Advertising Serves Many Masters, Creating Unintended Results
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Advertising is getting to be a pretty complicated transaction these days. It serves many masters, and sometimes selling goods and services is the least important.
Often popular ads do more for the agency than the client. Or the messages are created with a higher purpose than just moving the merchandise. Or the ads serve as a jumping off place for a post-agency career.
Take Allstate Insurance’s “Mayhem” campaign as an example of ads that help the agency more than the client. It’s attracted a great deal of attention, but it hasn’t really moved the needle for Allstate. The insurer has lost market share for the past five years. As Crain’s Chicago Business pointed out, more ad spending puts more pressure on profits, “a fact not lost on investors wondering how “Mayhem” can garner so much buzz (500,000 Facebook fans and nearly 10 million YouTube views) without boosting Allstate’s sales.”
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