Waste of Space

I have had my eye on this UAP ‘Public Offer’ for a while now, and I am far from impressed.

Everything about this ad is wrong – it is highly ineffective.

First the picture, what Ogilvy called the illustration – the point being that whether it is a photo, diagram or drawing, the visual should illustrate the point that the ad is trying to make.

The word in the English language for this sort of visual is ‘contrived’, which in this particular case should be prefaced with the adverb ‘highly’.

I don’t think I need to break it down excessively: it is very clear even to my ten year old mini-me that the situation being portrayed could not and would not happen in several years of Sundays.

Every ad is an attempt to convince. If you begin your ad (the picture tends to be the first thing that people look at, or the headline, dependent upon layout) with a ‘gambit’ that is unconvincing, how exactly do you expect to proceed to convince?

We sometimes forget that ads are consumed by humans, and that all humans react in exactly the same way to exactly the same things regardless of age, ethnicity, gender or political affiliation.

When something is manifestly fake, even though you do not consciously recognize it as such, although in this case you probably would, your immediate psychological reaction is distrust. Given that ads are a form of communication towards which people are already pre-disposed to be distrusting, to further re-enforce this pre-disposition is simply incompetent.

I do not wish to belabor this point, but when you have between 5 and 7 seconds to capture and hold a readers attention, everything operates at the level of instinct. If you give your reader a reason to instinctively back-off even before you have begun to talk to them, you have lost the battle before it has even begun.

What is even more annoying about this ad is that the visual is, in many ways, completely unnecessary. Let me ask you this: does this picture, in any way, add value to the communication? Does it enlighten?

What has happened here is that yet another curved-swoosh template has been dreamed up by some art director, and some other creative somewhere feels obliged to fill up the space.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, there is a deeper problem with this ad…

What is the point of this ad? What is the communication objective? What particular action is it that this ad is supposed to drive amongst its target audience?

“Easy” I hear you say, “it’s to get us to go and buy UAP shares!”

Well it’s not doing a very good job of it, is it?

Number 1. Why should I rush to go and buy UAP shares? What’s in it for me? (The question that every ad must answer or the people responsible for the transgression should be shot, in both knees).

Where is the information? Where are the 10 key reasons why this is the best investment that I am going to make this year? Where is the ‘killer copy’ that leaves me utterly convinced that UAP is the best insurance firm on the continent bar none and the best investment on the continent after Tullow Oil and land in Lodwar?

Anyone who answers any of these questions by saying ‘check the prospectus’ should be shot, repeatedly.

There is a reason why I have titled this post ‘Waste of Space’, because that is exactly what this ad is. An entire 472.15 cm squared of prime Friday Daily Nation real estate blown on a nothing visual, timid headline and ‘I’m so bored’ copy. Waste. Of. Space. Use the money to buy airtime and call random numbers and talk to the people who answer about why they should buy UAP shares and I assure you that you will get a better return on investment than this ad will give.

Shall I continue?

Where is the f*#king urgency? Three days to go surely means that you want to push people and push them hard to get on the phone to their brokers. Why is the headline so small? Why is it so weak? Where is the “You only have three days left to grab the investment opportunity of the decade!!!” or the “If you do nothing else today, get your UAP share application out of the way!!!” or even the “You snooze, you loose Niggaz…!!!”

N.B. Why do you think that ‘Hurry now whilst stocks last’ is one of the most repeated lines in advertising?

There is a smugness to this ad. An arrogance that suggests the belief that Kenyans do not need to be courted, to be seduced, to be sweet-talked, to be entertained, to be informed and to be respected as thinking, logical, intelligent, money-conscious, self-aware adult human beings. Bure Kabisa!