For the past four years, in partnership
with the Angus Reid Forum, we have been running a national ad recall study -
interviewing 1,500 Canadians coast-to-coast. The purpose of the study is to
track overarching trends in advertising recall. Uncovering which brands and
types of ads are best connecting with Canadians, arming marketers with
directional insights to help fuel their next campaign-planning brainstorm.
Looking at the data over the past four
years, we’re noticing an alarming trend – advertising is becoming less relevant
to consumers. It’s no secret that relevancy is a key creative metric when
predicting the future success of an ad and its recall rate. In fact, a 2016
study by the Direct Marketing Association concluded that relevancy beats out
personalisation - with 40% of interviewees preferring ads that are relevant to
them. [1]
Once in the better half of the top four ad
traits that drive recall, relevancy has fallen to the bottom.
With relevancy consistently seen as a key
metric for recall, this downward trend goes against what we’ve learned makes a
memorable ad and presents many interesting lines of inquiry. Do consumers
prefer ads with the other 3 traits more? Are marketers making less relevant ads?
Are ads with the other 3 traits simply getting better? Is the definition of
relevancy changing for consumers?
Digging deeper into the data, only 14% of
Canadians strongly agree with statement “I
am noticing more ads that are relevant to my needs and lifestyle compared to
two or three years ago”. The perceived relevancy of the ads of today is the
worst amongst Gen X and Baby Boomers. With 54% and 65%, respectively, disagreeing
with the statement compared to 42% among Millennials.
This
data is perplexing when we consider Google and Facebook Quality Score
algorithms. Both algorithms use relevancy as a key multiplier to an ads Quality
Score. With ads that are deemed most relevant to the consumer being pushed to them
while they’re browsing online or swiping through their social feeds. Meaning
advertisers aren’t just incentivized to create more relevant ads based on years
of best practice, they’re incentivized to create more relevant ads just so consumers
see them.
Though it’s not immediately clear what’s
driving it, here are some of our thoughts based on our case studies and data
we’ve collected over the past year:
- Advertising is becoming part of the entertainment repertoire as opposed to a venue to learn about products and services. It’s less “buy this product now” and more Red Bull Space Jump.
- An increased dependency on search and reviews to learn about products – consumers are taking relevancy into their own hands, seeking products themselves and assessing the relevancy to their life versus waiting for advertising to make the connection.
- As an industry, we are spending too much time ensuring we are relevant to Millennials and as a result, not providing the other two-thirds of the population with relevant communications.
Marc
Pritchard, the Chief Brand Officer at Procter & Gamble, partially blames
this downward trend on advertising’s myopic view of the world. Speaking at
Cannes, Pritchard says that “for too long, the ad world has been in its own
world – separate from other creative industries and becoming less relevant to
consumers.” Pritchard believes that “it’s time to re-imagine creativity to
re-imagine advertising” and his action plan includes finding creativity from
outside the ad world, to spark creativity and humanity from within.
“There
are vast sources of creativity available, and today P&G is taking action to
merge the ad world with other creative worlds through partnerships that embrace
humanity and broaden our view of what advertising could be.” - Marc Pritchard [2]
So how do we make advertising relevant
again?
Sources:
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