John Lewis attracts attention and charities get rejection
Research has revealed that brands favoured by marketers are close to those admired by consumers, and charity advertising has a negative effect on engagement.
John Lewis has been ranked the number one brand with the most impressive recent advertising among senior UK marketers, Apple came in second and Virgin third, in a list compiled by research company Grupo Consultores UK (GCUK) from interviews with more than 200 marketers.
Craig Inglis, marketing director at John Lewis, says that marketing and consumers get excited when brands are innovative, deliver on brand promises and engage on emotional levels. I certainly got sucked into the John Lewis Christmas campaign of 2011, showing a young boy counting down to give his parents a gift, rather than materialistically waiting, as I do, to receive a huge pile of presents on Christmas morning.
Even Apple with its Siri advertising tries to connect with consumers on an emotional and practical level, with requests to remember birthdays and recipes, and showing a man asking Siri the time in London so he can call his wife/girlfriend while he’s abroad.
At the opposite end of the engagement scale we have charity advertising. According to the Consumer Connections Survey seen by Marketing Week and carried out by Carat, almost one in three people reject charity marketing. At 31 per cent, it is slightly above the number of people actively rejecting financial services marketing, which stands at 28 per cent.
Also, according to research by Ipsos/Mori for the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) 30 per cent of children aged 11-16 said they had been bothered by a charity ad in the last 12 months, mainly because they were sexual, violent and/or scary. It would seem that charity organisations are evoking the wrong kind of emotions when it comes to their advertising.
