I recently came across with this interesting article, written by Toygun Yılmazer from TBWA, bringing the idea of 'advertising for good’.
Working in the field of sustainability and circular business development, I was questioning how marketing and advertising, known as fundamental tools of consumerism, will be influenced by the global rise of social and environmental awareness and purpose brands.I have found some answers here.
(Click for the full article.)
Read my highlights below:
This signals a big shift in advertising. While there is a growing influence of technology on one side, there is also a huge increase in campaigns that work for the good of the society and humankind. More and more, brands and agencies choose to use their resources for campaigns that are not trying to sell a product, but contributing to the solution of a social problem.
Once in a while, everyone in the ad world questions his/her place in the grand scheme of things. In their daily lives, ad people view themselves as problem-solvers, storytellers or artists. The job is to find the most interesting narrative about a brand and then to create the most intriguing way to tell that story. But from the outside, advertising looks evil. It is very much associated with consumerism and manipulation. Compared to this feeling of guilt, ‘advertising for good’ gives a chance to the ad people to redeem themselves. They still do the job they love. But this time, their mission is to get the world talking and taking action about a social problem they care for. Most of these campaigns stem from real-life situations and stories of empathy.
People in marketing and advertising have the talent and expertise to capture people’s attention and change public opinion. Now thanks to ‘advertising for good’, those skills are used to restore universal values like equality, inclusivity and sustainability.
The classical advertising model of AIDA starts with Attention and then goes into Interest, Desire and Action. Without the first step of attention there is no action, i.e. we cannot expect people to buy. This holds true whether it’s about buying products or in the case of social good campaigns, about buying into ideas.
Marketing communications, however, is a separate field from corporate communications and these two are usually represented by different divisions in a company. Today, ‘advertising for good’ takes what used to be seen in the realm of corporate communications and turns it into a marketing communications tool. In doing so, it blurs the line between marketing and corporate communications.
Established brands such as ANZ that have no major problem with brand awareness and familiarity, should rather consider advertising a social cause than advertising their well-known product. Because more often than not, the key challenge today is connecting with the audience on a deeper level. With ‘advertising for good’ a brand is defining its values, but at the same time defining its audience, as people who care for the same values. Therefore, ‘advertising for good’ is an effective way to create brand relevance.This signals a big shift in advertising. While there is a growing influence of technology on one side, there is also a huge increase in campaigns that work for the good of the society and humankind. More and more, brands and agencies choose to use their resources for campaigns that are not trying to sell a product, but contributing to the solution of a social problem.
Once in a while, everyone in the ad world questions his/her place in the grand scheme of things. In their daily lives, ad people view themselves as problem-solvers, storytellers or artists. The job is to find the most interesting narrative about a brand and then to create the most intriguing way to tell that story. But from the outside, advertising looks evil. It is very much associated with consumerism and manipulation. Compared to this feeling of guilt, ‘advertising for good’ gives a chance to the ad people to redeem themselves. They still do the job they love. But this time, their mission is to get the world talking and taking action about a social problem they care for. Most of these campaigns stem from real-life situations and stories of empathy.
Plus, you can listen to this podcast for a deeper conversation.