Is a great creative idea still great if it adds no value?
Late last year (December 2007) in an FT article Cadbury’s suggested that the “Gorilla ad” had played a major part in helping to raise its sales in Dairy Milk Chocolate.
TNS recently did some work for Marketing Magazine that looked at the biggest brands in the UK by sales.
One of the most interesting facts that came out of it was, that although Dairy Milk had a huge profile and PR success with the award winning Gorilla advert, they actually lost market share, posting growth results below the market rate of 2%. Galaxy on the other hand grew 12%!
Jan Jesenovec from TNS said that “advertising will not significantly increase your sales…it simply reinforces the positions of big brands”. I think the Gorilla ad is a great demonstration of this at work.
I personally loved the Gorilla ad. I thought it was bold, different, unexpected and had great stand out but I am not that surprised it seems to have had zero impact on sales.
Just like many others, I stood around the water cooler at work talking about it and emailed my friends the You Tube video link. Did it make me buy any more Dairy Milk…well errr no. I thought it was great entertainment but it did not make me feel like buying a chocolate bar, let alone Dairy Milk. What it did do, like many others, was make me want to talk about the piece itself – very much like a great bit of artistic work, a great film or a good book.
In doing so, the ad became more about the Gorilla than the brand or the chocolate bar. My emotional connection was with how “clever” the ad was and not with what it was ultimatly looking to sell me (that is unless Cadbury’s is moving into the entertainment business and out of the chocolate one).
When you look at Galaxy on the other hand, it is aimed squarley at women and plays on the soft seduction of chocolate. The emotional connection is clearly seductive in the way you visually enjoy the emotional sensation of the chocolate. They are clear in what they are saying to you and it’s all around the chocolate experience.
Fundamentally, it seems that the Cadbury’s work by Fallon failed to generate sales. So was the Gorilla ad worthy of “Top Dog” at Cannes, or some of the other awards it has picked up in the last few months? In my opinion I don’t think it was. Great advertising creative is there to serve a purpose and, more often than not, that is to generate revenue in one form or another. If you don’t do that, you sort of miss the main underlying objective of the brief. In this mad world we live in, at the moment making sure that the work delivers to the bottom line, is going to be even more important and something that many creatives are going to need to pay more attention to.
CMO’s of today are measured on their financial results that positively hit the bottom line, not on the number of trophies and paper weights they have on their desks. Ultimately, if they don’t deliver, then fantastic creative awards are just extra stuff to pack in their box as they get their P45.
The best creative is about results, not awards and a great creative idea has to first of all deliver the former.
