The AdNews Ngen blog: Dude, where's my CTA?

Do you ever find yourself standing in front of a wall of washing powder in the supermarket evaluating each product for its cost, attributes and brand stance before grabbing the one closest to your confused head and running for the freezer section?

Sometimes when faced with a barrage of choices – human beings revert to instinct and tend to lean towards their gut feeling. If the elements proposed are able to be digested and sifted through to make an educated and informed choice, our brains are able to process thought and ascertain the best decision. If that is not the case we tend to base our priorities on past experience and comfort – meaning we make choices we are familiar with and that don’t pose great threat or risk.

With this in mind – is there a chance the abundance of choices we have to respond to advertising will cause us to react in a similar way? Can we see the proverbial forest through the trees and understand the choices we are given and make the best decision?

There is rarely a TVC these days that doesn’t contain the well known little round cornered blue f in a box. We’re starting to see more and more call to action options for consumers called out and made prominent in ad space. Given the amount of commercial messages we are exposed to on a daily basis it may not be a bad thing that we have options about the way we interact with brands – if it wasn’t for social platforms there would be very little UGC opportunities for consumers and there’s a chance our brands would lack the ability to really offer a point of difference in promotion amongst their extremely product-similar competitors.

I’m not trying to discount the value of multiple call to action channels on single ad formats – I think there may well be room for this kind of approach in certain industries, amongst certain brands, and particularly when reaching certain audiences. I just wonder if having all that choice will actually have a deterrent effect on some consumers - leading them to less action than if they were faced with only one option.

If we assume that consumers need to be told in clear detail what their required action is, of course we will never try new approaches and challenge consumers’ way of thinking and interacting with brands – which is an integral part of most successful and exciting campaigns. We would also not want to assume that the majority of consumers cannot handle the choices thrown at them, process decision making, or have the ability to mentally toss out unnecessary options.

However; you may not be alone next time you see a row of symbols on a billboard and make a conscious effort to think about how you will take action to hunt out more information. Maybe I’ll tweet at them/to them/about them… or watch their YouTube chann- wait, wait, they have a Facebook page. I could just type in the URL... sh*t  I’ll just Google it.

Tegan Emmerson
Ikon