Every year, there's a batch of brainwashing ads (yes, I mean BOSS Zhipin, Bole Wedding Photography, Mafengwo, and Zhihu's 2018 World Cup ads) that dominate screens and are met with unanimous criticism and condemnation. At this point, the creators of these ads appear, smirking: "Scold us, the more intense the scolding, the happier we are, because it proves the ads are effective," and "Advertising pursues effectiveness, not art or aesthetics." They pose as saints sacrificing their own reputation for clients' commercial interests, lamenting that the advertising industry is immersed in creative taste while ignoring client results, and making a big fuss. It's simply ridiculous. I certainly agree that the ultimate goal of advertising is effectiveness, achieving market goals and product sales. But the biggest problem with brainwashing ads is not their garbage quality or mindlessness, but their ineffectiveness. So stop deliberately misinterpreting, okay? Stop talking about aesthetics and taste here; face the problem— Brainwashing ads are simply ineffective! Awareness is not effectiveness**** This principle is too obvious—I know you, but that doesn't mean I'll buy from you. But there are always those who turn a blind eye and say, "Controversial ads are good; if people criticize you and scold you, it proves you've left a deep impression, it proves they remember you, and it proves the ad is effective." Is that... so? Then let's elaborate on this principle. In the traditional era, consumer behavior followed AIDMA. Attention—Interest—Desire—Memory—Action (purchase) When watching TV, a consumer notices an ad, becomes interested in the product, which further converts into purchase desire, then the consumer remembers the brand, and days later when going to the supermarket, they recall it and make a purchase. From this, we can see that the biggest problem in traditional marketing is that the two behaviors of watching ads and purchasing products are disconnected and cannot be synchronized, so remembering is crucial. Therefore, traditional advertising placed great emphasis on repetition, and brand awareness was important; if you couldn't remember, you wouldn't recall it at the time of purchase, and the ad would be useless. In the internet era, consumer behavior changed to AISAS. Attention—Interest—Search—Action—Share. There are two changes: First, if consumers become interested while watching an ad, they can immediately search to learn about the product and then place an order. With online media and e-commerce platforms, watching ads and purchasing can be synchronized. This means the importance of remembering declines; what matters most is triggering an immediate purchase impulse. Second, after purchasing and using, users can comment and share on social media, and this user word-of-mouth has a significant impact on later buyers. In the traditional era, consumers naturally had no channels or platforms to share; at most, they could only tell a few people around them verbally. In the mobile internet era, consumer behavior changed again to SIPS. Empathy—Confirmation—Participation—Sharing and diffusion. The biggest feature of this era is information explosion and product explosion. Correspondingly, consumer attention is unprecedentedly scarce. Simply shouting loudly to attract consumer attention is useless; only when consumers feel empathy and recognition, confirming that you are a brand that fits them, will they be willing to participate and play with you, and share you with more people. Through this evolution of consumer behavior patterns, we can see that merely making consumers remember is useless; the key is to make consumers have an immediate impulse, search and order immediately; and at the same time, make consumers feel empathy and recognition, willing to participate and spread. The latter two are clearly things brainwashing ads cannot achieve. Let's use data to slap faces directly. This is Zhihu's overall search index. It can be seen that since its launch at the end of 2010, Zhihu has been on an overall upward trend. Now let's extract the period from June 14, 2018, when the World Cup started, to December 31, 2018. Huh, why does it seem to be declining all the way? Master Ye, the creator of Zhihu's World Cup ad, publicly claimed at the China Advertising and Brand Conference in April 2019: "Zhihu ranks first in Apple's social app chart, rising from 119th to 11th in the overall chart." Nonsense. Look at the data— On June 14, 2018, Zhihu ranked 116th in the App Store overall chart, which is correct. But Zhihu only reached 9th in the overall chart on June 27, and then quickly fell. By July 14, before the World Cup ended, Zhihu had already dropped back to 88th in the overall chart, and 7th in the social chart. Do you judge effectiveness by the best day only? Now look at BOSS Zhipin, which Red Production boasted about to the skies. It's too tragic! After BOSS Zhipin's World Cup ad was launched, downloads kept declining. Where's the promised effectiveness? It's really time to talk to the boss. In terms of screen domination, topicality, and awareness, BOSS Zhipin and Zhihu's placements during the 2018 World Cup were undoubtedly good. But in terms of more direct effectiveness indicators like search volume and downloads, Zhihu and BOSS Zhipin were a complete failure. Times have changed, consumers have changed. Sticking to the brainwashing ad formula that hasn't changed for twenty or thirty years, thinking that advertising is about brainwashing, repetition, and being simple and crude, while ignoring the audience's reactions, feelings, and preferences, and still thinking it's effective—I can only say, it's too pathetic. In fact, as early as the 1960s, advertising master Leo Burnett had already said: "If you want to be different, you can put a sock in your mouth when you come to work in the morning." If someone came to the office with a sock in their mouth, you would indeed remember that person. But what you remember is "what an idiot." Even if you have a deep impression, would you be willing to interact with this person, trust them, and be good friends? You'd only stay far away, right? Brainwashing ads only pursue user memory, but don't care what users actually remember. Can such ads be effective? Hengyuanxiang's zodiac ads back in the day were the ancestors of brainwashing ads. So, dear readers, how many pieces of clothing have you bought from Hengyuanxiang over the years? The "effectiveness" of brainwashing ads is built on huge advertising budgets, with too low a return on investment**** If you say that BOSS Zhipin and Mafengwo's ads being remembered is not easy, after all, there are many ads you haven't remembered. Then to talk about the communication effect of advertising, we need to focus on two elements: A. The ad content itself (e.g., a 15-second ad or a print ad) B. The media costs spent to promote the ad content. The reason you haven't remembered most ads is simply that the money wasn't enough, the media budget was insufficient. Why did the three ads during last year's World Cup dominate screens? CCTV's World Cup ad package cost 165 million yuan per slot. Spending 165 million yuan in just one month—can it not make some noise? Are you a pig? And this is only the media cost; we haven't counted the endorsers for Zhihu and Mafengwo's ads, Liu Haoran and Huang Xuan, and their own traffic and topicality. Why is "No middleman to take the difference, second-hand car sales lead by a long shot" known to every household? Is the annual advertising budget of 1 billion yuan a joke? Guazi Used Cars' annual revenue is not even as high as its advertising costs. Folks, never joke with money. For an advertising campaign, awareness is the most basic and least technical indicator. Because there are ratings, reach, gross rating points, and a bunch of other indicators. How much you invest, how much exposure you get, how many people you cover—this can be calculated from the start. Brainwashing ads rely solely on hard spending to achieve results, and the results are entirely based on astronomical advertising costs. If you add the effect of brainwashing ads to the denominator of the huge media budget, then its return on investment is definitely the lowest. Because it has to spend money on each person multiple times to be remembered, and no consumer is willing to actively recommend or share the brands in brainwashing ads with friends and family. When you talk about effectiveness, why not also mention how much was spent on advertising, how many customers were acquired in total, and what the average customer acquisition cost was. Not mentioning the advertising cost and only saying brainwashing ads are effective is being a rogue. This ignores the company's advertising investment and takes all the credit for the ad's effect, which is too thick-skinned. Master Ye showed a chart in his speech, saying that Mafengwo's mobile index during the World Cup left Ctrip and Fliggy far behind. Seeing this chart, I couldn't help but laugh unkindly. Master Ye is really cunning. Using "Mafengwo" to compare with "Fliggy Travel" and "Ctrip Travel," why didn't you add the suffix "Travel" to "Mafengwo" but added "Travel" to Fliggy and Ctrip? (Dear friends, when you search for Ctrip, do you type "Ctrip" or "Ctrip Travel"?) Let's compare Mafengwo with Fliggy and Ctrip directly, slapping faces. Mafengwo, which spent nearly 200 million yuan, looks no different from Fliggy, which didn't invest in World Cup ads. So where's the effectiveness? Let's also look at Mafengwo Travel APP's download data. Oh my, it's too tragic! It's been declining since the World Cup started on June 14, 2018. Where's the promised 316% growth? At this point, Master Tang Seng asks: Why? Why? Why? **Brainwashing ads win short-term exposure but cause long-term harm Brainwashing ads gain exposure through short-term concentrated screen domination, creating topics and controversy, and indeed raising awareness in the short term. But they harm user experience and feelings, leading to a large amount of negativity, which is very detrimental to long-term brand management. Advertising godfather Ogilvy said: Every advertisement should be a long-term investment in the brand image. But for brand building, brainwashing ads are not an investment at all; they are completely harmful. They are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, draining the pond to catch the fish. Of course, the creative companies behind these brainwashing ads don't care; they take the money and run, and the long-term consequences are borne by the brand owners themselves. And let's just talk about "remembering" alone. I agree with Tony Robbins' view: information lacking emotion is not memorable. Even the hottest topic, after two days of discussion, fades away as people move on to other hot topics. If a brand cannot establish a sustained emotional connection with consumers, it will soon be forgotten. Finally, let's look at Bole Wedding Photography's search index over the past six months. See? As soon as the ad stops, it immediately reverts to its original form. What does this show? Brainwashing ads give no added value to the brand at all. Think about the situation during the 2019 Spring Festival when Bole Wedding Photography ads dominated. After the ad placement ended, the effect was exactly the same as before the placement. After this year's Spring Festival, Adquan selected the top ten Spring Festival marketing cases of 2019. I'll pick one brand to compare with Bole Wedding Photography. I won't pick top brands like Pepsi, OPPO, Honor of Kings, or Land Rover; I'll pick Oppein. Oppein aired a 12-minute heartwarming micro-film during the Spring Festival. According to the brainwashing ad school's view, this is too indirect, making people wonder if anyone would be willing to watch such a long film. This is the WeChat index comparison between Oppein and Bole Wedding Photography over the past 90 days (Jan 18 - Apr 17; this year's Spring Festival was Feb 5). It can be seen that after Oppein's Spring Festival campaign ended, the communication effect continued to accumulate and improve. For Bole Wedding Photography, as the Spring Festival placement ended, everything ended. According to classic brand equity theory, brand is the most important asset of a company. Brand equity components include brand awareness, brand recognition, brand association, and brand loyalty. Good advertising should continuously add to the brand's effect, while brainwashing ads only focus on short-term awareness improvement, but in the long run, they greatly harm brand recognition and association, and thus cannot gain loyal consumers. So, stop beating around the bush and talking about whether advertising should have creativity, taste, art, or aesthetics. The ultimate goal of advertising is effectiveness. And the fundamental problem with brainwashing ads is not that they are garbage, but that they are ineffective! Source: Kong Shou (firsteal13) Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted. China FMCG + Internet Professional New Media Dedicated to FMCG manufacturer transformation and channel digital solutions