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Every so often I take an advertisement, usually from TV, and analyse it from a consumer perspective.

What I’m interested in is the way in which the advert is likely to work at an unconscious level, since I’m convinced that this is most important dimension for marketing communication of this kind.

Now that presents it’s own particular problem, because it’s generally acknowledged that we have no direct link between our unconscious and conscious minds.  The unconscious triggers various feelings, which our conscious mind then receives and attempts to decode into some kind of rational explanation: “I feel bad, I must not like what I’m looking at.” 

Unfortunately there’s lots of evidence to show that we’re quite bad at evaluating these feelings accurately (which is one of the reasons that consumer research has so much potential to be misleading).

By applying models of how people think and developing my own split personality I keep a trained eye on my own unconscious reaction to the adverts I encounter and then set about trying to decode what it is that does or doesn’t work about what I’ve seen.

How effective is this?  Well, you can decide for yourself if you take a quick hop over to my home page and look at one or more of the articles at the top left, headed Advertising Reviews: the most recent is called “A Bad Ad in a Good Cause“.

Please do drop back over here and let me know what you think.  Advertising is a notoriously subjective issue, but I’m working on ways to remove that subjectivity; I’m interested to know if you think I’ve achieved that.

Philip

16 Comments

  4. Rob Northrup

    I think that ad is worthless. It smacks to me of one of those public service pro-bono ads that they do for these “worthy” causes where the ad guy just decides to stroke his or her own ego.

    The motorcycle coffin is just an attempt to be funny and ads nothing to the message. After all, the purpose is to try to get people to give to charity instead of their family.

    reply to comment→
  14. Darryl Pace

    Philip,
    My thoughts on the ad are:
    Why was the chopper in a box? Were they going to bury it? Were they donating it to charity?

    Maybe I need to watch it over and pay closer attention. But my initial impressions are that I don’t completely get the chopper at the end, and that I was left with a somewhat negative, questioning attitude toward the ad.

    Health, Fitness — Darryl Pace

    reply to comment→

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