5Points Creative was founded as a media buying agency over 17 years ago, and while much has changed in advertising over that time, many things have not. In fact, we wrote an eBook [link here] about the impact of traditional media in a digital world.
Years ago, I had a discussion with my cousin. We were watching a pro sports game (probably football, but at this point it doesn’t matter and I don’t remember), and he turns to me and says, “You know, I don’t know why any companies pay for advertising. They should just sponsor football stadiums and everyone will see their name. It would be so much cheaper than running ads!” While I did not call him stupid, my response was, “Yeah, it would be cheaper, but it wouldn’t work.”
Let me explain why with another story: I recently saw a video about why NYC subway conductors have to point out the window at each stop. This 10-year-old article from the prestigious news source MentalFloss [https://www.mentalfloss.com/transportation/trains/what-are-subway-conductors-always-pointing] covers it in detail and goes so far as to cite (the always reliable) Reddit, but the summary goes like this:
• Conductors must ensure their subway doors line up with the platform before riders disembark to prevent riders from falling off and electrocuting themselves, so they hang “zebra boards” to mark the correct position.
• Too many conductors were “looking” at the boards with only their eyes, but because of human nature, this routine habit lost its meaning, and even though their eyes might look out the window at the zebra boards, their brains weren’t registering that the subway cars were out of position. That meant too many hurried passengers stepped out of the doors to find no walkway present.
• To fix this issue, the NYC subway borrowed from the Japanese train operators—by pairing the physical movement of pointing their finger at the boards with looking at it with their eyes, the brain then registered when the subway was out of position.
This movement from “impression” (the eyes see the zebra board) to “impact” (the eyes see the zebra board and the physical movement helps the brain register the meaning of the position) has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Impressions mattered less than the impact, because the conductors needed to recognize the meaning of what they were seeing. It’s the same with your advertising.
See, when we’re placing advertising, whether it’s traditional TV or radio, out of home, streaming TV, print, digital, or even pay-per-click, we’re looking for more than just impressions. Impressions are great, but unless your brand message is already well known, they are meaningless. Advertising needs to have impact. It needs to influence behavior. Good advertising mixes both the correct medium (such as a TV channel or billboard) with a message that gets noticed. Pointing at the TV is great, but just as good are emotional responses—laughter, sadness, surprise, disbelief. By combining the eyes (the impression) with the response (the emotion) through a story, we create an impact. That impact is how you build a brand.
In this era of AI-generated answers, that impact is becoming even more important. You can no longer count on your search engine ranking position (SERP) to get prospective customers to your website, because many searches never make it past the query thanks to the AI summary answering their questions. In the same way, many large companies have been built on pay-per-click—pay Google a certain amount each month and a predictable number of people will click on your sponsored search result—but that website traffic has diminished with the advent of the AI summary as well.
Back to the “why buy advertising when you can sponsor a football stadium question”:
1) There are a limited number of pro and college stadiums, and a sponsorship of that magnitude is far beyond the reach of most local and regional advertisers.
2) Stadium sponsorships deliver many impressions, but they do nothing to further a story and build trust. Seeing a name and logo without a story to connect it is a meaningless impression. If you already have a story that people are aware of with some amount of trust, simple impressions can still be meaningful. But you have to get there first.
If you want your advertising to have impact, both long-term and more immediate leads, it’s imperative that you build trust in your brand by combining the best medium with a story that helps the viewer understand (and dare I say feel) the importance of the message. That’s how you create the impact.