I would like to talk to you about my urinary losses! No, don't worry, just keep reading, it was just a quote. But I would like to talk to you about a sector, that of dealer, which in Italy today produces revenues of around ten billion euros per year. We all have before our eyes statements like the one I began with, and many others that cannot help but make us ask: what are we witnessing? In an era that is no longer that of advertising, of the Carosello where the form of advertising it was in its infancy for television, and above all it did not include the return channel, enabled by digital, which made the concept of communication go beyond that of conversation.
Is it possible that today we still believe that it is enough to say "since always" to produce a credible statement? There is almost no commercial that does not include this questionable statement. Alongside which we find real pearls that are worth trying to quote to understand where we are going.
Chickens, a Milanese pickle and preserves company born in a historic shop in Milan, now with production in Tuscany, informs us that they have also launched pesto in jars, but they do not fail to specify that "it took 150 years, but it was worth it". Well, 150 years to make pesto is not exactly a great viaticum of credibility in terms of skills to prepare foods and preserves, but that's how it is, it may not have been forever but almost...
The mythical IlaryBlasi has hit the headlines recently especially for her complicated divorce with Francesco Totti, with the theft of Rolexes and luxury bags, where it is not clear who of the two is lying. Well, our national creatives in the detergent commercial Lenor they couldn't get him to do anything but… lie! Is it possible? She became a professional liar to the point of feigning a non-existent illness just to stay in bed wrapped in the fragrances of her freshly washed sheets? But was it really the right time for her? And she accepted it? Mysteries of marketing strategies on one hand, of personal branding on the other.
Meanwhile, the concept of testimonial extends from the face of the famous person to music, and the Autostrade Company (after the Morandi Bridge disaster…) dusts off Giorgio Gaber and Conad disturbs Paolo Conte, hunting for institutionality to support his commercial offers. But have they spent their money well (ours too in the case of public companies), which I imagine have been copiously donated to singer-songwriters (or to the heirs in the case of Gaber)?
New sectors then appear on the scene of the commercial, such as windows. Have you ever seen windows talked about so much during commercial breaks? With Oknoplast it is done through the fastest change of opinion in history, making the male voice begin with "a window is a window" which is countered with a dry and feminine "and instead no", obtaining a lightning-fast change of heart from the unfortunate person who, after grunting first "hum", then "I see", is forced to conclude after a few seconds with "a piece of design at the price of a window". Or windows Schuco, who, not content with the useless and faithless “forever” which they too invariably use, smugly add “forever”, in case there were any doubts about the immanence of the product over the centuries!
Not to mention the sofas, beds necessary for our relaxation that we all have at home and often long for to spend the last part of the day. Well, how can it be credible for someone like Armchairs and Sofas overwhelms us with a GRP pressure of several tens of millions of euros telling us every week for years that today everything is discounted and that there are unmissable offers (which however invariably end on Sunday)? But evidently the sales support this strategy, even net of the fact that everyone perfectly understands that the story of the discounted offer is only a ploy to make us go to the nearest store, and the discount is only declared and not real.
We imagine these investments to be truly productive in terms of commercial results. There is no reliable parameter to measure the commercial effectiveness of an advertising investment: you can measure the effectiveness of the story, of the possible testimonial or of the musical jingle before the launch with focus groups representative of the sample of the public to which we are addressing, and afterwards the appreciation of the spot and the awareness of the brand, but the only imaginable evaluation term remains the trend of sales. And here we must conclude that evidently we are the ones who are wrong. If this is the panorama and these are the creative and linguistic assumptions on which the investments are based, perhaps we are the ones who do not understand how buyers can be attracted by messages that we judge to be banal, often confusing, sometimes ridiculous.
So maybe I really want to talk to you about my urine leakage… But maybe next time.
