Safe aka. Boring advertising is a waste of time and money
Let's start with an example. What feelings does the ad awake?
Warmth? Disguise? Interest? Joy?
I bet the ad affected you somehow. Whether the feeling is
positive or negative doesn't really matter. Obviously positive
feelings are the ones we work for, but you can never please your
entire target audience.
"Good advertising penetrates the public mind with desires and
belief", said Leo Burnett once. Wise words. And they are also
very true with B2B advertising. Even an engineer is human. Although
it's somewhat hard to believe when surfing through white papers I'd
rather call information overload.
Why do we create marketing material that doesn't stand out?
Because we are afraid. The Brand Manager is afraid
that her precious brand will collapse - and her own job will vanish
in the same process. The Account Director is afraid of losing the
client. The safe way has always worked in the past, why change it?
And then the creative team is afraid that their ideas, their crown
jewels, will get the boot for the same reason. Why bother at
all?
We have created a perpetual motion machine. Should we stop
it?
