Quiet, Please

...Humour, Marketing and Noise

A few summers ago, an old friend from New York was visiting London. We hadn’t seen each other for several years; my wife and I invited her to dinner. There was plenty to catch up on, but one sentence from that meal stands out. She said that what she found disagreeable today was “we’re all being marketed to. We’re just surrounded by the noise of marketing.”

The noise of marketing.

She didn’t work in the industry and it was a passing comment, nothing more. But what she was talking about, of course, was this:

But there was another side to what she said: less the amount of advertising than the ads themselves. They were themselves noisy.

I thought about her comment again last week when I posted one of my favourite ads on Twitter. It’s for Heinz Spider-Man pasta:

Lovely, right? And what made it stand out was, in a way, its quiet quality.

¹

It doesn’t need words, or even the Heinz logo in the bottom right-hand corner. It does its job, and it does it excellently. Above all, it doesn’t feel noisy.

This all reminds me of a great tweet by Lee Clow’s Beard — an advertising creative (real name Jason Fox) who writes lovely pearls of wisdom:

There’s a humour mechanism called incongruity-resolution which enables this — a very long phrase for a very beautiful concept. Basically, we see a puzzle and we work it out. Adverts that use this mechanism often have this quiet, whispering quality (you can read more about it here). This seems very much against the tone of our times which is about conversations, and pokes in the eye and, well, noise.

Here’s a lovely example for Stella Artois (the strapline, if you can’t read it, says Reassuringly Expensive). What is it saying? The beer’s so desirable, you’d ruin your classic Lambretta

²

in taking off the cap.

Am I saying, then, that more brands should go towards a quieter, more introverted stance? Not at all. But let’s be honest: we’ve all been to parties and dinners and experienced that moment when someone with a slow, quiet voice is far more captivating than a relentless loudmouth.

Perhaps, I wonder, there’s a parallel in advertising. Consider these two ads below. The first is chock-full of flashy graphics, music, voice-over and rapid cuts.

And, below, the second. No music, no speech, and only six words written on screen — of which four are the name of the product.

Which would you rather watch a second time? One of the TV ads above is trying to be funny; another is succeeding. One of the ads is memorable, another is forgettable. The only noisy thing about the VW ad is the sound of the engine — but given it’s a car ad, that can be forgiven.

Many thanks for reading,

Paddy

Book a meeting here / www.studiogilmore.com / pg@studiogilmore.com / Twitter: @mrpaddygilmore

1. I had no idea who created this ad so a big thanks to Paul Reading, Creative Director at 1HQ London, who put me right: ‘It was created by Nick Pringle and his partner (forget his name) in the very early days of the Leo Burnett’s/D’Arcy merger. CD was Nick Bell. I was very jealous at the time. Still am really.’

2. As doubtless you’ll know, the scooter is a Series 3 TV200 which Lambrettista.net note is “very desirable”. It’s amazing what you can find on the World Wide Web these days.