Image: The Mill
My personal love affair with advertising began many years ago when I saw a commercial featuring “the man your man could smell like.”
I always thought advertising was boring. Prints and visuals were just extraneous visuals in our lives that didn’t get in the way but didn’t really matter, and all commercials did was take time away from the thing that you actually wanted to watch. But after seeing the aforementioned commercial from Old Spice, and many more commercials like it from the same brand, my mind changed.
Old Spice commercials are fundamentally nonsensical. In one, Terry Crews is trapped in a painting while his rival plays chess with a lion. In another, a pilot is panicking as he flies through a storm, but a beautiful woman instructs him to put on Old Spice grooming products. After doing so, he regains his composure and crashes perfectly into the woman’s house, where a romantic dinner has already been prepared for the two of them.
These commercials make no effort whatsoever at explaining why Old Spice is logically the best deodorant, but they are hilarious, and every time I see one, I fall more and more deeply in love with Old Spice as a brand. These commercials showed me that advertising can be exciting and entertaining, but without the internet, I don’t believe they ever would have existed.
The rise of the Internet has led to the birth of a new culture. The internet gives anyone with a computer an equal shot at sharing their content, which means unique styles that had never been seen before, mostly because they weren’t mainstream enough, were able to come into the light. The style that is reflected in the Old Spice commercials was born out of the unique content that the Internet has allowed for. It is difficult to describe this style, but it is something like this: “fast-paced green screen intensive non sequitur comedy.”
Before the internet, this style would not have been accepted. At it’s very core it is strange and seeks to defy all conventions. But younger generations raised with the weirdness of the internet have adapted to it, and as a result, brands like Old Spice have been able to come in and capitalize. Commercials and videos like these showed me how cool advertising can be, and none of it could have existed without the culture created by the internet.
This isn’t the only way the internet has changed advertising. Platforms like YouTube and Facebook have stolen massive quantities of viewers from cable television, and streaming services like Netflix and HBO have taken even more. This means that classic TV ads aren’t worth nearly as much as they were, and online marketing has become essential. Thus, appealing to the aforementioned internet culture is incredibly important, but it is not easy.
If a brand attempts to be trendy and “appeal to the kids” when they are out of touch with reality, they will be viewed very negatively. An example would be advertisements from people like Tai Lopez. Lopez gained a huge amount of negative attention for his ads, but because it was still attention, a bunch of other people started trying to copy him. But because everyone already saw Lopez as a scam, any video styled after him is viewed as a scam too, so at least for me personally, there is no way I would trust the advertiser
The Internet has changed advertising and public relations forever, so for a brand trying to market itself well, they must connect with their audiences on the Internet. This can be very difficult, so consulting with future consumers first to see what they really like, not what you think they will like, is perhaps the best answer.
Josh's Journey 