Against my better judgment – and a personal vow never to expose my ignorance of obscure trivia again – I got roped into Trivia Night at my daughter’s school.
Trying to regurgitate useless facts learned by rote ain’t my idea of a good time. But it was for the kids and whatnot, so I went.
There was one category that caught my interest. It had to do with Super Bowl commercials.
The host played 10 famous (infamous?) Super Bowl commercials on a big screen.
What they didn’t show, however, was what company each commercial was for.
That’s what we had to figure out.
These were all buzzworthy, fairly recent (within the last 10 years or so) commercials.
Pretty much everyone in the room remembered seeing these commercials. But you know what most people couldn’t remember?
What big company coughed up the millions of greenbacks to air their commercial during the Big Game.
In fact, this was one of the hardest categories of the night.
People had an easier time coming up with the names of dead Presidents and other random historical minutia.
Most teams struggled to correctly ID half the companies for the 10 commercials played.
If you’re surprised, don’t be.
That’s what happens when you choose branding and being cute/funny over direct-response advertising and salesmanship.
It’s ego marketing at its finest.
You think the ad’s amazing creativity will generate a ton of attention for your business. But the reality is your brand name gets lost from people’s memories like it’s a snowflake in a blizzard.
And if huge companies, with ad budgets that could fund a small country can’t make it stick, what chance do you have with a tiny fraction of their budget?
Plastering your name on TV, radio, billboards, etc., with entertaining yet meaningless “creative” ads just doesn’t cut it. It’s like pouring your hard-earned cash into a black hole – it may be fun to look at, but you’ll never see it again.
So, leave the cute ads to the billion-dollar brands with money to burn. Spend your marketing dollars where they’ll actually work for you—direct response advertising that sticks in the mind, drives action, and brings customers through your door.
If only those brands had used direct response strategies—maybe we wouldn’t have all been scratching our heads that night, wondering which company spent millions on that talking baby commercial.
