Anti-Ads?

[awm]

Recently I've been seeing some advertisements that make me actively uninterested in the product they're advertising! I'm not sure if this is some subtle new advertising technique, or just bad, but here are some examples:

 

1. There's an ad at the movies for a phone game called "Best Fiends" where people are violently tapping on their phones in very inappropriate settings. At first I thought this was the typical movies "turn off your phone" message, but apparently they are actually trying to sell a game! Of course, seeing this makes me less interested and not more.

 

2. There's a series of TV ads for something called "Facebook Live" which makes it easy to share videos on Facebook. I don't really have any interest in Facebook in any case, but watching this commercial reminds me of why I don't like it (people "oversharing" totally uninteresting things about themselves, constantly and obsessively).

 

Anyway, I wanted to post this to see if anyone else has similar ad experiences!

[Vampyr]

Recently I've been seeing some advertisements that make me actively uninterested in the product they're advertising! I'm not sure if this is some subtle new advertising technique, or just bad, but here are some examples:

 

1. There's an ad at the movies for a phone game called "Best Fiends" where people are violently tapping on their phones in very inappropriate settings. At first I thought this was the typical movies "turn off your phone" message, but apparently they are actually trying to sell a game! Of course, seeing this makes me less interested and not more.

 

2. There's a series of TV ads for something called "Facebook Live" which makes it easy to share videos on Facebook. I don't really have any interest in Facebook in any case, but watching this commercial reminds me of why I don't like it (people "oversharing" totally uninteresting things about themselves, constantly and obsessively).

 

Anyway, I wanted to post this to see if anyone else has similar ad experiences!

 

They have inane songs about this thing called "Hive" which allows you to control your home thermostat remotely with your phone. The songs feature things like getting a piggyback ride from an armadillo on a skateboard, which seems to highlight just how useless the product is.

[1eyedjack]

They have inane songs about this thing called "Hive" which allows you to control your home thermostat remotely with your phone. The songs feature things like getting a piggyback ride from an armadillo on a skateboard, which seems to highlight just how useless the product is.

 

Personally I love Hive. Cannot comment about the adverts, mind - never seen them.

[ggwhiz]

Any ad for a specific drug on tv or in print.

 

I glanced through a magazine over the holidays and one had a large picture and over 2 pages there was 25% on benefits and 75% on side effects. Flipped the page and there was a further full page on how you might grow a third eye or a second head.

[barmar]

Any ad for a specific drug on tv or in print.

If you don't actually have the condition the drug is intended for, naturally you won't find it interesting, and will fixate on the negatives.

 

Most of the side effects of these drugs are very low probability, they're just forced to disclose them. If the likely benefits didn't outweigh the slight risk of side effects, they wouldn't be approved (especially in the US, where the FDA is incredibly conservative).

[barmar]

Recently I've been seeing some advertisements that make me actively uninterested in the product they're advertising! I'm not sure if this is some subtle new advertising technique, or just bad, but here are some examples:

They say there's no such thing as bad publicity.

 

Just getting the name out there is likely to help. If someone eventually is looking for a product of that type, they'll recognize a name that they've heard in an ad, but might not remember that the ad was annoying.

 

Of course, if you have no interest in that type of product in general, it doesn't really matter -- ads aren't likely to change your general attitude. I also find just about everything about Facebook useless, so I'm not inclined to care about Facebook Live (I haven't even seen the ads).

 

I also don't play mobile games (except BBO), but I imagine that for ardent gamers, the ad you dislike will be very attractive. The purpose of that ad isn't to turn non-gamers into gamers, it's to get gamers to buy that particular game instead of some other.

[Vampyr]

Personally I love Hive. Cannot comment about the adverts, mind - never seen them.

 

Why do you love it? Do you find it very useful to turn your heating up and down when you are not there?

[1eyedjack]

Why do you love it? Do you find it very useful to turn your heating up and down when you are not there?

Yes - a couple of days ago I was away at the office, and wife was getting drenched during postal delivery - wanted the heating boosted in time for her to get home. She texted me from her work and I did it remotely from mine

 

And with web app (or PC for that matter, you get vastly more options for timings than using a hardware thermostat. If you spend a bit more you can control room by room but I have not gone that far.

 

And you get reports of whether your system is underperforming or inefficient. And you can separately control the hot water. And you can separately control the lighting if you are away and want to deter burglars (OK there are random hardware methods for that).

[awm]

I also don't play mobile games (except BBO), but I imagine that for ardent gamers, the ad you dislike will be very attractive. The purpose of that ad isn't to turn non-gamers into gamers, it's to get gamers to buy that particular game instead of some other.

 

My wife was with me at the movies when we saw this ad. She spends quite a bit of time playing mobile phone games, but her reaction to the ad was pretty much the same as mine. Of course, I guess we could slice and dice the market more (i.e. she doesn't like games where you pound the phone screen so hard that you drop it in the bathtub and possibly damage it, or she doesn't go out to dinner with friends and sit there playing games the whole time... and therefore is not the target market). But it still seems kind of weird.

 

Another ad I remember from years ago was the "Head-On: Apply Directly to the Head" ad for headache medicine, where it seemed like the ad was trying to be so loud and annoying that it gave the people watching headaches. Certainly it succeeded in being memorable (but not in making me want to buy the product, and I do buy headache remedies with some regularity).

[cherdano]

1. There's an ad at the movies for a phone game called "Best Fiends" where people are violently tapping on their phones in very inappropriate settings. At first I thought this was the typical movies "turn off your phone" message, but apparently they are actually trying to sell a game! Of course, seeing this makes me less interested and not more.

I bet you wouldn't have bought "Best Fiends" without the ad, either!

 

2. There's a series of TV ads for something called "Facebook Live" which makes it easy to share videos on Facebook. I don't really have any interest in Facebook in any case, but watching this commercial reminds me of why I don't like it (people "oversharing" totally uninteresting things about themselves, constantly and obsessively).

I bet you wouldn't have installed "Facebook live" without the ad, either!

[Vampyr]

Yes - a couple of days ago I was away at the office, and wife was getting drenched during postal delivery - wanted the heating boosted in time for her to get home. She texted me from her work and I did it remotely from mine

 

And with web app (or PC for that matter, you get vastly more options for timings than using a hardware thermostat. If you spend a bit more you can control room by room but I have not gone that far.

 

And you get reports of whether your system is underperforming or inefficient. And you can separately control the hot water. And you can separately control the lighting if you are away and want to deter burglars (OK there are random hardware methods for that).

 

OK. I guess we never let our house get very cold because we have cats.

 

Controlling room by room seems very tricky; you would have to get some sort of device attached to your radiators, right?

[ggwhiz]

(people "oversharing" totally uninteresting things about themselves, constantly and obsessively).

 

I read about the low tech version where the guy just shouts out random things in public like what he had for breakfast and holds a picture of it over his head.

 

He has 3 followers, 2 security guards and a cop.

[kenberg]

I bet you wouldn't have bought "Best Fiends" without the ad, either!

 

 

I bet you wouldn't have installed "Facebook live" without the ad, either!

 

You have a point here. Maybe we could go back in time. I remember when we bought ground coffee at the store, maybe Folgers, maybe Maxwell House, maybe something else. The ad featuring a man congratulating his wife on being a "good little Maxwell House wife" precluded the possibility of us ever having that brand in our house again.

 

 

Largely I don't see ads on tv. Many things we watch don't have ads, and we record things that do so we can skip through them. The Redskins are playing today, hoping to make it into the playoffs, so perhaps I will watch that. But really, I don't give a hoot.

[Zelandakh]

Perhaps the Democrats could learn a few things from this thread combined with the rise of fake news, Create some charitable trusts under names like "Conservative Alliance" and the like and use them to create apparently positive Republican ads that show the Rep candidate off badly. It might take such tricks to find a way of communicating with the right-wing base...

 

In the wider market, it is difficult to see how this technique could gain traction other than, perhaps, brand image for a select few companies. That said, spreading false information as a marketing strategy is well known. The head of the board of my company was forced to step down from a previous job after it emerged that he had spent over a million euros on false reviews designed to boost opinions towards the company, supposedly without anyone else knowing about it *cough*. As was also seen with the fallout from the Ivanka flight incident, fake reviews are a cheap and effective way of putting a message across and causing a degree of difficulty to opponents. I doubt negative positive-ads will prove to be anywhere near so effective any time soon.

[Fluffy]

Usually when you don't understand what an ad is about you are simply not part of the target audience. Remember luxury cars, yatch, etc do not advertise on TV (people who can buy them are doing better things than watching regular TV)

 

I am out of practically every target audience as I hate being told to do something (buy, buy, buy), and I also hate companies wasting money on advertising instead of making the product better.

 

There is an ad that makes me switch channel everytime, it is the security alarm company whose every advertisement is about someone whose house has been broken into. Most advertisements try to sell hapinness or sex, this one is selling fear which I can't stand for.

[barmar]

Usually when you don't understand what an ad is about you are simply not part of the target audience. Remember luxury cars, yatch, etc do not advertise on TV (people who can buy them are doing better things than watching regular TV)

I suspect you don't watch much golf. Its main audience is rich old white men, and the main advertisements are for luxury cars, financial services, and ED drugs.

[Fluffy]

Golf is only on paid TV in my country.

[WellSpyder]

Recently I've been seeing some advertisements that make me actively uninterested in the product they're advertising .... I wanted to post this to see if anyone else has similar ad experiences!

I'm not sure whether you would describe election leaflets as advertising, but I had much this experience when we recently had a parliamentary by-election in our constituency - every time I looked at one of the leaflets that came through the door I wanted to vote for someone else.....

[blackshoe]

OK. I guess we never let our house get very cold because we have cats.

 

Controlling room by room seems very tricky; you would have to get some sort of device attached to your radiators, right?

What radiators? :-)

[barmar]

Controlling room by room seems very tricky; you would have to get some sort of device attached to your radiators, right?

You mean thermostats?

 

I live in a one-bedroom condo apartment, it has 3 thermostats: one in the bedroom, one in the bathroom, and one for the rest of the unit.

[helene_t]

Most adds are repulsive. They pretend to sell sex and sunshine rather than the product advertised.

 

Probably they work subconsciously anyway. I am only aware of a couple of instances in which I have actually bought a product after having seen an advert for it. One was a piece of jewelry, the other was a book. But it has probably happened dozens of times and I just forgot (or wasn't even aware).

 

After the fall of the Berlin Wall I read that advertisers would have to take a more cautious approach in East Germany since East Germans are not used to advertisements and tend to take the view that if it is necessary to advertise a product, it must be faulty. So no sex and sunshine and unverifiable adjectives, just plain facts about the products. This is not 25 years ago so probably by now the East Germans have become braindead consumer sheep like the rest of us.

[cherdano]

Probably they work subconsciously anyway. I am only aware of a couple of instances in which I have actually bought a product after having seen an advert for it. One was a piece of jewelry, the other was a book. But it has probably happened dozens of times and I just forgot (or wasn't even aware).

There is an alternative viewpoint. Until online ads, it was extremely difficult to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. (Of course it's more true for some form of advertising - especially "brand building campaigns" - than for others - say direct mail catalogues.) Perhaps not coincidentally,

• online ads pay much less than ads in traditional media, and
  
• they seem generally much more specific and factual than classical ads.
  

[ggwhiz]

http://brieflaugh.com/album/11-of-the-stupidest-as-seen-on-tv-products-ever/

 

On the in person front, I once worked a Christmas season in retail when they had a fluffy green thing at the cashes that when you pressed the button said "WHAZ UPPPP!".

 

Every time a kid hit it, a parent would scream "PUT THAT DOWN!". I offered to buy lunch for anyone that sold one... no takers.

[billw55]

Most adds are repulsive. They pretend to sell sex and sunshine rather than the product advertised.

 

Probably they work subconsciously anyway. I am only aware of a couple of instances in which I have actually bought a product after having seen an advert for it. One was a piece of jewelry, the other was a book. But it has probably happened dozens of times and I just forgot (or wasn't even aware).

 

After the fall of the Berlin Wall I read that advertisers would have to take a more cautious approach in East Germany since East Germans are not used to advertisements and tend to take the view that if it is necessary to advertise a product, it must be faulty. So no sex and sunshine and unverifiable adjectives, just plain facts about the products. This is not 25 years ago so probably by now the East Germans have become braindead consumer sheep like the rest of us.

It is now widely known that emotional manipulation is much more effective than facts and information. Chances are this was discovered by politicians before advertisers.

 

Also, advertisers don't care if they turn off, repulse, or anger viewers who weren't buying the product anyway. In fact it is often better to do so, that way they get some use out of you as publicity in internet forums.

[Winstonm]

The ads about the poor suffering animals always makes me wonder how much money could be going to help these unfortunate creatures when so much is being spent on television advertising and overhead. It's like they are showing moving pictures of sad animal faces in order to tweak emotions and then saying, now that you feel rotten about yourselves, send me some money and make yourself feel better!