Is Advertising Dead?
And, is social media is the killer?
That blog title is what a Social Media Manager would call a hook. As you scroll through an infinite stream of cat videos and selfie-angle storytimes, it’s difficult for an ad to stop your thumb.
Within the socila media landscape, ads compete with, well, everything.
Audiences decide to scroll or stop on a post in the first split second. So, to engage, or “hook,” an audience, you open on something destined to raise their heart rate and catch their attention, whether their emotional reaction to this hook is positive or negative.
This tactic is difficult to integrate with brand storytelling for a litany of reasons. To start, most things that shock audiences are not polished and professional. If you were to start a video with an employee angrily telling the camera, “I just got fired,” your video would have a good shot at virality and an even better shot at painting your brand in a negative light.
Optimized Social Media Post Structure
Even my use of a hook-like title in this blog article risked turning you, my audience, off. To imply the demise of our livelihoods is, well, attention-grabbing.
Advertising is far from dead, but the golden era of six-figure shot-on-an-alexa, star-studded commercial has tough competition. A UGC Iphone video of social media’s newest heartthrob may outperform a premium commercial with the same star on Instagram or TikTok.
Why? Because a brand’s best bet at creating engaging content for their audience within the social media landscape is to get as close as possible to what content is native to their ideal customer’s FYP. If you are trying to sell cupcakes to Gen Z women, a mukbang featuring a food reviewer, shot with an iPhone is a car, is nearly indistinguishable from entertainment content across a young foodie’s feed. Commercial gloss looks entirely foreign. In less than a second your viewer is swiping away. Even if the commercial is an artistic masterpiece.
This means that brands have two paths. First, they lean into the UGC content that actually stands a change within the social landscape, prioritizing talent in their budget.
Or, second, they create big budget content that competes with entertainment content. Branded films and shorts that audiences watch, not in between shows or vidoes, but for entertainment.
