Ad recycling?

I recently read with interest and amazement an article by Geoffrey James, “New Life for Old Ads” in the June issue of Business 2.0 Magazine (page 50).

In the article, James tells of a firm that specializes in reselling old advertisements to clients other than those for whom the ads were created. In this manner, small companies or companies on tight budgets can purchase pre-made ads that ran in different markets or that never ran at all and simply strip the name of the original company/brand out and place their own name/brand name in. The idea is that these "pre-aired ads" can be resold at a fraction of the production costs of creating a new, original ad.

While the idea of using “pre-aired” ads may seem appealing to advertisers, I think this practice demonstrates all that is wrong in advertising today.

The notion that a brand would communicate so little about its unique qualities that its name may be simply stripped out of an ad and another brand name put in its place is appalling a represents a vast waste of advertising dollars. Shame on the ad agencies and corporate marketers who allow such ineffective ads to be made in the first place! I think this practice also demonstrates that while simply capturing attention by using shock or clever creative may be alluring and raise awareness, unless you move prospects down the sales path once you have their attention and tell them what is unique about your brand, you are not building strategic awareness.

Marketers need to learn that everything they do should promote core brand values that only their brand offers. Viewers of ads should clearly understand the unique promises of value being made so there is no mistake what brand is being promoted—even before the name is mentioned. A truly effective ad is one that distinguishes its brand from all the rest and could never be mistaken for any other brand.
While small businesses may like the idea of cheap advertisements and ad agencies surely will love the additional revenue stream, don’t allow your brands to communicate so poorly as to become generic! That is exactly the opposite of what your ads are supposed to do.

Happy branding,
-Dave