When you think about TV adverts what are your first thoughts? A nuisance? An annoying and far too regular interruption from your TV viewing? Chances are you're like me though, you don't watch much live TV so adverts, as irritating as they may be, can be fast forwarded.
And that begs the question: Do they work? Are the gazillions of pounds being channelled into TV advertising justified? Or could the money be better spent elsewhere?
I guess it all comes down to memorability. Modern day classics like the John Lewis Christmas ad and the Evian baby have taken over from Rowan Atkinson's Barclay Card, the Diet Coke break, Carlsberg and Hamlet. It's amazing what sticks and sells - humour, heartstrings and sex.
So where do the majority of advertisers go wrong? Is it the bland, catchphrase orientated nonsense? Or is it the irritating "go-compare" like beat-you-into-submission headaches? Whatever it is, if we have to watch an advert literally half the time my wife and I look at each other and say WTF??
This year, in 2016, a 30 second advert during half time at the Super Bowl would have cost the advertisers a whopping $5m. When you're paying that much money you pull out all the stops. You up your game and you create an iconic advert. Because of this a large portion of the 114.4 million audience will tune in to watch because they know that they're going to be entertained - and that's what people want.
They want to be entertained - be that by making them laugh, by pulling on their heartstrings or by tickling their fancy. They don't want to be sold to, they don't want to be spammed, they don't want to see adverts - they just want to be entertained.
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