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You're missing the larger change in society that advertising is adapting to.

Few people have the attention span anymore to read all of the copy in BMW's old ads. Ad agencies could hire Hemingway himself, it wouldn't make any difference. People look at the picture, the headline, and move on.

So-called brand advertising (at least, print brand advertising) serves as an admission on the part of marketers that, if they can't fit the whole AIDA model into a single ad anymore, they can at least try to push Awareness as much as possible.

Doesn't mean that brand advertising is particularly effective.




> Few people have the attention span anymore to read all of the copy in BMW's old ads

or could it be that everything is so oversaturated with ads that spending two minutes voluntarily reading fluffy ad copy just doesn't seem like a great use of time, even if it's well written?

attention span is its own problem, but connecting the two like this seems... odd.

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EDIT, had more thoughts on this

i mean, i like the old VW Beetle ads. they're charming and clever and i enjoy reading them. but that's because the element of "trying to get me to buy something" isn't relevant anymore, i'm experiencing the (long-dead) ad willingly. but if the ad is a normal ad i see in a magazine... no way i'm giving it my undivided attention for two minutes just so it can manipulate me into liking X


I agree, there is still plenty of money invested in product placements in long form content, or sponsored 'review' articles.

It's not so much that they don't write copy, it's that they try to avoid telling you that it's copy


Few people have the attention span anymore to read all of the copy in BMW's old ads.

Few brand owners or ad agencies also want to produce an ad that doesn't play globally. It's harder for things to get lost in (literal) translation when there are fewer words to translate. It's cheaper too!


Disagree. MI5 used to run full page,text only ads without even mentioning their org in the text.Those who needed to understand understood the gist of it. Jack Daniels text ads in London underground stations have more text than the other 50 stacked together. It's different,it attracts and it somehow works.


Hemingway is kind of a bad example here because he writes short and to the point.


So, no matter how short he could write it, it won't beat a meme-like image


For sale: baby shoes, never worn.




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