OPEN2 | Page 49

HUMOUR ME Jane Caro, Writer, Lecturer and Media Commentator ... The most important – and also the most neglected – part of persuasive communication is that it must contain something unexpected. This is the element that causes us to stop and pay attention. It disturbs the usual and shakes us out of our torpor. It is also the part of a communication that those who commission such things are most afraid. When I worked in ad agency creative departments, we often joked at how unerringly many clients would find the idea in an advertisement and demand it be taken out. That’s because the idea – in an advertising creative person’s terms – is the part of the concept that makes it unexpected, different, and, yes, a little bit disturbing. Sadly, without an element of the unexpected, messages sink without a trace. However deep your pockets, it is no longer possible to bore people into buying your product. These days, they will either physically reject your message by fastforwarding it, muting it, skipping it or – if all that fails – by simply ignoring it. We’ve never been so besieged by advertising messages and never been so less likely to notice them. Some advertisements, however, are transcending the technology to such an extent that they are becoming destinations in themselves. Their creators have realised that if you make the message relevant, compelling and engaging enough, your audience will also become your media. They will post your message on their Facebook page and tweet it to their followers. If they do that, discussions will emerge around your message and it will become not an intruder on the popular conversation (as so many advertisements still are) but both an instigator and an equal participant. That’s the Holy Grail for any message. For Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising messages, however, the pursuit of the unexpected in cynical, lazy or unskilled hands, has the potential to cause real problems. OOH messages have always had the advantage of being harder to ignore. They are able to intrude themselves into our field of vision simply by being a part of the landscape. You can’t even go to a public loo these days without someone sticking an advertising message on the back of the door! This is also their disadvantage. Because OOH advertisements cannot be avoided by passers-by, there is an added responsibility on advertisers in terms of their message. The advertisement that might be unexceptional in Zoo magazine, for example, is going to cause trouble 24 sheets high beside the M1. I spend quite a lot of my time as a media commentator apologising on the advertising industry’s behalf for ill-conceived posters. Part of the problem is a lazy attempt to gain attention via shock. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with shock as a way to include the unexpected in your message – just as long as the unexpected is relevant and appropriate. When it is borrowed interest, however, or just a cynical attempt to cause a furore and so gain free exposure, it may work in the short term but, in the long term, it increases pressure for creativity to be limited by legislation, which will damage us all. Advertisers, like any other participant in the public space, have two sets of responsibilities – to their client and to society as a whole. Yet, to get noticed, OOH advertisements still have to disturb the usual by doing something unexpected. The task is a tough one, but if you get it right, the rewards can be worth it. Create a message that disturbs your audience in a positive way and you can spend far less of your budget on buying media and far more on making a really first-rate message – be it for television, OOH, print, online or 45 /