The Anti-Ad Project: What I Learned From Trolling Consumers for a Week.
Here’s how people respond when you target them with fake ads.
It was a normal day in the office, we just received client feedback and it was all, well, as you’d expect.
Out of 117 paid posts, the copy and images were approved on just three.
And that’s when I realized, 90% of what we get paid to create comes out like shit.
And if I think it looks like shit, imagine what the consumer is going to think.
We know ads on social media are essential to business. We also know the actual content of the majority of them is comparable to if your computer ate a black bean burrito and took a cyber-dump on your face. As seen below.
Why?
Because opinions are like assholes. Everyone’s got one, and they all stink.
I blame most of it on approval process, and more importantly, the people involved. Such process for a single paid post is so convoluted that any mildly entertaining idea gets eaten away by corporate bureaucracy until it’s boring nonsense. Anywhere from 19 to 53,845 people are involved in approving every single piece of content that goes out into that world, and every one of them has an opinion on it. God forbid something stands out (as we creatives try our best to make happen), someone else waters it down until it looks like the rest of everything else.
*breaks pencil*
God what I would give to just take up all that valuable advertising space on people’s social media feeds and replace it with hilarious nonsense. Absurd fake products, promoted all over their screens. In fact, I bet if I did, my ads would perform better than real ads.
Yeah, I bet…
So, I gave it a shot.
I made the fake online retailer, Nozama (hint hint, spell it backwards), supplier of everything you could imagine you never knew you needed. Child-sized shock collars, canned unicorn meat, taurine injections… I made roughly 30 products, wrote some nonsensical crap for the copy, and used my mediocre photoshop skills to bring them to life… sort of.
Armed with Facebook’s targeting tools and $15 of free ad credit, I replaced ad space for just about any industry you could think of. So people searching for healthy food alternatives or expecting mothers were served ads for this kind of shit:
And boy did it yield some interesting results.
The average engagement rate per post across all industries is 0.17% on Facebook, and 4.7% on Instagram.
My post’s engagement rates averaged 0.33% on Facebook, and 17% on Instagram.
Doubled Facebook, tripled Instagram. I’ll be damned.
The comments reinforced my opinion. People were delighted by the promoted posts; sharing, liking, commenting… every brand’s dream.
This project was merely the result of my own defiance and existential boredom. I did it for the shits and giggles. But I think we can all take something away from this, a valuable lesson for brands:
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Nobody cares.
Also, a little easter egg for our folks in the industry, I ran this during Cannes:
Enjoy the rest of your day, and sorry for trolling you and taking up your space.
You can have it back now.
