Just Because I like Your Commercial Dosen't Mean I'll Buy Your Product

I Think this has long been the mantra of many brand focused marketers:

Make a commercial people like; and they will buy my product.

Pick a flavor of the month celebrity, stick them in a funny scenario (say a desert island or a night club), come up with a catchy line and BAM: you’ve converted a viewer into a sale.

I’m happy to say this practice is either shrinking or marketers are getting smarter about how they spend $$$ on high priced endorsements.

Seth Godin has long explored, commented and written on this topic. “Built it & they will come” holds little water in a recession.

Current Commercials I like (by like  I mean; I find them funny, memorable or interesting) include -

• Dos Equi’s “The Most Interesting Man In The World”
• Bud Light’s “Billy Mays-style Infomercials”
• Progressive’s “Personalized Service”

Now, I love these commercials – they are smart, witty, innovative and have one thing in common – they poke fun at themselves. These are commercials I actually remember; now I’m in advertising so I tend to think I’ve got a trained eye for this stuff.

But for all the commercials I’m exposed to over the course of a day, month or even year – this are the ones I predominately remember? That’s pretty sad.

Now, I’m only talking about TV – of which I only watch about two hours a day and stick to four or five core channels; so I’m pretty much in line with the Gen Y demo: we only consume what we like and we consume a lot of it.

There are products I buy that have ads I don’t care for at all, or that I’ve never seen on TV; simple things like face wash, socks and jeans (utility items, I’d say).

But then there are the products I actually buy that say something about who I am – Sneakers, tshirts, dress shirts, music, dvds, a car, etc.

And of those things I wouldn’t say it’s the number of times I’ve seen that ad or the length of the spot it comes down; but more so the story the product is telling me and the way it makes me feel.

It’s emotional – why do I want to buy your product?

So what does it take to sell something to me? Write a story, tell me how this is going to effect my life and get the message in front of my face. Traditional media is shrinking and engagement messaging is growing.

You do the math.