Just because it’s annoying to you doesn’t mean it’s annoying to everyone. It’s very likely you’re not their target audience. Also, even if a commercial annoys you, it can still generate brand awareness and make you remember that brand next time you’re shopping for something in that industry. Finally, often the ad creators just mess up. There are a lot more bad ads than good ads out there.
Most ads are about brand recognition. When you go to the store to buy some product you are more likely to choose a product that sounds familiar rather than some “suspicious no-name knockoff”. You can test it yourself by going to store and looking at products you never never (like diapers if you don’t have kids), some products will seem better than others because you recognise a brand even though you know nothing about diapers.
I’m not sure if you were around in the 90’s, but a prime example of this is the [Mentos commercials](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLL8jARrdTQ) back then. So weird, so cringy, so parodied…but because they generated huge sales for the company
Also think Trump…who was a washed out, unsuccessful businessman who’d squandered the 500 million he got from his dad. All the fucked up crap he does, all the crazy shit he says, the more times he’s indicted…got him elected despite his questionable past, and has kept him in the news and popular all these years
It’s actually pretty simple.
Sales numbers.
With modern capitalism and think tanks, you can hate the way things are or think you know better, but at the end of the day, evolution in business comes down to one simple idea, maximize profits and minimize costs.
Commercials are overwhelming and annoying because there has been sufficient evidence that a bombardment of cheap, annoying commercials are more profitable and cost effective than a few, high quality, well received commercials.
The psychology is that, the people dumb enough to buy whatever random shit they see on the street or TV are their audience. Anyone smart enough to care about the quality of a commercial is most likely going to put research into their product choice and spend their money wisely.
20+ year advertising hack, here.
Advertising is made almost exclusively by ad agencies. Ad agencies run on a service model. I.e., you do what your client tells you to.
Your client is always a group of marketers and a brand manager who are all terrified of their bosses—and each other.
The remedy, they feel, is to demand you, the agency they hired, “break through” with content, which today, usually just means annoying the crap out of people, because it’s the only thing all those terrified clients can agree will work.
Which, unfortunately, it does.
Every crap ad starts out awesome, interesting and—hopefully—compelling. An novel ad like that *might* move the needle 5%—or it might move it 0%, which means all that money spent is lost and everyone loses their job.
However, if a really annoying, weird, hack job of an ad that pierces the dumpster fire of a media landscape we all live in will *guarantee* a needle move of 2%, those terrified clients are going with that 100% of the time.
Tl;dr: capitalism
Latest Answers