Do advertisers appreciate at all how their ad when placed in very heavy rotation, irritates & loses customers?

Question

It may be a great ad...but then the network, TV station or cable company RUINS it by playing it AD NAUSEUM...and I just think the advertisers must not watch TV that much and leave all the decision making to the ad agencies who make more when the ads they create come with big promotion budgets to absolutely SATURATE the market.

I'm getting fed up, though, with so many saturation campaigns. I think a lot of advertisers are just ruining television now. The proliferation of so many cable channels has brought a lot of change...some good, but also a lot of bad because there is so much competition now for leisure time with the advancement of internet as an entertainment alternative. So the response is to pound the viewing audience with so many repetitive messages wherever you can find them, and I for one, just don't like it. It's taking the whole medium of television down.

I realize the conventional wisdom of advertising is that it takes 20 or more exposures to a message before it sinks in and motives a change in buyer behavior. But I think that age-old "truism" needs re-thinking because it assumes viewers are total, thick-headed morons and you have to program for the lowest common denominator in society. So pound the hell out of 'em through repetition after repetition. And I'm sorry, I don't subscribe to that kind of buyer behavior modification ploy.

I believe if you come up with an effective, eye-catching ad that really sells the product and leaves the consumer with a smile on their face, you won't NEED to saturate with so many mindless repetitions. I think you can reinforce by utilizing different media to reach the same audience in a similar but modifed message (e.g. shorter copy on billboards but with familiar image from TV campaign). But just blasting same ad over same channel ad nauseum is going too far & hurts you, the advertiser.

Answer 1

I totally agree. I change the station whenever one of those hideous "every kiss begins with Kay" jewelry store commercials come on, and I'd sever my head before I'd buy something from there. (Ok, maybe I won't resort to suicide, but I won't shop there!) And I'm boycotting Gap until they remove their aggravating Will and Amy ad from Yahoo Answers. I've got to think most people hate seeing the same annoying advertisement 17 times during a one-hour-long program.

Answer 2

I often wonder about that on some of the "basic cable" channels and also about the blasting volume so many of these run commercials at.

Advertising maxims have it that repetition sells but one would think they'd do studies to determine that nowadays with remotes people are more likely to change the channel when they see a commercial that annoys them due to repetition (or just being bad in the first place) or mute the sound when it starts to blare?

To this day I still turn off any channel that has HeadON or any of the other "ON" products the moment the commercial comes on due to my extreme annoyance at their original commercial.

Answer 3

They only care if you buy the product not how you feel about the ad.