Advertisements have evolved in many ways over the last few centuries or maybe even in the last few decades. The advertisements are signals for consumers to buy the product. The goods are produced and have to be sold in the market. The prospective consumers have to be aware of the presence of the goods in the market. The demand arises out of awareness in the first place. In absence of awareness, there would be no demand. The firm’s desire would be to make consumers aware of the product. The awareness is followed by seeking to create an interest in the product. The interest generated is likely to lead to a desire followed by the actual action of purchasing the good. The AIDA model is what drives the logic of advertising.
Any ad is essentially a message conveying the attributes of the good to the prospective consumers. The consumers might have several queries relating to the good. The producers seek to answer those queries in a concise manner. There is essentially a trade-off entailed in this monologue. The producers have to reach a large section of the audience in a short period of time. Therefore, to them the reach has to be prioritized. On the other hand, the message about the good has to become concise. In other words, the richness has to be sacrificed. There is a trade-off between richness and reach something that has characterized the advertising and promotion industries for many years. The rise of internet and internet based platforms are doing away with the trade-off given both richness and reach can be achieved in the internet space. The advertisements are critical element in the firm’s branding and promotion strategy. They seek to prioritize reach over richness. The catalogues or in-store demonstration are good examples for the reverse- prioritizing richness over reach.
As the firms seek to prioritize reach over richness, they need to create an attention at the very least. Furthermore, the attention has to translate into interest and desire. This implies the message must occupy the top of the mind space in the consumer psychology. In brand and ad-tracking studies, the top of the mind recall is important for this very reason. Often the consumer would exercise their preference towards such a choice that is top of the mind in terms of the recall. Therefore, the message in the ad must be clear in order to create a top of the mind recall. Yet, to the consumers, there are thousands of ads being literally bombarded on them every day. This implies that the ad must stand out with respect to the rest. The advertising industry in terms of ads being bombarded on various media be it internet, television, radio, newspapers, outdoors or whatever other means it might be is essentially a perfect competition in practice. It is not competing with the different brands of same product but with thousands of brands of assorted goods each which might not have remote connections except they all seek to occupy the mind space of the prospective consumer.
To the consumer, it becomes a toll on their ability to recall or even keep them in attention to the numerous messages being communicated to them. The consumer’s mind is essentially creating a framework for demand and supply. The demand and supply is in the context of attention. The ads through their messages are seeking consumer attention which they hope would convert into interest finally leading to action. Therefore, the demand for consumer’s attention is quite significant. It must be noted that the ads are the not the only thing that is demanding consumer attention. There are numerous sundries in life that the consumer would concentrate and seek to focus the attention on. Therefore, it is imperative that ads capture their space. Therefore, what comes out is the fact that the supply of attention is limited. The consumer has very little time to spend on internalizing the ads and even less time to internalize the specific ad, something that would prod them to action. There is deficient of supply and excess of demand thus tilting the price upwards. The price is not something in monetary terms but in non-monetary terms of doing something different to attract the consumer. The perfect competition would have to give way to product differentiation.
Each ad would be seeking to convey a unique message that would position the product in a specific way. The objective is to capture the mind space and further retain it. Therefore, the obvious way of messaging must give way to something unorthodox. It must be unique in the sense that consumer would seek to recall the ad with reference to a specific product for a long time to come. It need to be provocative so as to create a sense of debate. There might be outrage over the ad yet this conveys the message that ad is seeking to of positioning itself at the top. It is not the content per se that might matter but the way it is presented that might tilt the scales. It is about the differing narratives that the ad brings about that becomes important. More than the features of the product, it is the association with the product or the brand that has to be established. Therefore, to the copy writers, it is the message they seek to work would have to be unconventional and at times totally antithetical to the mainstream. Therefore, one is not surprised to see ads that capture role reversals, power reversals, unorthodox ideas, and fantasies in action among many other things. There are ads that create controversy but the controversy itself would be an indicator more often than not of the success of the ad. There might be a few who might reject the good based on the good, but there would also be people who would buy goods based on the ad. At the heart is the net benefits. A good ad therefore would have to build a controversy or at least a platform that would open up for multiple interpretations thus stirring a debate among the audience. Therefore, the potential seeking of demand from attention starved supply of human mind space coupled with the need to differentiate itself from the rest often lead to unorthodox advertisement.
Thoughts on Theory and Practice 