Media is how it gets there. Message is what’s delivered. The media world has a horrible habit of delivering delicious divas adorning diamond studded dresses in beat up, rusty, loud, gas guzzling pick up trucks.
People on the creative side of media seem to get it. There are thousands of commercials that achieve the three ladders mentioned in a previous post. These ads: illicit a deep and meaningful emotional response; represent real value and not just the illusion of a good product; respect for the viewer’s desires, needs, pains, and wants. The byproduct of this creative achievement is that viewers often want more. This in turn instigates repeat views, or elevates the intent to purchase.
Millions are invested every year to achieve aesthetic and moral greatness through creative efforts, but what about how the ads are delivered? It seems like media is firmly entrenched in the dark side. So much so, in fact, that I’ve heard marketers actually claim that a media shouldn’t offer anything more than just a message. The argument goes something like: IF someone’s watching because of some other incentive, THEN they are not watching because they’re interested in the product. I suppose this argument would be valid, except that current messaging is almost entirely interruptive. In other words, people are watching, because a marketer/advertiser has somehow tricked the viewer into a 30 second spot or click-through.
In contrast to traditional interruptive broadcasting, what if tangible value could be achieved in the actual delivery of advertising? What if advertising media could represent the re-distribution and investment of wealth into so many of the issues that desperately need support and nurturing.
What if our bar were set higher?
Next time you see a billboard or an ad of any sort, ask yourself: “What is my time worth?”, i.e. “Has the investment of my time been truly met with the highest standards of investment and appreciation?” More often than not, the opposite is true. An ad manages to grab your attention, but for all the wrong reasons.
There is some hope however within the realm of cause-marketing and cause media. As I mentioned in a recent mediapost article, one such company leading the charge in terms of offering value to viewers through social investment is Toronto agency, The Hive Inc.
The example at hand is the multimedia Cadbury Bicycle Factory campaign. Users were invited through traditional and social media to visit http://bicyclefactory.ca. Once there, they entered UPCs from various Cadbury products. For every UPC, a bicycle part was installed (it takes 100 bicycle parts to create one bicycle). At the end of the three-month campaign 5,000 bicycles (that’s 500,000 engagements!!!) were “created,” and sent to a village in Africa. Green marketing was employed successfully as a way to get repeat engagement, attention, as well as product sales.
In the case of this particular campaign, interruptive media (TV) was used to drive users towards something they deeply cared about. The world literally became a better place, on the basis of Cadbury’s and the Hive’s creation.
It’s refreshing to see creative and engagement media used in such a noble manner. Hopefully, we’ll see more examples of this type of media as the sector emerges. Who would have thought that advertising could be associated with truth, beauty and goodness?