OPEN 2

HUMOUR ME
Jane Caro, Writer, Lecturer
and Media Commentator
...
The most important – and also the most
neglected – part of persuasive communication
is that it must contain something unexpected.
This is the element that causes us to stop and
pay attention. It disturbs the usual and shakes
us out of our torpor. It is also the part of
a communication that those who commission
such things are most afraid.
When I worked in ad agency creative
departments, we often joked at how unerringly
many clients would find the idea in an
advertisement and demand it be taken out.
That’s because the idea – in an advertising
creative person’s terms – is the part of the
concept that makes it unexpected, different,
and, yes, a little bit disturbing. Sadly, without
an element of the unexpected, messages sink
without a trace. However deep your pockets,
it is no longer possible to bore people into
buying your product. These days, they will
either physically reject your message by fastforwarding
it, muting it, skipping it or – if all
that fails – by simply ignoring it. We’ve never
been so besieged by advertising messages and
never been so less likely to notice them.
Some advertisements, however, are
transcending the technology to such an
extent that they are becoming destinations in
themselves. Their creators have realised that
if you make the message relevant, compelling
and engaging enough, your audience will
also become your media. They will post your
message on their Facebook page and tweet it to
their followers. If they do that, discussions will
emerge around your message and it will become
not an intruder on the popular conversation (as
so many advertisements still are) but both an
instigator and an equal participant. That’s the
Holy Grail for any message.
For Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising
messages, however, the pursuit of the
unexpected in cynical, lazy or unskilled hands,
has the potential to cause real problems.
OOH messages have always had the
advantage of being harder to ignore. They
are able to intrude themselves into our
field of vision simply by being a part of the
landscape. You can’t even go to a public loo
these days without someone sticking an
advertising message on the back of the door!
This is also their disadvantage. Because
OOH advertisements cannot be avoided by
passers-by, there is an added responsibility
on advertisers in terms of their message. The
advertisement that might be unexceptional
in Zoo magazine, for example, is going to cause
trouble 24 sheets high beside the M1. I spend
quite a lot of my time as a media commentator
apologising on the advertising industry’s behalf
for ill-conceived posters.
Part of the problem is a lazy attempt
to gain attention via shock. There is nothing
intrinsically wrong with shock as a way
to include the unexpected in your message –
just as long as the unexpected is relevant and
appropriate. When it is borrowed interest,
however, or just a cynical attempt to cause
a furore and so gain free exposure, it may
work in the short term but, in the long term,
it increases pressure for creativity to be limited
by legislation, which will damage us all.
Advertisers, like any other participant
in the public space, have two sets of
responsibilities – to their client and to
society as a whole. Yet, to get noticed, OOH
advertisements still have to disturb the usual
by doing something unexpected. The task is
a tough one, but if you get it right, the rewards
can be worth it.
Create a message that disturbs your
audience in a positive way and you can spend
far less of your budget on buying media and far
more on making a really first-rate message
– be it for television, OOH, print, online or
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