Some thoughts from Joseph Frydl in an Ad Age Viewpoint piece today on the trend for greater engagement of the audience in popular entertainment and the necessity for advertising and [I'll add] other forms of social and health communications to take note.
Successful brands compete for attention with the increasingly sophisticated content that surrounds them. They ask for some form of 'cognitive engagement' -- maybe even a little imagination from their audience. We might have heard a lot about Dove's 'Real Beauty,' Sega's 'Beta 7' and Audi's 'Art of the Heist,' but the fact remains that they are all recent standouts precisely because they asked the audience to think a little bit. Dove provoked a referendum on the nature of feminine beauty. 'Beta 7' and the 'Art of the Heist' took for granted the ability of the audience to follow and enjoy a complicated narrative thread. They didn't connect all the dots.
How many times do brand managers ask advertisers to be 'more hard-hitting' with a particular piece of communication? This directive seldom means 'be more imaginative' or 'be more provocative.' Most often, it means 'be more obvious.' It seems we're being asked to club people to death like so many baby harp seals with a blunt-force object stripped of any imagination while the true communication breakthroughs lie at the other end of the imagination spectrum.
Technorati Tags: Advertising, Cognitive Engagement, Health Communications, Pop Culture
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