When Advertisers Over-Advertise
I
don’t have anything against advertising and have used it in various jobs myself, however, some companies appear to over-advertise which starts to feel quite intimidating. The photo of junk feels like the advertising I see every single day.
Adverts these days are everywhere. Whatever you do and where ever you go they are very hard to avoid; on social media, websites, television, on the bus, public toilets, public spaces, text messages, train stations, newspapers – it’s tough to shut them out of your life.
So, what happens when someone continuously sees the same, or a particularly bad, advert:
- Become burned out so much they numb to the content
- Turn off the TV losing viewers to a certain program or even channel
- On social media hide any future advertising from that company
- Block the company on social media sites
- Provide public angry feedback to the company creating a risk to their reputation or loss of potential customers
Companies control the rate of advertising that goes out, they should fine-tune it so customers don’t feel bullied into purchasing the products. Companies also control, somewhat, who their target audience is such as on Social Media. Hopefully, a company targets advertising to a cross-section of people who can benefit from their product, but you wouldn’t bombard someone who is in the senior age group for a product that is for teenagers. On a daily basis, I see many examples of mistargeted ads.
Who are the main culprits of over-advertising? Here are some examples:
- Wayfair – first time I saw the TV commercial I thought “moderately ok” but since they push that out every break I have to either mute the sound or turn the TV off.
- Smile Direct Club – the cheesy childlike branding is not only annoying but their social media team bombard people with a never-ending supply of copy and paste hard sell messages that feel like spam beating people into submission
- Pharmaceuticals – multiple commercials every break with annoying music and messages
- Conservative Party of Canada – really draining negative messages on the Space Channel which people watch to avoid politics
- Mattresses – for some reason, on the west coast of the US, advertisers think there is a huge market for bed mattresses for which we see multiple adverts in the same break
Many companies that over-advertise push so much income into the marketing department but fail to beef up customer service staff which is why you see so many negative experiences with the ones I mention above.
The reason why Ad Blocker type plugins have become so successful is partly due to the continuous bombardment of adverts we are all seeing these days. We shouldn’t need to use these plugins if companies moderate themselves.
Peaceful Restaurant
When we came back to Canada one of the places I really wanted to move to was White Rock. Why White Rock? Two main reasons really 1) it was by the sea so I would get the fresh air from the water, and 2) it reminded me of a typical British seaside resort, therefore, I would feel it would be a little piece of home in Canada. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be due to a number of reasons but pleased to live close by.
