Because the internet is a place infested by people hell-bent of opposing virtually every view they come across – see the Guardian’s Comment Is Free – or displaying ‘aggression and unkindness’ at every turn, it sometimes behoves a blogger to justify his various thoughts.
This is, generally, absurd, and it should be a given these days that anything clearly presented as a subjective opinion comes with an imaginary ‘in my opinion…’ prefix.
Getting into an argument on your own blog is rarely constructive, and generally reductive – eventually descending into nothing more than another ‘swirling online guff storm’ as Charlie Brooker has it.
‘Who are you to say whether this advert is shit?’ is a common question on AdTurds. I’m someone who has worked in the media for ten years and often writes about adverts, which is plenty qualification as far as I’m concerned – as if anyone actually needs any kind of qualification for voicing an opinion an a blog.
But there are actually all kinds of metrics out there to gauge the efficacy of an advert: sales, tracking, focus groups, polls. They’ll all be out there somewhere, hidden in the draws of some marketing agency.
More obviously Youtube and other social media are a good way to crowd source opinion, though I’d caution against placing too much stock in them, unless they’re wildly negative.
Luckily, every now and then, a bit of research from a marketing or PR outfit finds its way onto the net. I happened to stumble across a poll on Yahoo’s brand penetration following its recent Anthem advert
Unfortunately for the big Y! it revealed that awareness of Yahoo as a brand fell of a cliff following the debut of their new series of adverts and expensive relaunch.
So, if you ever wanted proof that an ad was shit, check this out.
