TNS

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?