The Simplicity of Branding

I am not sure if this cartoon is meant to be a stab at advertising or not, but when most of your day is spent working to advertise for a large company, you start to see this cartoon in a very jaded way.

It is interesting because I think that the effectiveness of advertising is the direct opposite of the directness. To me, the ‘Branding’ frame is the least direct approach to reaching customers, but the most effective approach. Especially at finding customers who want to be a part of your product. On the other hand the ‘Advertising’ approach is the most direct, but I would like to think, the least effective. Even if it may drive more sales up front, I feel like they would be short term customers and only bought once because of the screaming approach illustrated in frame 4.

Obviously I must be wrong since most large companies put most of their budget into the ‘Advertising’ approach over ‘Branding’. Even when I work on a “Branding” campaign, ‘they’ always manage to slide in an offer at the last minute.

– discovered at: swissmiss