Giorgi Mamuzelos, Copy Editor, looks behind the scenes at manipulative marketing.
THIS time last year, I was pretty sure advertising was my calling in life. Remembering a work placement in 2010 with the rose-tinted glasses of a student desperate for something resembling a ‘plan for the future’, I managed to nab an internship at one of the biggest ad agencies in London.
After about two weeks spent optimising hundreds of YouTube videos on behalf of a German finance corporation (if someone had asked me to make tea instead I would’ve kissed their feet), I was invited to sit in on a team briefing and watch the magic happen.
Technically, there’s no fixed formula for a ‘good ad’.
Sat in a room with three men who practically screamed ‘independent coffee shop’, I watched the professionals puzzle over how to sell razors.
“Okay,” says Edgy Ad Guy number 1, “so what we kind of want to communicate is… if you use this razor, you’re different. Everyone else is the same. But because you use this razor, you’re, like… special?” Appreciative nodding around the room.
“So I was thinking: robots and aliens.”
“Yes. Exactly!” says number 2. Number 3 writes ‘ROBOTS AND ALIENS’ on the whiteboard. Number 2 makes frantic notes. Hashtags are mentioned. I start wondering what publishing is like.
The miserable thing about all these gimmicky ad campaigns is that I can now imagine the various creative teams behind them clapping each other on the back and feeling like millennial Don Drapers, giggling to themselves as they formulate the next wacky instalment of their horrifically enduring ‘Compare the Meerkat’ saga, and getting paid for it.
As far as I can see, the work (in some sense of the word) ends there. Every time a new gimmick with the subtlety of an obnoxious six year old appears on our screens, we’re given a hashtag (e.g. #EpicStrut, #BeMoreDog, #MakeItRight – make it stop) and expected to relay the video to loved ones and strangers alike, as though it were anything but an advert for a price comparison site.
And the worst part is, we often do. You’ve probably seen the new John Lewis ad. Actually, I’m going to hazard a guess someone reading this shared something about it on social media. Good job, John Lewis’s marketing team owes you one. You, and the rest of the bloody country.
In the book Hey Whipple, Squeeze This, copywriter Luke Sullivan remembers Mr Whipple, the endlessly enduring hero of a series of Charmin toilet paper commercials in the 60’s – hated by Americans everywhere, but simultaneously more famous than the President in office at the time. That pretty much sums up the power adverts have over us.
Technically, there’s no fixed formula for a ‘good ad’. They can make you laugh, cry, or send you to bed with nightmares (thanks, THINK!, for all the blood and dead children you’ve brought to our screens), but I think I’d argue that most of the ‘better’ ones are fucking atrocious. After all, you don’t have to love every wacky gimmick that gets shoved in your face; all the ads ask is that you remember their brand. Whether you like it or not.