22 August 2011 - 4:59pm| by | 6 comments

Can ads that grate be great?: Haribo and Gocompare in the spotlight

With the new Haribo Supermix advert plaguing the ears of the nation recently, The Drum takes a look at if adverts that get on the nerves of viewers can actually boost the brand.

From our Twitter message asking for what you thought were the worst commercials on TV right now, we discovered that the adverts which make you want to change the channel include Haribo, Gocompare and Harvester.   Adverts for Compare the Market, confused.com and Lucozade also received votes.

It raises the question: if some companies can’t come up with a great idea, do they instead make an advert that will get the attention of the public for being bad?  Some cringey adverts certainly make it seem that way.

Or do some advertisers aim for the so-bad-its-good tag?  The Gocompare adverts have won the most irritating advert award two years in a row, and yet the opera singer is still warbling annoying rhymes on our screens.

At the time, Nick Hall, marketing director at Gocompare, told Marketing Magazine, who ran the awards: “The strategy and objective of the campaign is to raise awareness of the Gocompare brand and ensure that it’s front of mind, and we have certainly achieved that.”

Jonathan Hemus, founder and director of reputation management and communication consultancy Insignia, told The Drum: “In general terms, the adage ‘all publicity is good publicity’ is not true.  There are many organisations that have received bad publicity that wish they hadn’t.

“However, one of the main purposes of an advert is to be memorable and get it talked about.  It sounds like Haribo have succeeded in that term.”

Hemus also explained that a serious or luxury brand could face challenges if it had an advert that was ‘naff’, but that Haribo was not that type of brand.

From our Twitter straw poll, we found that adverts with songs were the ones that annoyed you the most.  But do these adverts annoy you because they are bad…or because despite thinking they are bad, you still get the song stuck in your head?

Despite the ‘squidgy…squidgy baby!’ tune driving people to the point of violence (if tweets we have received are to be believed) Haribo is the largest manufacturer of gummy and jelly sweets in the world, so it must be doing something right.

 

Some of the tweets we received:

ScottNeilson9: @TheDrum DEFINATLEY the new #Haribo advert, it's unbelievably terrible! Please somebody get them told before the madness continues! #shitads

falconsallies: @TheDrum Harvester - 'Bring out the Best' by a country mile. http://t.co/y0xqXWN #shitads

Brad_On_Bass: @TheDrum GoCompare.com. By far the worst, bring back ads such as the 3 minute Peugeot 406 'M People' from the nineties!

matpayne: @TheDrum lucozade one, awful and also the Halifax ones, shocking

data_monkey: @TheDrum Easily the Aviva ads. 28 seconds of Paul Whitehouse doing funny accents, followed by two second logo. Who are they for again?

SharonMills67: @TheDrum I hate those ruddy Meercats. I realise I am in a minority ;o)

Didn't see our tweet and want to let us know which advert you find the most annoying?  Answer our poll on the homepage asking which of the three adverts named the most in our Twitter feed you find the most annoying.

Comments

22 Aug 2011 - 20:13
tristan_morris's picture
6
comments

Sorry all, read the research on marketing effectiveness. Campaigns that set out to achieve brand fame perform all others, sometimes this means producing a cringe worthy creative execution but it delivers on hard business measures. That's go compare, comparethemarket.com and I suspect Haribo's plan...

22 Aug 2011 - 21:26
giles_moffatt's picture
80
comments

"Haribo is the largest manufacturer of gummy and jelly sweets in the world, so it must be doing something right."

They are. They make very nice sweets.

Tristan, not sure what 'research' you are referring to. Speak to Hamish Pringle (ex IPA Director General) and you'll actually find there's a clear and proven link between strong creative work, and advertising effectiveness. Anyone who has worked on pan-Euro pap will realise that this commercial is most likely a UK version of something that 'worked very well in Germany', dictated by a German parent company.

Personally, I'd like to congratulate Haribo for doing something so utterly bad, so brilliantly well. Few agencies could achieve this on purpose.

22 Aug 2011 - 22:06
tristan_morris's picture
6
comments

Hi Giles. Yep its IPA research I am referring to and the most effective type of creative campaign is that which targets brand fame. Results are from IPA marketing in the era of accountability report which is a very revealing analysis. My previous comment related to those types of campaigns that are viewed as cringeworthy, my point purely is that many of these fall into the brand fame category and as such research suggests they could be very effective. There are many examples of this on top of the ones mentioned before including 118 118 and webuyanycar.com.

Whether Haribo's ad was planned to be so 'poor' creatively or not is another question I don't think we will ever know...

23 Aug 2011 - 12:46
peteretheridge's picture
1
comments

peter etheridge Tue 23 Aug 2011 12:44
Maybe it's just because I'm a cynical bastard who works in this industry, but I went out of my way NOT to use Go Compare for my car insurance as my own small way of punishing them for assaulting my eardrums over the last 2 years. In the absence of an opportunity to take a running punch at Gio Compario, that's all I can do.

To be fair though, all of the insurance aggregators are in a tough position - realistically they're unlikely to come up with a better idea than the Meerkat (which, lest we forget, was brilliant before they bled it dry), so they've decided that all they can do is get noticed by being irritating. Credit to Money Supermarket for at least having a go at a proper concept!

Anonymous (not verified)
23 Aug 2011 - 22:15
Anonymous's picture

I think most people hate the very camp Gio Compario, he certainly makes my blood boil. Haribo is in the same league as Ferrero Rocher for sheer cringeworthyness.
People only remember the first WeBuyAnyCar ad, the rest have been totally forgettable.

My personal ad shockers are Elephant.com, Kayak, Mazuma and anything else that repeats itself 10 times in 20 seconds....just f*** off with that shit.

Anonymous (not verified)
24 Aug 2011 - 13:29
Anonymous's picture

Lets not ignore the weight of media spend either - eventually it will bludgeon itself into your subconscious if it's in your face all the time - look at DFS.

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