Sam Walters.
In a hyper-stimulated media environment, Sam Walters, GM of Consulting at Cubery, explores why irritation can drive memorability, where it fails, and why strong branding remains paramount.
For decades, “irritating” was the ultimate criticism of advertising.
Annoying was viewed as ineffective. It implied shouting over substance, volume over craft. The “gold standard” became happiness: make people smile, make them feel good, make them like the brand a little more. In a slower, calmer media world, that logic held.
But that world is long gone.
Today, we are all permanently distracted. We scroll while watching, watch while half-working, and half-work while absorbing a constant stream of notifications, headlines, and content designed to pull us somewhere else. Doomscrolling is the default, and our attention spans are not just shorter—they are completely fractured.
Seen through that lens, the biggest threat to advertising is not irritation. It is indifference.
Every quarter, The Cubery Hot List is published. Not a popularity contest, nor a verdict on creative quality, but a read on which ads have lodged themselves most firmly in people’s memories. And sitting among the emotionally rich, beautifully crafted work is an uncomfortable truth: some of the most unforgettable ads are openly described by people as “annoying”.
Too repetitive. Too loud. Too silly. Too much. It wouldn’t be controversial to say that DiDi falls in that bucket.
In another era, that would have signalled failure. Today, for some brands, it is the price of being noticed at all.
We’ve over‑romanticised “positive” emotion
One of the industry’s blind spots is how narrowly we define “good” emotion. Happiness has become the default objective, as if the job of creativity is to leave people feeling uplifted in the moment. But happiness is only one emotional response, and in a saturated media world it may not be the most effective. Pleasant advertising is, after all, pleasantly easy to ignore.
Irritation, by contrast, disrupts rhythm and forces the brain to register something as different—which is the foundation of memory. Not enjoyable, necessarily, but memorable. In a world engineered to keep us scrolling, subtlety is often invisible.
A necessary clarification: Irritation is a side-effect, not a strategy
I have some reservations about arguing for more irritating advertising. That is not a noble position. None of us want our attention constantly hijacked, none of us want to be phone-addicted, and yet this is the environment advertising must operate in.
This is not an endorsement of the system; it is an acknowledgement of reality.
Advertising competes with everything else that has learned how to steal our attention. Expecting brands to whisper politely in that environment is, quite simply, unrealistic.
What is realistic is accepting that advertising designed to be distinctive, unavoidable, or creatively exaggerated may generate annoyance as a by‑product. The ads people remember are rarely irritating by accident; they’re irritating because they commit, relentlessly, to a single idea. They repeat a phrase until it becomes cultural currency. They lean into tone or character until it borders on absurdity.
Push distinctiveness far enough and, yes, it can slip into irritation.
And when done with intent, that can be powerful.
Think of the “Not happy, Jan!” era. Or the operatic absurdity of GoCompare. Or the cultural wormhole Telstra’s “Wherever We Go” created. People groaned, quoted, complained… but ultimately remembered the brand.
There’s a strange, almost affectionate relationship that emerges when irritation tips into fame.
Where it fails: When the brand disappears
The Cubery Hot List also offers some cautionary tales. Some have certainly nailed the “memorability” bit but failed on the equally important “branding” component necessary for building and shaping long-lasting mental structures.
In those cases, irritation has done its job for generating attention but failed at the more commercially useful task of brand building. Put another way, if irritation detracts from how clearly the advertising looks and feels like the brand, or from how well it aligns with the existing mental constructs people have around it, then it stands to win creative accolades but will fail to deliver the desired brand impact.
Equally it’s not the right strategy for every brand. If the job is trust, reassurance, or premium connotations, irritation is usually the wrong tool. If the job is fame, mental availability, or breaking through a low-interest category, it can be brutally effective.
Ultimately, the real lesson is not “be annoying”. It is “be unmistakable—and unmistakably yours”.