advertising greed is bad for your brand health

here is one more practice of marketers and ad agencies that i honestly could not understand. we don't even have to go back to advertising principles, we just have to apply common sense.

we call it advertising greed.

globe handyphone customer service telephone hotline - when you call their telephone hotline, they don't immediately connect you to the menu of services you want to know about nor to the customer service agent who is supposed to help you with your problems. what you hear instead is this audio spiel that advertises their latest service offering or promotion. if it is the first time for you to call this number, you need to listen to the whole spiel before you get connected to the person you want to talk to. that is, if by the time the spiel ends there is already a customer service agent who is already free to handle your call. if not, you will here some irritating music on the line.

we really don't get that. the whole idea behind putting up a telephone hotline is to provide customer service efficiently and QUICKLY. during the days before the invention of the term "customer satisfaction" and call centers, it tool a long time to get anything done to help customers on their complaints on the service or get information. the telephone and call center is supposed to eliminate that problem of decades ago.

running that audio spiel violates that very principle of "quick and efficient" customer service hotline. it actually delays it rather than quicken it.

we like advertising but we do not think this is a smart thing to do. the customer hotline is one area where we think it is counter-productive to out an ad in. most people call these numbers to complain about a service or to fix a service problem. it is to the interest of globe and the the appreciation of customers that these are quickly resolved.

we have been watching the FIFA world cup on tv at balls cable tv. what gets us is that when they cut to the showing of ads, the ad break is very long, at least 5 minutes worth of ads. and this is what kills us - some of the tv ads are shown not once, not twice but often times more than 5 times!

what is the point of showing the same ad for more than once? they forgot that you are supposed to develop ads that work even when seen only once by the audience. there is not advantage in showing the same ad to the same audience in the same commercial break for more than 5 times.

it is stupid to expect that the audience will actually watch the same ad 5 times in a row! didn't the ad agency, client and the cable tv operator know all tv sets now come with a remote control unit? it's easy to expect that the audience will click the remote and watch another tv channel while the ads are running. many tv sets have the picture in picture feature, the audience who switches channels during the long commercial break will not miss a thing when the game is put back on.

why do clients and ad agencies do these things? what is the point of advertising greed when the audience has the power not to view the repeated ads with the remote control? or when an ad is forcibly broadcast to the audience who is in no mood to listen to an ad from the service provider?

advertising greed does not make a sale, nor does it build brand equity, all it does is annoy the audience and a definite WAWAM!