All PR is Good PR. But is it really?

Throughout human history, wars have been fought over scarce resources — wealth, land, oil, trading routes etc. However, in 2021, ‘user engagement’ and ‘attention’ is arguably more valuable than all of the above. Engagement and attention is probably the single most lucrative resource sought after by most tech and software giants today. The only reason this demand exists is because of advertising.

‘Advertising’ as an industry has existed since newspapers were a thing in the 1800s. This used to be a simple way to monetize certain works — art, journalism, entertainment etc. This industry boomed in a post World War II era consumer base, where people were looking for places to spend their money, and brands were ready to pay to put themselves out there. Fast forward to Mark Zuckerberg in 2018, informing dumbfounded US Senators that Facebook had accrued billions through advertising revenue alone.

With a larger number of people gaining access to the internet, and all of the platforms on it, the potential target base for advertising companies and brands have steadily grown. Today, entire professions and business models are designed around the ability to sell consumer engagement to brands. These brands are all willing to roll the dice on advertising and putting their image out into consumer consciousness.

When advertising space is bought out by a particular brand, they essentially leverage consumers’ attention to try and sell something to them. So, there exists an implicit need to advertise only relevant products to genuine potential customers. If a brand invests $100,000 into buying out advertising space on a website, or on YouTube videos, their campaign succeeds if even 5% of their ad views translates into actual sales. Although these margins of conversion may seem extremely small, brands still find value in making sure that their message is travelling through public consciousness, and try to stay relevant even when they don’t convert many of their ad views into tangible sales.

Even though social media and internet-based platforms are held up solely through money pumped in by advertisements, there’s definitely a dip in the value given to brands by spending on advertising.

Think about it, what kind of product are you more likely to buy? One which has the most catchy and well written advertisement on television, or one which your friend has used, which is recommended to you through word of mouth? Further yet, you may only choose to buy products that your favorite YouTubers or writers have reviewed favorably. So is there actually any use for traditional advertising?

Counterintuitive / Anti — Advertisements?

Firms and brands spend massive amounts of money running huge, aggressive ad campaigns for their products. This is usually on top of all of their existing development and sales costs. Blockbuster movies in Hollywood do this too — with their marketing budgets being almost equal to their entire cost of production.

When a targeted consumer looks at these ad campaigns (which undoubtedly took large amounts of time and resources to pull off), he/she may actually be dissuaded from indulging in that brand’s product or service. Because, if the firm has so much money to advertise its products, couldn’t all that money and resources have been used to make the product itself better for the consumer? Are large ad campaigns indicative of how good the product is, or how great it could have been if not for spending tons of resources on marketing. RayCon wireless earbuds may be a good example of this in practice. RayCons are priced like a $120 pair of earphones, but sound like a product worth half that much. Just take a guess where all that money went.

Whereas most advertisements are usually innocuous and easily ignorable, some brands choose to do the exact opposite. Aggressive advertising campaigns are all over the internet, and may be counteractive to the brand’s core purpose itself.

Think of a situation where you’d see billboards plastered with a new product, TV show or entertainer. Seeing such ads once or twice online and in real life may be great, and frankly good for your overall brand awareness. However, seeing the same ads again and again would probably cause you to disengage entirely from that product/service itself, which is counterintuitive to what the advertisement should be. An Anti-Ad, if you will.

A wise man once said “People are smart. They instinctively zone out when you show them what seems to be an ad”, and that couldn’t hold truer in today’s attention-driven online market. Great marketers and advertisers manage to strike a balance between making sure brand awareness exists, and ensuring that the target demographic isn’t annoyed by the ads.

So build your ad campaigns wisely, use good amounts of restraint while putting your brand out there. The last thing you’d want is for your brand to be labelled as “the one with all those annoying ads on Reddit and YouTube”.

And remember, all PR is good PR, until it isn’t.

Project Tinker is a Bangalore based startup aimed at helping ideators with the tools they need to build amazing ideas. To learn more about our services and philosophy, visit project-tinker.com