Does Your Ad Sell Your Product?
The main reason for producing an ad in the first place is to sell the product. If your product isn’t selling, the root of the problem is likely, in part, due to ineffective advertising. A brand could have the greatest product in the world, but if the ads aren’t telling a story, or showcasing the product to the fullest, or if the ad fails to speak to the target audience, sales will inevitably go down.
Sell the Story
The Super Bowl is the holy grail of advertising. Great Super Bowl Ads become legendary, and so do the not-so-great ads, but for all the wrong reasons. Days after the Super Bowl, people are still talking about the ads. But are people buying what they are selling? In such polarizing times, it’s no wonder that people seemed to have polarizing views on many of the ads, especially those with underlying political statements. Even seemingly tame ads can make a provocative statement.
Cards Against Humanity, a popular satirical word-association card game, aired an ad during the pre-game that definitely generated a response. Some are calling it the worst Super Bowl Ad of all time. Ars Technica UK considers the ad “the least successful advertisement in Super Bowl history.” AV Club has dubbed it “truly awful.” Viewers were left confused by a 30-second long ad of virtually nothing. However, other sources, like The Next Web, are calling it a brilliant marketing scheme.
Ad Performance
The ad itself was simple. It was a 30-second spot with the words “Advertisement” written on a potato. Some say the ad did not translate well. After all, no one would equate the word “potato” with “advertisement.” It also makes no mention of the product being sold. The brand is known for some crazy antics, but even they admitted their faults in a satirical blog post about the ad’s failure. They jokingly admit their failure in connecting to their target audience, young people.
They’ve even publicly acknowledged this, issuing a statement on their blog declaring bankruptcy. They stated that this ad failed to generate a return on investment, only to later denounce this as a joke, clearly, taking a stab at “fake news.” This “fake ad” is being championed by The Next Web as a great marketing tactic in 2017, since they took a risk by denouncing convention and playing to the post-modern audience.
Sometimes, with great risk comes great reward. One way brands can assess risk is through ad testing. Ask specifics about the likelihood to act will help determine whether the campaign will translate into product purchases. Cards Against Humanity even included a little joke about testing in their blog, about how they ditched their ad agency and surveyed the American people to optimize which vegetable to use. All jokes aside, ad testing can be a very effective means of evaluating your overall message and conversion metrics.
Spot Trender can help you make positive changes to your brand’s ads. Spot Trender is a full-service ad testing company—we help our clients test their concepts/storyboards all the way to post-produced spots. Contact us now. We’ll work with you to craft powerful messages.
