THIS ARTICLE HAS NO INTENTION OF CONVINCING YOU OF MY MARKETING STRATEGY SKILLS

Or: What effects does the rising anti-ad culture have on the race for attention?

The fight for consumer attention is getting more intense. More brands betting on anti-ad strategies to win. Midjourney and Canva collage

Lately, I feel like a lot more advertisements that don’t really appear like advertisements are entering the media stream, reaching us across channels. They do not feel like advertisements not because they appear so organic and natural (like past advertising critiques e.g. unmarked influencer ads) – the opposite is the case: To the untrained marketing eye, it might even seem downright amateurish what must have cost a lot of marketing budget.

However, one should not interpret the naïve appearance as harmless or less impactful. More than ever, anti-ads aim to attract the attention of their recipients in the faster-than-ever spinning race for the attention of consumers.

What exactly do I refer to when I say anti-ads? (From my understanding) anti-ads describe a variety of practices that oppose or critique traditional advertising methods and messages. While traditional advertisement communicates the benefits of brands, products, and services and aims for a positive resonance of its audience, anti-ads often confront with self-ironic messages, reality-driven images, or spark malaise. It’s often a bet with high stakes for the advertisers because it is a communication that either raises lots of attention and appreciation – or just many eyebrows.

This article gathers quite some good examples of the type of advertisement that I want to discuss today.

While this form of advertising has its roots decades ago, its increased usage and successful implementation by companies as a fundament of their communication strategy is rather new. Integrated anti-ad strategies based on a corresponding brand identity and a permanent presence across channels are replacing stand-alone special campaigns that temporarily change the narrative of a long-term story.

Before investigating what anti-ad embedding strategies look like, we make the little detour to ask: why anti-ads? Ian Forrester argues in his recent article in The Drum, “Gag reflex: why gross humor in ads can often leave a bad smell” that more traditional advertising is more effective in bringing out positive emotions and might create more buying intention than campaigns like the “Moldy Whopper” by Burgerking or Andrex’s “First Office Poo” and I believe that’s right. Truth is, that certain target groups are simply so oversaturated with perfect image, happy world communication, while being aware of a reality that looks different, that shiny promotion goes in and out without sticking. Beyond that: the too-perfect-image can cause after-purchase disappointment. (Immediately recalls those thick burger patties in old billboard ads... and the frustration after unwrapping one). Another advantage of anti-ads is the opportunity to differentiate your brand/ offering from (more traditional) competition.

And that’s where the genius of Oatly´s marketing strategy lies. I´ll keep this case study short, just because I don’t want to write article nr. 10.000 praising the (really good) marketing of Oatly, but there are two specific aspects I want to point out, making Oatlys anti-ads so successful and likable:

Oatly can leverage these different (from the norm) ads in its strategy so well because its product is different from the norm in its category. Oatly is the brand introducing oat milk as an alternative to cow milk to a wide audience. It is not only a different style of communication, but also how Oatly is as a brand and product. Beyond the funny, self-ironic communication, they enrich it with a fact-driven, strong voice of expertise around dairy products, food production, and environmental-/ climate protection (e.g. on Oatly Fans). This dual approach works (on me at least) and it’s a case where we can learn a lot about the kind of scenarios offering potential for anti-ads and what the embedding strategy around it can look like.

… This was just the intro of my article on the effects of anti-ad communication strategies. Sign up for my monthly newsletter and read about strategy approaches to benefit from communication like this in the full article.

Achieving objectivity in positioning and branding projects

Many stakeholders, high involvement: positioning and branding projects can be challenging - generated via Midjourney

Writing this article reminds me in nostalgic horror of the many times in rebranding-, refinement-, brand development-, positioning projects, in which initially well-structured and logical approaches got cast away by personal opinions and try-to-look-objective debates, that were clearly pushing individual preferences through the backdoor. 

It´s a phenomenon, that you can, you must count on in these highly emotionally charged projects, which usually involve multiple high-level yet convincing stakeholders, prepared to fight for “their baby”. Most likely, you won´t erase 100% subjectivity from the project but aiming for its minimal impact is worth the effort and will drive project outcomes directly. 

When we´re looking at the benefits of leaving personal preferences and taste behind and aiming for a max. objective approach, there must be a mutual understanding from all parties involved that goals of the project are: 

• Creating an improved brand perception, a better understanding of the brand´s identity among relevant audiences (which are usually the (potential) customers). Reasons requiring an improved brand perception can be e.g., a shift in positioning of the brand, a change in the company’s structure/ products or strong competition. 

and/or 

• Optimizing the functional usage of the brand (e.g. cheaper/ better brand management, adapting for digital space, legal issues). 

Tasking stakeholders to aim for mentioned goals with the development and execution of the brands heart surgery, the patients’ chances for a healthy, long life are significant higher, compared to a task force blurred in vision by the poison of subjective taste and a different agenda for the projects purpose. 

Bad practice: rebranding Twitter to X: 

• The reason for the painful rebranding from Twitter to X was the acquisition by Elon Musk, who has a think with X (SpaceX, his sons name, paypal previously was X.com). Officially the cause for change was to create a vessel for a Wechat-like super app. Many months later X is still mostly like Twitter and there are no signs of significant product changes. 

• The cognitive shortcut and (positive) associations that Twitter´s brand already provided to the world, got cut off. The value of the tossed away brand was estimated $ 4bn. (source: Forbes). 

• The new brand yet didn’t provide any advantages or benefits for users. The operational implementation was abrupt and confusing and beyond that, it’s still lacking acceptance: Media and users are still referring to Twitter talking about the platform. 

Having the right reasons/ goals for rebranding/ positioning (whatever change) steadily in mind, you can start moving into a direction with aligning methods and decision-making. 

But how to implement that mindset among stakeholders, who don’t necessarily have a marketing background or eventually have created the previous branding (“that has been so successful over the last 20 years…”) and are (most critical) higher up on the career ladder?  ..Warning: It probably won´t work without countless reminders to hold on aligned principals and goals but here are some foundations, that were essential to me sailing project-ships through tough weathers, ultimately leading to successful projects and brands:   

… This was just the intro of my article on how to archive objectivity in positioning and branding projects. If you are curious about eight hands on guidelines to ease your project, sign up to my monthly newsletter :)

Exclusivity everywhere, exclusivity (almost) nowhere

Exclusivity can have a strong leverage on consumers, if applied right. Generated via Midjourney

It’s a commodity to everyone who ever waited for a limited ticket- or product release, refreshing a website like a maniac to be eventually lucky enough to make a purchase: “Exclusivity” has the potential to be a strong leverage on consumer´s mind and behavior, boosting desire and therefore price of goods and services. Nowadays you read that word almost everywhere and find it in contexts that are the opposite of exclusive… or did I not understand something about that exclusive newsletter, that everyone can sign up for, that exclusive special offer to everyone entering the website, that exclusive edition, that was available everywhere …for years? Over time the word decreased in meaning and significance to me, even raising suspicion on reputation and quality of brands chasing me with their “exclusivity”. Yet exclusivity as a leverage on consumers desires works, since there are some brands from various industries mastering the trick over and over again. This article is an answer to the question on how exclusivity can become a relevant success factor in today’s marketing strategy. 

A foundation for that answer is understanding what precisely “exclusivity” is doing for consumers. Two important mechanisms behind the leverage are the human needs of “self-realization” and “belonging”. Both are major contributors to identity formation. For those who covered more basic needs, like physical wellbeing, understanding and representing unique identity is a live long mission, that drives our behavior in many areas of life, aiming to get one step closer to a more or less conscious target picture identity. Who are we and who do we want to be?  

Consuming certain goods and services can help us gain perception in relevant social environments as we want to be seen and as we see ourselves. Exclusivity can boost this benefit, helping those inside the exclusivity club to be more individualistic in self-realization and to belong more than others can.  

The value for those accessing exclusivity, lays within others not having this access. The higher an entry barrier is set, the higher a potential benefit from exclusive goods, services and brands for both, customer and provider.  

There are essentially two ways to create exclusivity: Price and availability. A price barrier simply restricts consumption to those being able to pay. Availability can be played out in various ways, such as local limitations, limitations based on consumer characteristics (memberships, top customers, etc.) and time of availability.  

“To make exclusivity do its job, it is key to match hight and kind of the entry barrier with the desired good/ service and the audience.”

Designing exclusivity means asking yourself: Does the target group want to make the respective effort to be part of the club and is the entry barrier an efficient differentiator between those who are in and those who are not. Going back to the exclusive Newsletter: The Newsletter is not exclusive, if everyone with an email address can simply sign up and all the contents are information that I can also find elsewhere. The Newsletter could be exclusive, if only people with e.g. a certain profession/ position can sign up and the contents can’t be substituted by internet research….

… This was just the intro of my article on exclusivity and how brands can profit from that leverage. If you are curious about my learnings and practical approaches, sign up