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.
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.
