Monday, February 22, 2010

Walking the advertising tightrope

How often should you update your advertising?

Advertising is expensive and time consuming to produce, and so there’s a natural reluctance to change it too often. But there is a risk to leaving the same creative out there for an extended period.

Our brains are hardwired to ignore the familiar. This allows us to pay more attention to the new and different, which in the early days of evolution might help you (“What if it’s something good to eat?”) or hurt you (“What if it’s something interested in eating me?”).

The old advertising model was “say it over and over again until it takes root in your audience’s minds.” But if your audience is ignoring the familiar, then every repetition is marginally less effective, and it won’t be long until you’re just wasting your money.

If you want to keep your audience’s attention, you need to constantly update your advertising. But watch out! Changing management and advertising creative teams tend to introduce variability. “Our advertising will be even better if we just [fill in the blank].” Every update runs the risk of straying from your brand’s core message (how many ways can you say the same thing?). And when consumers get two different messages about a brand, it creates cognitive dissonance that erodes the effectiveness of your advertising.

What’s the answer? You need to take a three-fold approach.

1) Come up with a rock-solid brand USP (see What's Your Unique Buying Proposition, September 2009 in this blog) and make sure all your advertising reflects it.

2) Changes in your advertising need to be evolutionary, not revolutionary. This is hard to enforce. Everyone wants to make their creative mark on the brand, for the sake of their personal portfolios. So they tend to develop creative that is as different as possible from “the old stuff.” The problem is, you have brand awareness equity bound up in “the old stuff.” There is real value in having your audience connect your old advertising with the new, so that you’re building on that equity and not starting a new “silo” of awareness.

3) Plan to change your advertising as frequently as your budget allows. Don’t sink every cent into advertising that you are then forced to run over and over because you cannot afford anything new. Make new creative an integral part of your schedule. New advertising can be inexpensive if you shoot or record additional material during the initial production session, and then edit and release new versions over time. This also helps you stay true to your USP.

Your CMO can show you how to keep your advertising focused and effective. Call me if you’d like to talk about helping your advertising “evolve.”