The truth about (some) lousy adverts

Do bad ads genuinely suck, or were they just written for someone else…?

Corissa Nunn
Sep 3, 2018 · 4 min read

Lousy adverts can trigger an allergic reaction.

They can make you feel like an outsider or uncool or stupid or poor or remind you about a fact or event you’d rather forget. (Someone paid to put this monstrosity in front of you? Paid? With actual MONIES?? Raaaage!)

But is the advert as objectively lousy as you first thought?

Here’s a masochi err fun thought experiment:

You can try to reverse-engineer the advert and work out whether a) it point-blank misfired or b) you’re just not the creator’s target audience.

It takes a bit of thought to spot the difference. More often than you might expect (thanks to the spotlight effect and other biases), the answer is b.

This exercise is a window into how to write, whether the outcome is “OK so basically I should never do it that way” or “OK so this message doesn’t work on me but it may persuade someone else”. (It might also keep your blood pressure in check.)

Starling Bank laid the groundwork for this post last week when they targeted me with two Facebook ads.

Here’s one:

“You’re good with words. Now get good at the numbers”.

Firstly, who the Dickens are they to judge that I’m good with words? I don’t know if they targeted me because of my job title, but however “good” I might be with words, I still have some way to go. Secondly, I am allergic to the suggestion that I’m “bad” at numbers when I’m probably (only slightly, veeeery slightly) better than average.

Verdict… misfire.

Now the other advert:

“A banking app that looks beautiful. Yes, you heard right.”

So the app is beautiful? Cool story bro. I just want it to work beautifully. I want to believe I can trust it with my dirty laundry and my few precious quid. As a bit of an old duffer at heart, I have never found my Lloyds app to be an eyesore in the first place. Yet that isn’t the dealbreaker. The dealbreaker is the phrase “Yes, you heard right”, which is powered by a kind of verbal aggro that reminds me of the knuckleheads at school who I hid from in the toilet cubicle till the caretaker smoked me out.

The Allergy had been triggered. My nose slobbered and my eyes itched and my throat scratched.

Do those adverts really suck though? Or were they simply written for someone who isn’t me?

Cue the reverse-engineering.

Starling are a challenger bank with a reputation for being a bit more grown-up than other challenger banks.

Who is Starling’s ideal customer? Finger in the air, I would guess the person is young enough not to faint at the thought of an online-only bank account, yet old enough not to fall for the emoji gimmicks of Monzo. Frustrated enough with their current provider to entertain the idea of Uncharted Territory, yet wary enough to need the same gravitas as the bricks and mortar outfit they’ve trusted since adolescence. Busy enough to want it to feel easy, yet millennial enough to want it to stop them in their tracks.

Sign me up!

Only please don’t.

What makes me think I’m not Starling’s ideal customer, despite the match in the above fundamentals?

  1. There’s the nuances in the positioning — the nuts and bolts that determine what you say. In this instance, Starling have decided that their ideal customer values beauty as a flagship feature in a banking app. That rules me out.
  2. Then, on top of the positioning, there’s the tone to reckon with — how you say it. That’s where things fell apart in my hypothalamus. I felt (mis)judged and attacked. The tone of those ads might resonate with someone who never spent days hiding in a toilet cubicle between 1999 and 2004, but I am not that person.

All in all, Starling did not win me over.

And that’s cool. Because maybe I’m not Starling’s ideal customer. I’m 70% sure that those ads just weren’t written for me. I will sit on my hands until a grown-up challenger bank that’s more on my wavelength comes along.

And on the 30% off-chance that I am in fact their ideal customer? Maybe Lloyds will put out an even more lousy ad, and I will eat my words and mosey on over.

So next time you have an allergic reaction to an advert, have a think. Was it written for you?

Corissa Nunn

Written by

Copywriter by day, poet by accident.

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