Results don't shield a stinker

Then, a decade ago, BT started to spoil all the fun. The company's 'It's
good to talk' campaign, featuring Bob Hoskins, was voted by the public
as one of the most irritating ads in the same year that it took the
Grand Prix at the IPA Effectiveness Awards - generating an estimated
£297m in additional revenue for BT and unwittingly giving birth to
the insidious phrase 'irritating ads can be effective'.

Since then, the idea that bad advertising is a good thing has been
gaining credence, to the extent that senior industry sorts who should
know better are quite prepared to say it is not the quality of the work
that matters, but the sales chart. I would like to apologise
unreservedly for this state of affairs. Marketing has charted the
progress of irritating ads at the same time as championing the
effectiveness cause, inadvertently giving rise to the idea that any
half-baked, over-aired, telephone- or doormat-bothering pestiferousness
is OK as long as it plagues the consumer's mind for long enough to get
them to visit the relevant aisle at Tesco.

I'm sorry, also, to pick on Andy Cheetham, creative director at
CheethamBell JWT, who, after all, obligingly provided us with this
quote: 'Ultimately great work is work that sells. That has to be the
ultimate measure of any advertising.' Quite right, absolutely. 'Gaviscon
has sold shedloads,' he added. Shame on you, Andy. Just because you are
able to float it on the pure waters of commercial logic doesn't mean
that the ad itself is not excrement.

Irritating ads can be effective, but so too can radically different
creative communications, or even quite ordinary but beautifully crafted
ideas. Which would you rather produce or, for that matter, buy? After
all, the agencies are not churning this stuff out without getting
someone's say so.

This is my resolution for 2007: that Marketing ceases to be an apologist
for pap. After all, haven't we got all of this the wrong way around?
Surely we have reached a point of marketing maturity where we should
stop gleefully applauding like simpletons every time what we do is
actually shown to work? It's just my guess, but surely marketing's pleas
to be taken seriously would go down better if we were less excitable
about not having frittered away the budget, and more passionate about
superior thinking, originality and quality.

Which brings me back to irritating ads and what's acceptable. Of our top
20 most irksome ads, just two, in my own opinion, are deliberately so:
Cillit Bang and Sheila's Wheels. They deserve praise as they are
consciously irritatingly effective. That leaves 18 other brands that did
not seek to alienate big chunks of the public with their ads, but have
done so. The client may have bought the work, as the public buys the
product or service, but evidently they could do better - which I rather
thought was the point.

- Annoying but engaging, page 14.