The mystique of the full-page ad
Samsung has placed a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post apologizing for the withdrawal of its exploding smartphones and washing machines in a desperate bid to restore consumer confidence.
The full page ad comes soon after another totally unrelated one, this time published by Slack in The New York Times about the entry of Microsoft into its market with Microsoft Teams.
The origin of this type of announcement dates back to August 12, 1981 and Apple’s “Welcome, IBM. Seriously.” In 2012, Snapchat copied the idea when Facebook launched a clone of its messaging service, as did Rdio in 2015 when Apple entered what it considered its business.
The use of the full-page ad is undergoing an extremely interesting change: in the 1980s, it was a great way to make a big impact and possibly becoming one of the most talked about stories of the day; today it has more to do with the reflection and coverage that the ad gets in other media. In the case of Samsung, for example, there is no doubt that by publishing a full-page advertisement in the top three American newspapers it aims for its apology to reach many potential consumers. At the same time it is letting the world know it has the resources and communicative power to do so. But in reality, Samsung knows that much more people will hear about the ad indirectly, from websites and the social media.
For Slack, the strategy of welcoming a powerful competitor that enters its field is also to reach as many people as possible, but in a very different way: on the one hand, it is saying that it isn’t worried, because Microsoft will never be able to match its product. On the other hand, by doing something it has never done before, Slack shows that it is worried (who wouldn’t?), while of course creating maximum impact because other media will pick up on it. Obviously, a company the size of Microsoft does not need another much smaller — but by no means insignificant — such as Slack to give it visibility, but a number of pundits have suggested that Slack may have made a mistake with the ad.
Excluding Samsung’s, which was an attempt to deal with a huge crisis, I would say the most successful of this recent spate of full page advertisements is Snapchat’s. It is a relatively small company cheekily welcoming a giant, Facebook, and displaying the self-confidence that in the short term at least, it would win. And that is what happened: Poke failed to gain any traction in the market, while Snapchat kept on growing, and Zuckerberg tried again — and failed again — with Slingshot. A couple of days ago, in what now seems to be some sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder, Facebook again announced the launch of a new clone of Snapchat to try to unseat it in emerging markets, right after the launch of Instagram Stories, which so far seems to be the only attempt that is gaining some momentum.
Times change, and new competition appears, but the full page advertisement retains its importance, that “mystique of paper” that doesn’t reach many people directly, but is talked about in other media. That said, for younger people, who see newspapers as living fossils and an uncomfortable way to find out what is going on in the world, the full-page advertisement isn’t going to have much impact. How much longer will that mystique justify the use of the full-page advertisement?
(En español, aquí)
