There are still marketing managers who believe that a national TV advertising campaign is the best way to spend marketing budget and to increase product sales. At the same time, there are many advertsing executives keen to persuade those marketing managers that they are not only correct but also incredibly astute.
In the last year, one of TV’s most talked-about advertisements has been the drumming gorilla. It won awards, it was a typical ‘water-cooler’ discussion point, and many people found it fun and off-beat (excuse the drumming pun!), even though the accompanying music was by Phil Collins.
The advertisers must have been happy with their awards and Cadbury’s must have been thrilled with the buzz. Or were they? Marketing Research company TNS have just issued a report – gratefully referenced by Private Eye in their ‘Ad Nauseam’ section – that shows that, during the period of the advertisement’s run up to July this year, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk actually lost ground to Galaxy (produced by rival Mars).
The moral of the story is that consumers tend to see advertisements like the drumming gorilla as part of the entertainment on their TV (or on youtube or their mobile or wherever they end up watching it). On the other hand, they no longer see advertisements such as this as instructions to buy. The target audience for this advertisement was obviously at the younger end of the market and these are precisely the people who are getting more and more resistant to interruption marketing. Why? Because they spend an increasing amount of time actively involved in marketing decisions with friends and networks. They no longer sit passively waiting to be told what to buy by advertisers and marketing managers.
Are you more likely to buy a chocolate bar because of a drumming gorilla or because your mates tell you the bar is great and you know your favourite band always have a stack of them (chocolate bars – not drumming gorillas) in the dressing room after gigs?
I am suspicious about this ad too. Cadbury claims sales were up 9%. The “lost ground to Galaxy” effect is very significant – we should all check our facts because I think this has the potential to REALLY support the social media story.
Thanks for dropping by, Mark. The Cadbury claims are interesting: did sales increase 9% because of the ad or was it a seasonal glitch that would have happened anyway? How do they know? There’s no ‘buy now’ button on my TV so I’m guessing the numbers come from polling organizations associated to the advertiser. Q1 Did you see the gorilla? Q2 Do you eat chocolate Q3 Name your favourite bar.
A challenge for the social media players here is how to convince companies like Cadbury to drop the big buck spending and rely on a new way of doing things. If they believe that 9% and they’re happy with what they spent, they will be hard to convince that social media can bring about the same effect for less budget. It will take time to break the big spend. big ROI link in the minds of retail brands, I think.
[...] One of the knock on effects of the downturn, nee the credit crunch SOON TO BE PROPER ACTUAL RECESSION EVEN UNDER OFFICIAL DEFINITIONS is there is less frivolous money banging around in industry. Cutbacks come in more profligate and somewhat unproven areas. HELLO advertising, an industry puffed up with its own importance but a general lack of all that much in the way of concrete evidence that its work really improves sales. The Cadbury’s drumming ape after all did more to drive up sales of Phil Collins Greatest Hits that it did Cabdury’s*. [...]
[...] of improving sales, turns out the Gorilla one didn’t really help either. Makes you think really, doesn’t [...]