THE “ANNOY YOU INTO BUYING” MYTH

hile I aspire not to create them, I’m frequently asked about ads that annoy people. Especially broadcast ads. Some irritate potential customers by yelling or condescending or launching into hyperbole. More often, the complaint is repetition: people ask me if advertisers deliberately seek to annoy the public into purchasing a product by running the same ad over and over and over again. And I find myself answering “no, no, and no.”

It’s true that many commercials wear out their welcome long before they’re taken off the air. Just as a convoy is only as fast as its slowest ship, advertising often appears to be only as good as its most annoying players. These are the cynics and the screamers (many of them local car dealers with outrageous hairpieces, it seems).

Think of it this way: advertising is an enormous (and growing) worldwide industry. Like any community, it’s driven by geniuses, visionaries, and savants, just as its dark, damp cracks are infested with crackpots and the good ones are invited into your imagination as familiar friends and given an honoured place in that cozy chair by the fire; the bad ones are dismissed as “advertisers” and are shown the door.

Especially irritating are ads that are presented more than once during a single commercial break—sometimes back to back. A friend who buys media for advertisers told me it’s never the intention of advertisers to do this but rather a mistake by the broadcaster.

Just the same, as early as the 1950s, ad giant Rosser Reeves, of the agency Ted Bates & Co., was a firm believer in the power of repetition. So much so that according to an industry joke, the switchboard used to answer the agency phone with:

“Hello, Ted Bates.
“Hello, Ted Bates.
“Hello, Ted Bates.”

It’s true that the very tone and manner of some ads irritate. But it’s never an actual strategy to annoy anyone into buying.