The more the merrier?
I hope you managed to survive our recent cold snap. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this. Doh. And I’m sure during that time, sitting in front of the idiot box, you saw the recent A&W “Besties” ad. It features two young women, one who is giving her friend a driving lesson on how to navigate an A&W drive-through, served by that familiar A&W guy.
Well, I’m sure if you didn’t leave your seat during commercial breaks, there’s no way you would have missed it because of how many times the ad appeared each commercial break. I found it to be very entertaining and funny. And obviously memorable since I’m talking about it in this article. Never did I get tired of it when it came on, sometimes even during the same commercial break. In fact, I enjoyed it as I saw something different each time.
In the world of advertising-media speak, this is called “frequency”. Frequency refers to the number of times an ad is run, targeted at a specific target audience at specific time frames during a specific time period whether it be hours, days, weeks or months. In A&W’s case, assuming I fell into their target audience persona as someone who eats fast food on a budget, it was during the evening news, dinner hour and/or hockey games that it appeared and reappeared. I’m sure it runs on other channels at other times depending on who they are targeting at a particular time of day.
The role of frequency, whether it be on tv, radio, online or even print such as billboards, is to build brand awareness. Whether you’re selling a product or service, the idea is that the more your potential customer sees your brand, the more they will be able to recall or remember it. It’s message reinforcement. But when using frequency, the message or creative idea must be emotionally engaging. The viewer must be drawn into the ad whether it be through laughter (A&W “Besties”ad), anger (election ads), sadness (pet adoption), joy (diamond engagement rings), etc. It’s the emotional buttons that get pressed that build awareness and connection to your brand. Frequency in combination with creativity leads to memorability and immediate or future engagement by the viewer.
However, this approach can also do the opposite. It’s a fine balancing act between creativity and frequency that grows your brand. Creatively weak, lackluster, unemotional boring ads are not memorable. They make you go to the fridge for another slice of cold pizza. Ads that don’t leave an impression are a waste of your precious marketing dollars and you may as well spend your ad dollars on purchasing lottery tickets if you’re not investing in creative brand story telling.
If you’re going to engage frequency in your ads, make sure the creativity lends itself to the viewer wanting to see it repeated but not to the point of ad nauseam. People will talk about and share in conversation, emotionally creative ads.
Check out the A&W television spot at www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwPy7ry-PPU for yourself. The key to the success of any ad whether on television, print or digital is in its creativity. If it’s good, some will even take the time to write about it.
Until next time, keep it creative.
Cheers, mark.
Cheers, mark.
Cheers, mark.
