Month: February 2010

I suspect that there are two types of ads:

1) Ads that draw your attention to stuff, and maybe sell it

2) Ads that act as background noise to constantly remind you of a companies or products existence, so you recall it at a much later purchase time.

My ads (and likely ANY indie game ads) fall into 1). We hope you see the ad, read the ad copy, click it, and try the demo, then buy the game. Ha! we hope…

But look at TV ads. Pay attention to the next group of TV ads you see, and count what percentage of them are ads for products you haven’t heard of, or companies you don’t know about. I bet its zero percent. These ads are either shown 10 times a day or not at all, because they are all type 2) ads. They don’t work on their own.

The best examples (and the most annoying) here in the UK are car insurance comparison websites. How many can you name? Try it (if you are a brit )

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I bet you named gocompare and comparethemarket.com. And when was the last time you needed to get a  competitive car insurance quote? On average 6 months ago, if at all. These ads work like  the ads for directory enquiries numbers here in the UK. You will notice that there is little or no actual information in them at all. I’ve seen 100+ adverts for mazumamobile.com, and have no idea what they said. They only really need to say a single thing:

mazumamobile.com

And that will eventually stick in your head.  The majority of  TV ads are semi-ignored, absorbed in our peripheral vision, or maybe just overheard from another room. Ad designers know this. That is why TV ads are so annoying and seem to be targeted at idiots. The content is, sadly, irrelevant. All that matters is the name. That name can stay in your head for decades. If the name sucks, you need a tagline. If you are 30+ in the UK, do you remember these?

“I’m a secret lemonade drinker”

“Made to make your mouth water”

“Helps you work rest and play”

If you EVER saw these ads, I bet you know the products, now, even fifteen-twenty years later. Scary isn’t it?

One of the small number of companies I own shares in is Marks And Spencers.  One of the reasons I own them is they have a flipping superb ad agency working for them. One that we will remember years later,

Remember, this wasn’t just a blog post. This was a Marks and Spencers Blog post :D

I wish my ads were that good…

If this is right:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/Inside_ms.mspx

Microsoft have $58 billion revenue a year and 92,000 employees.

The average revenue per employee is thus $630,175 a year.

Holy shit.

I must remember this the next time I read some microsoft bashing from linux or google fanboys. Microsoft isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.

I restarted some of my old ads for my politics sim Democracy 2. I’m just trying to see if they still generate more sales. This is a game that has surprisingly good sales, even over 2 years after it was made. It’s never going to be #1 anywhere, some portals still won’t even sell it, but it was well worth making and definitely a profitable game.

TBH I have no idea why sales of it have recently been so good. It might be the’free Democracy 1 for Maine and Michigan students’ thing. (I must look up here the sales are from. I wish BMT had better reporting…). Or maybe its the fact that the US has upcoming midterms and the UK an upcoming election?

Either way it’s welcome…