MELBOURNE: The Carlton Draught Big Ad has won yet another gong after being dubbed the nation’s number one ad in a recent survey.
Melbourne’s Onion Communications said its survey found the hugely popular ad was so successful because it treats the viewer with intelligence and rewards them with a joke in exchange for their attention.
Onion Communications managing partner Richard Patterson said like all good advertising, the Big Ad hits a nerve and laughs at other ads as well as itself.
The national survey was carried out in October via 1200 telephone interviews - split evenly between male and female. Called OzWatch, the survey will be distributed to the ad agency’s current clients and be used for future marketing purposes.
Patterson said the likeability of the ad also likely translates into sales, saying there is enough global research to suggest in the case of fast moving consumer goods, people who like a commercial "a lot" are more likely to be persuade by it than people who simply felt neutral.
“As technology allows consumers to skip ads on interactive TV, advertisers must adapt or die to the changing market,” he said.
Patterson said it was worrying that some of the nation’s biggest spenders on advertising, such as Myer, Ford, Holden, the big banks, Nestle, Mars, government advertising and Qantas, didn’t even rate a mention in the survey.
“This leads us to only one conclusion: if these brands agree with the sentiment that likeability is an important factor in cut-through and sales generation, then according to our research, these advertisers are not achieving it,” Patterson said.
“I can predict phone calls from both agencies and clients not on this list, who will be quick to quote both sales figures and pre-testing studies defending their ads. I have one thing to say to them. If they had managed to communicate their existing strategies with an execution with more creative and popular execution, then it stands to reason that their advertising would be more powerful and their sales figures more impressive.”
It is likely the survey, which has been conducted a couple of times in the past, will become a semi-regular offering for the agency.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.