports brands cannot do.

Apple is very smart and rarely mentions value. Forget about "Think different". Children born in that year are already masters of slacking off. Almost all of Apple's advertisements talk about products. Even the Spring Festival videos emphasize that they were shot with iPhones. You can also say that the content of its products is its brand value.

Maybe it’s a bunch of sports brands that have corrupted the trend. Now brands are always trying to put up values. What they are selling is not mobile phones, but the unyielding spirit of youth; what they are selling is not underwear, but youth with hormones that have nowhere to bloom. The values ​​of many brands in their advertisements at different times are contradictory, but no one cares because few people see them anyway.

3. Having incorrect values ​​but pretending to have correct ones

Now many brands are encouraging young people to be brave and be themselves. Think about when you just graduated and were a rookie. You were obviously very frustrated. Was it interesting to be yourself?

If you don’t want to be yourself, then surpass yourself. Most people are noobs like me, and even if I surpass myself, I will probably still be standing still.

Female marketing is also a hard-hit area. It's called a hundred flowers blooming, but people are concerned about the leftover women and the lack of confidence in women. They are labeled with a very strange term called "independent women". At first hearing it, you might think that women somewhere are not liberated.

If you want to sell your products at a higher price, please first innovate your products, improve quality, and solve consumers' pain points. Without years of brand accumulation and your products are average, it is a cunning and petty-minded approach to try to output your values ​​through one or two creative campaigns and achieve brand premium.

The brand values ​​must be positive, and the bad values ​​with hidden agendas cannot be hidden. For example, the female doctor advertisement that was recently criticized.

Moreover, young people’s little heads cannot accommodate so many conflicting values.

4. No help for enterprises

Now the budget given by brands to agents is getting smaller and smaller. From 4A to hot stores, they all feel that business is not as good as before. For creative agencies, a project of two to three million is already a big order. Is it true that companies have no money? Companies have money. If they don't make money, they don't exist. They just don't want to give it to agents.

Why? Because most advertisements today do not bring value to businesses, even though advertising companies are very good at adding value.

Advertising is a part of marketing. In this part, the so-called marketing strategy you have sorted out can neither help the company improve its operations, nor can the advertisements you make help the company increase sales. Some advertisements can even make you wonder which brand they are after watching them for a long time. To put it bluntly, they are useless and it doesn’t matter whether you do them or not.

Brands have become smarter now. Almost all project briefs require both brand influence and actual sales. Even some international brands are like this. It is rare to see purely brand-oriented projects.

5. The story is not exciting but very, very long

I don’t deny that for a company, operations are important, and brand storytelling is also important. Some stories even become the core assets of a brand, but that must be a wonderful story, such as the story of Chu Orange.

Nowadays, we often see such TVCs, which are three or five minutes long or more, with no fascinating plot, but have a strong sense of commercial advertisement when they are opened, as if to say, look at me, see what kind of advertisement I am, and how I can reduce your IQ to zero.

If we don't have the ability to tell stories and can't produce ads like "Dream Knight" by Volkswagen Bank, "Lao Du" by Xiaodu, and "The Last Transfer in the Northern Tang Dynasty" by UnionPay, then we can just shoot a 15-second P&G-style product ad. At least the money won't be wasted.

Some TVCs tell a very long illogical story that seems to have nothing to do with the product. At the very end, the brand logo appears. The money is definitely wasted - no, there is not a single splash. The only visible response may be the sarcasm in the comment section of Shuying.com.

6. Creative Desire Outweighs Commercial Logic

I am a little ashamed to say that most of the time I don’t consider the client’s business. What drives my advertising passion is my desire to create.

Although many people do get into this industry for the fun of creating, it is unethical. It is unacceptable to take the client's money, create your own works, and win awards. Sometimes, when we share an advertising work in the conference room, everyone says it is a good advertisement, but no one says it is a good product.

Sometimes we even have to laugh at the client for having poor aesthetic taste, not getting the beauty of the idea, not understanding advertising, and only knowing that the logo must be big.

Party A understands business because it is on the front line of the market.

We didn’t think that having a big logo is the right thing to do in terms of business communication logic. A big logo is easier to see. And a big logo can also look good, like LV and Coca-Cola.

7. Forget why you advertise

Bill Bernbach once said that we want to prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can become good sales.

The contemporary advertising operating system has trained a group of mature advertisers. The advertisements we make may have good taste, good art, and good words, but we forget the last and most important sentence, which is to turn it into a good sales pitch.

The above is all, let’s encourage each other.

Author: Chen Wuyong

Source: WeChat public account "Chen Wuyong (ID: wuyongzhiyong2022)"