Lost in the Trend

Take a look at this latest ad for Continental...

This campaign is an ideal example of being trendy for trendiness’ sake. On the surface, it looks effective. It has all the elements of a campaign that could work within its market. We can even make a list.

• Relatability: People of all walks of life talking about how hopeless they are at finding love, to make absolutely certain that no-one is exempt from identifying just how much the art of failing miserably relates to them.
  
  
• Emotional punch: Multiple-angle close-ups of said people going through a barrage of universally recognised emotions- including surprise, delight, desire, and admiration- spreads warmth through our cold, cynical bones.
  
  
• Appeal to sex: A series of Bachelor-esque, over-the-shoulder, shot-reverse-shots of flirtatious gestures including lip biting, eyebrow waggling, and general squirming kick us straight in the loins.
  
  
• Appeal to identity: Because everyone is valuable and deserves to be valued, and you too can find value by sharing your flavour profile with people who couldn’t care less and engaging with those who have the same.
  
  
• Storytelling: By circling the entire campaign back to a nostalgic desire or long-standing insecurity that can be resolved through the most basic of biological drives, a story is born, and there’s nothing audiences love more than a good story.

Now this is all well and good. These elements are all effective in their own right, and to not include at least one of them in a campaign tailored to the young and directionless and attention-starved could spell instant death for your brand. There’s just one issue.

What does any of this have to do with Continental?

Oh yeah, there's definitely a connection here...

Without the proven effective methods of advertising that have been fine-tuned over decades to rocket brands to success, this campaign falls totally flat. Without them, this campaign is 66,000+ views and 12 comments with even less ‘likes’.

Let’s make a list of elements that Continental hasn’t accounted for.

• Branding: Non-existent. There’s a half-second shot of the logo at the end? I guess that’s enough to hit targets.
  
  
• Positioning: Millennials…? Or something?
  
  
• Targeting: Uh, how many times can I say “millennials” before the marketing department gets suss...
  
  
• Incentive: Aside from being more motivated to order take-out or perhaps put some effort into pulling together the pieces of my shattered love-life, I can’t see much of any reason to buy Continental anything. There’s a call-to-action, but it’s barely related to the product at all.
  
  
• Context: Hey market research; do people really ponder the existentials of life on a lazy Tuesday afternoon in aisle five? They couldn’t possibly just want whatever’s cheap- whatever they’ve seen and used before that they know works- whatever’s most convenient and in arm’s reach and satisfies whatever it’s designed to do- which in Continental’s sake is presumably stew in a microwave for 90 seconds and taste like shit- right?
  
  
• Distinctiveness: Perhaps the biggest caveat. In the age of marketing by what’s trending, being different is being the same as everyone else.

The gist is, being trendy and attractive and relatable without actually advertising is comparable to sticking your head in the artisanal ground and yelling about how much kale it could sprout.

Enough for a smoothie stand.

There will always be backlash against unabashed, obvious advertising. There will always be people who rally against its manipulative, “mind-altering” practices. There will always be experts declaring for the umpteenth time that consumers are more receptive to advertising that doesn’t look or feel or taste like advertising, but instead like home-grown success stories.

This doesn’t mean that traditional methods don’t work, because they absolutely still do. If they didn’t, we’d put a lot more thought into what we buy and consume and a lot less thought into how it shapes our identity.

Us marketing folk have neither the money nor patience to sacrifice what works for what trends.

a.ce