Do TV ads work？
Shocking news in adland: television advertising does not work.
Oh well, commercial TV was nice while it lasted. Now, I suppose, we go back to whatever we were doing before it arrived: singing around the piano, talking to each other, going out of our minds with boredom or, in Britain's case, watching the BBC.
Before continuing, however, I had better qualify that opening claim. Clearly, TV advertising can work. But according to a provocative report from Deutsche Bank in the US (Commercial Noise: Why TV Advertising Doesn't Work for Mature Brands), the sort of advertising we tend to associate with TV, promoting well-known brands of consumer packaged goods, is usually a waste of money.
How does Deutsche Bank know? Andrew Shore, an analyst, spent two years monitoring the advertising and sales of 23 big packaged goods brands in the US. He found that, although TV advertising increased sales over the next six to 12 months, in most cases it produced a negative return on investment. In other words, the gross profit generated by the extra sales was exceeded by the cost of the advertising.
Things have changed since the golden age of marketing, the 1950s to the 1970s, when commercial TV allowed packaged goods companies to introduce their products to vast numbers of consumers. Today, media fragmentation has undermined television's power and many packaged goods are close to market saturation. Meanwhile, remote control ownership has risen from zero in 1965 to 97 per cent, and TiVo-style digital video recorders make it easy for viewers to skip commercials altogether.
Yet can we really be sure that brand advertising is such a waste of money?
”
Since I own a TiVo recorder and have hardly seen a TV commercial in more than two years, I have no idea why I would want to defend TV advertising (unless, of course, it is to preserve my access to free content). Yet somewhere at the back of my mind I hear the insistent voice of Philip Wrigley, son of William Wrigley, founder of the chewing-gum company, addressing this question of value for money. Asked during a transcontinental flight why Wrigley went on spending so much on advertising when its products were already successful, he replied: "For the same reason the pilot of this plane keeps the engines running when we're already 29,000ft up."
Mature brands, by definition, face the prospect of decline, so perhaps the miracle of TV advertising is that it sustains them year after year when they might otherwise fade slowly into oblivion. In any event, what a study should surely be measuring is not just the increase in sales delivered by TV advertising, but the difference between the increased level and the level to which sales would have declined if there was no TV advertising.
I have another quibble. Reluctant as I am to take issue with Deutsche Bank's intriguing study, I cannot help feeling that, by focusing on relatively short-term increases in sales, it takes an outdated view of the way brand advertising works.
Once, people used to see advertising as a means of persuading people consciously to choose one product over another. The advertisement was a sales pitch, and it was vital to get the consumer's attention in order to get the message across.
More recently, however, a British marketer named Robert Heath has drawn on neuroscience and psychology to offer a different explanation.
In an influential monograph called The Hidden Power of Advertising (Admap Publications, 2001), he said people regarded most reputable brands as performing similarly and paid little attention to advertisements. However, this did not mean the advertisements did not work.
People absorb information both actively and passively. Some knowledge you seek, other knowledge you absorb through "implicit" learning without even knowing it is happening. According to Heath, brand communications fell mostly into the second category: although often ignored at the conscious level, they were absorbed through an automatic, subconscious mental activity known as low involvement processing.
The way long-term memory worked, the more often an idea was processed alongside a brand, the more it became associated with that brand. "And because implicit memory is more durable than explicit memory," Heath said, "these brand associations, once learnt, are rarely forgotten."
So, even more shocking than the revelation that TV advertising does not work is that it does - and without our even knowing it. Just as we always suspected, we are being brainwashed.
Correction. You are being brainwashed - I have a TiVo. But the point is, it is already too late for me, too. Even today, every time I choose a product on a supermarket shelf, I am expressing brand preferences influenced by advertisements I saw when I was six. The payback from a TV commercial cannot be measured over six months or a year: it is for life.
I know, I know, TV is not the only means of advertising and other media offer better value: perhaps Coca-Cola gets more effective brand associations from its sponsorship of music and sport than it does from its TV advertising. But the fundamental asset of successful brands is fame, and there is something almost magical about television's ability to deliver it.
Sheer voodoo it may be, but it is a brave packaged goods company that stops advertising on TV while its competitors carry on. This is the age of celebrity and brands desperately want to be stars. Somehow, I think commercial television is going to be with us for a while yet. This column returns on June 11.
电视广告管用吗？
震惊广告世界的新闻：电视广告没用。
唔，电视广告曾经有过好日子。我假设不管那时我们在做什么，让我们现在回到商业电视来临之前的状态：围着钢琴唱歌，相互交谈，厌倦地出神，或者对英国人来说，看BBC。
但在写下去之间，我最好先限定一下本文开篇的那个主张。电视广告显然可以起作用。但根据美国德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)一篇具有煽动性的报告《商业噪音：为什么电视广告对成熟品牌没有用》(Commercial Noise: Why TV Advertising Doesn't Work for Mature Brands)，那种我们通常将之和电视联系在一起的广告，即推广著名消费品品牌的广告，往往只是在浪费金钱。
德意志银行又是怎么知道的呢？它的一位分析师安德鲁?肖尔(Andrew Shore)花了两年时间，跟踪了23个著名产品在美国的广告和销售情况。他发现，尽管电视广告在播出后的6至12个月里促进了销售，但在大多数情况下，它造成了投资回报的负数。换句话说，额外销售产生的毛利还不及广告的成本。
自从50至70年代市场营销的黄金时代过去之后，事情就发生了变化。当时的商业电视让企业向大量消费者介绍它们的产品。而现如今，媒体的分裂削弱了电视的力量，许多产品趋于市场饱和。与此同时，遥控器的拥有量从1965年的零上升到97%，并且，电视信号式(TiVo)的数字录像机能使人们在看电视时，轻易地跳过所有的广告。
但我们真能肯定品牌广告是在浪费钱吗？
由于我有一台电视信号录像机，并且我已经有两年多没看过电视广告了，所以我也搞不懂，自己为什么会想为电视广告辩护(当然，除非这是为了保持自己对免费内容的使用权)。然而在我的思想深处，我总是记得那个口香糖企业的创始人威廉?里格利(William Wrigley)的儿子菲利普?里格利(Philip Wrigley)，在回答这个有关金钱价值的问题时，坚持不懈的声音。当他在一次横穿大陆的飞行中被问及，为什么里格利企业在产品已经非常成功时还在广告上投那么多的钱，他回答说：“就像这架飞机的驾驶员，当我们早已在2.9万英尺的高空时，他还让发动机继续保持运转。这和我们的道理是一样的。”
成熟品牌按其定义来看就面临着衰落的前景。或许，电视广告的奇迹就在于，当这些品牌可能到了慢慢变得湮没无闻的时候，广告却能使它们年复一年地得以维持。不管怎么说，一个研究必须要测量的不只是电视广告导致的销售增长，而且还应当包括，增长水平与如果不做广告可能导致的下滑水平之间的差距。
我还有一个谬论。尽管我不愿意和德意志银行富有启发性的研究争辩，但我忍不住觉得，将重点放在相对短期的销售增长上，说明他们对品牌广告效用方式的看法相当过时。
曾经，人们把广告看作一种有意识地说服人们选择某一种产品而非另一种产品的手段。广告是一种销售方式，并且，它在获取消费者注意，以向其传递信息的过程中，起着至关重要的作用。
然而，最近一位名叫罗伯特?希思(Robert Heath)的英国营销家通过引用神经学和心理学知识，给出了一个不同的解释。
在一篇富有影响的专题论文《广告隐藏的力量》(The Hidden Power of Advertising (Admap Publications, 2001))中，他说到，人们认为那些最受人尊敬的品牌表现得都差不多，而且人们很少注意广告。但这并不意味着广告就没有用。
人们吸收信息的方式既有积极的，也有消极的。有些知识是你自己去找的，还有一些你是通过“默默地”学习吸收到的，在学的时候，你都根本不知道自己在学。希思认为，品牌交流主要属于第二种范畴：尽管它们经常在意识层面上被忽视，但它们通过一种被称为低度参与过程的自动潜意识行为被吸收。
长期记忆的工作方式导致这样的情况：如果一种观念越是经常和某一个品牌一起处理，它就越可能和那个品牌联系在一起。“并且，由于暗示记忆比明示记忆更持久。”希思说道，“因此，人们一旦记忆这些品牌联系，就很少被忘记。”
所以，比“电视广告没用”这一新发现更令人震惊的是，电视广告确实在起作用，而我们甚至都不知道。正如我们一直所怀疑的，我们正在被洗脑。
纠正。你正在被洗脑，因为我有电视信号录像机。但关键是，这对我来说也太迟了。就是在今天，每次我站在超市货架前选东西时，我都会表现出品牌倾向度，那是受了我6岁时所看的广告的影响。电视广告的效应并不能用6个月或1年来计算：它是终身的。
我知道，我知道，电视不是广告唯一的载体，还有其它媒体提供更好的价值：可口可乐或许从其音乐或体育赞助中，获得比电视广告更有效的品牌联系。但成功品牌根本的资产在于其名气，而电视在制造名气上的能力几乎有些不可思议。
这可能纯粹是巫术，但如果一个企业眼看着它的竞争者继续在电视上投放广告，而自己却停止投放的话，那这个企业真是极为勇敢。这是一个追名逐利的时代，品牌一心要当明星。不知为什么，我认为电视广告还要和我们相伴一段时间
