Is the way we understand advertising changing?

Recent advertising has increasingly rejected traditional brand messages and is not about anything. In view of the fact that people are getting more (media-) illiterate, is it really a fair assumption that they are getting increasingly more ad-literate (form and content)? A project surveying teenagers in London, Manchester and Scotland found that those surveyed admired advertising that employed narrative distancing (fantasy, anthropomorphism, or use of a celebrity), which allowed them to pick out relevance as and when they found it and apply the brand message to themselves.

Is the Way We Understand Advertising Changing?

Gavin MacDonald, The Leith Agency, debates whether the young, ad aware, sophisticated consumer we keep hearing about is really out there

Once, if an ad didn’t tell you something new about a product, you didn’t buy it. Then, as advertisers woke up to the fact that their closely guarded functional benefits were being copied by competitors five minutes later, a new style of advertising emerged, one which prized brand values above functional benefits. Consumers developed relationships with brands based on this emotional delivery. They bought them if it felt right.

Young, market-literate...

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