Logic don’t make memories

How pleasant it would be for marketers if advertising was a science.
A simple equation. Put your money here. Get your returns here.
Sadly, the data is in. We just don’t know how to read it.

How nice it would be for creative departments if advertising was art.
If only the audience appreciated the little moments of craft instead of ignoring the entire thing because the logo just unbalances the entire thing.

Advertising is neither.
And this is the beauty and challenge and fulfilment of the endeavor.

We’ve noted before how unconvincing facts can be, here.
Facts insist advertising needs to be commercially accountable.
But, to be accountable, it needs to be noticed.

You can either do that by endless repetition – the old media game of more eyeballs equals more returns.
Or you can do it with a hook.

If you leave me, can I come too?
A great hook. I can’t remember much more of the lyric, but I’ll always remember that song. And, as a result, Mental As Anything.

I hear Karma Chameleon and I’m la-la-la-ing until Boy and I start belting out, “Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleo-o-o-on.”
I don’t remember much of the rest, but I remembered enough to buy the single.
And the album.
And download it.
Twice.

Same when I heard “Here come the hotstepper” – and bonus points for anyone who remembers Ini Kamoze.

And why did Aretha want me to take out TCP? My young mind spent too many years trying to figure out what RESE spelt. It’s just a hook. Just doing a Bob Dylan and trying to make it rhyme. But that bit of illogic may just have added more to Aretha’s bank balance than almost any other lyric she sang.

A thousand hooks in a thousand songs, and we remember them all.
The hooks get caught somewhere in our brain and we buy what they’re saying. And buy the song as a result.

Advertising is a commercial enterprise.

Instead of asking, “What should we tell them?” maybe we should just get the creators of the ads to search until they find something the audience will remember.

The stuck window in “Not happy, Jan” was apparently a mistake that made the ad memorable.
A barb in the logic that made the hook.

Not happy with Jan. Very happy with the results.

“You ought to be congratulated” is a lovely fact-free jingle. To me, the lyrics feel like they’ve been shoehorned into the music. But, the slightly awkward bump in the flow makes it stick.

“Oh, what a feeling.”
One jump in one ad that became the hook for the entire brand.

Oh, what a hook.

A wiser man than I once said, “Your advertising is working if you hear it in the playground.”

The fact is most people don’t remember the logic of what you say.

They just remember the bits that stick.