When advertising becomes vanity

I've already written about the vanity exercise in which SSE generates so much profit from its customers that it can afford to waste money putting its name onto a sporting arena.

Has anyone, ever, in the history of advertising, seen the name of an energy supplier over the door of an arena and thought, "That's the supplier for me! I won't bother comparing prices, I'll just sign up with them now!"?

Did we all get the answer 'no' to that question?

So I think we can agree to drop that exercise into the 'vanity' box.

I'm not saying all advertising is vanity, clearly not. Sometimes a company has started to sell a new thing and they want to tell people about it. You know, by telling them about the product. Not just by putting its name in big letters over a large building.

But what on earth is going on in the new Lloyds Bank advertisement?

It's a potted history of the horse over the past 250 years with the name of a bank inserted at the end. And this celebrates the fact that Lloyds Bank has existed for 250 years and has used a black horse in its corporate material for some or all of that time. (As far as I'm aware, they've never sold horses.)

I shudder to think how much it cost to shoot that film. And will it generate any new business? Or is it vanity?

Here's what I would do

Assuming that the shareholders would rather generate more business (and retain existing business) than produce some self-congratulatory horse film, why not use my film instead? The total cost to the bank would have been the same...

I think they're much more likely to see a return on the advertising cost using my approach. And it's shorter so wouldn't annoy audiences as much.

I am available for freelance advertising consultancy - and that sample video is my portfolio. Concept available to purchase, price negotiable, form an orderly queue, sealed bids at the ready...