ABSTRACT

Perhaps we should begin by explaining why we are devoting a whole chapter to what makes ‘good’ advertising: because 90 per cent of advertising is bad and 90 per cent of advertising goes unnoticed and fails. No matter how often an ad is run, if it is uninspired, dull, boring and mediocre the audience will ignore it (even worse, frequent exposure to an irritating ad will actively annoy consumers). Place this against a backcloth of ever-increasing media clutter and audience apathy and it is little wonder that bad ads will not sell in today’s communication-saturated society. Ironically, as the effectiveness of advertising is reducing, its use in volume and variety, is increasing. The per capita consumption of advertising in the USA today is over $400 a year.1 This means that if a company was to allocate $1 million of ad spend next year to the American market, it would be hitting the average consumer with less than half a cent of advertising, spread out over the whole year – a consumer already exposed to $399.99 of other advertising communication. Of course, the USA accounts for over half of all advertising spend and the average American consumer is exposed to twice as much advertising as the average Canadian, four times as much as the average Briton and five times as much as the average French person.2 In this saturated environment, it will take some pretty slick advertising to attract the attention of the ad-fatigued tourism and leisure consumer, even more so when you think that most advertising is irrelevant to most consumers at any one time – it is only when you are about to book a holiday trip or buy a new tennis racket that you become aware of ads for tour operators and sports goods.