Advertising, it's an art form. A slightly odd thing to say, perhaps, but we’re not alone. Bill Bernbach, a giant of American advertising, said of his profession: ‘Advertising is fundamentally persuasion, and persuasion happens to be not a science but an art.’ And who doesn’t want to be an artist?
Whether art or science, there's no doubt about advertising's effectiveness and cultural relevance. Fond memories of childhood TV ads abound: ‘For mash, get Smash’; ‘Follow the bear’; ‘It does exactly what it says on the tin’; those bizarre and strangely menacing Kinder Surprise ads — Ebo Shakey! Chocadooby!
Great advertising is the product of blood, sweat and tears. It is distilled, triple-strength, cold-filtered, turbocharged. It’s a neutron star: super-dense and pulsing with potential. Done right, it packs more creativity and intelligence into a few moments than is found in entire TV series.
Now, that sounds like an artform to us.
A PROLIFERATION OF CHANNELS
Today, advertisers can deliver messages to ever-smaller, highly targeted sub-groups and audience segments with surgical precision - driven by real-time audience behaviour and insights.
Planning modern advertising feels more like deploying high-tech, laser-guided messaging missiles compared to the indiscriminate, wasteful carpet-bombing approach of old. As a result, the potential for collateral damage (to your marketing budget) is similarly reduced.