It’s a typical week night in at the Milburn household. The baby is in bed, the washing up is done and it’s time to chill. Which inevitably means my wife and I turn on the TV and have our dinner. I’m sure like us, you find it doesn’t matter what time you turn your telly on, it’s always on the advert break because that’s the way sods law works!  As an incredibly impatient person I am enraged that it’s always like that and then the adverts only tend wind me up more. Am I the only person in the UK who doesn’t understand why Halifax employees would be running a radio station – badly – and why that woman needs to nod her head to the beat in that ridiculous manner? In fact, it’s got to the point that every time I see a Halifax advert I tell my wife “I’m never ever opening a Halifax account, ‘Ice Ice Baby’ really isn’t funny, it doesn’t make sense and worse, makes my blood boil”.  Fortunately she understands my rage; she has her own contestants for the most annoying advert ever. This week it’s the new flake advert. “Why is that woman wearing a dress made of tripe whilst having purple poster paint thrown at her? That’s not arty, it’s just disgusting. I’m never eating a flake again”. Or the maddening ‘Perle-du-Lait’ advert, where they spread yoghurt on each other’s faces. I could go on….

But is that the point? In the last paragraph, I’ve mentioned 3 brands, based on the fact that they annoy me or someone I know.  I’m not alone in my annoyance. Type ‘annoying adverts’ into any search engine and you will find forums and blogs galore giving all these brands valuable air time. Take two classic annoying adverts as a case study – the singing ‘Go Compare man’ and the ‘I want a Poo at Paul’s house’ adverts.

Now you are probably already singing the Go Compare advert in your head which is exactly the point. You know the name of the company, what they do, and you can’t think about it without singing the song. It’s a tried and tested advertiser’s trick but it only works when you need to remember a short phrase or website address. ‘We Buy Any Car’, for example, is infuriating but it works and tends to be impossible to say without the ‘Dot Com’ signature ending. And the sillier the advert, the better, because people get annoyed and that means chatter, blogs, forum posts, Facebook groups. Take a look at Facebook and you will find over 500 groups dedicated to the Go Compare man, most of these mentioning the brand in the title and regardless of the fact that they want to kill the Go Compare man; many of these people will remember the website address when they need to renew their car insurance. The Brand Managers in this case got it exactly right, it’s annoying enough to remember but not enough to stop you using it and it’s the brand name you remember.

Now the ‘Poo at Paul’s House’ advert is a different matter entirely. I bet most of you can remember the advert, but how many can remember the brand? You know it’s an air-freshener – but which one*? Looking again at Facebook you can see there are far fewer groups for this one, and less than half mention the brand at all. When you look at the surveys for most annoying advert it’s still up there in the top ten, meaning its annoyed people but obviously just not quite in the right way. It has done half its job as people are talking about the ad, but because the branding isn’t obvious are not associating it with the brand – surely the whole point of the advert? So some of the annoying adverts do drive positive brand awareness but there are loads that just miss out on getting it quite right, or just plain annoy their viewers… Halifax for one.

So how do you get it right? Well you need to have a memorable tag line people remember that can be associated with your brand. You need to get people talking but not boycotting your brand through sheer annoyance. It needs to have something about it which makes it memorable or better still, mimicable. How many Youtube stars have videoed themselves doing the ‘Cadbury Gorilla’? The Gorilla might have had nothing to do with chocolate, but the advert was cleverly designed to encourage people to make homemade versions, thereby creating an online viral landslide. Any Brand Managers dream. Whatever happens, the advert needs to be in-line with your overall marketing strategy. If you want to get people talking online but have a poor digital presence you might just be wasting your money.

Get the balance right however and the very best ads, no matter how annoying, will have you singing them all day, remembering the web address when you need it, talking about them in the pub, blogging about them disturbing your evening’s relaxing…

*(It’s Glade, in case you didn’t remember)