Commenting on the survey, agency director of strategy Stephen Yolland commented: “It’s been awhile, so we were very interested to see what’s changed. And it’s very obvious from the results that consumers today seem increasingly underwhelmed by the advertising on offer.

“Almost nothing seems to be both cutting through and impressing people. There are successful exceptions, but certainly very little is being spontaneously remembered. Which means we all seem to be spending an awful lot of money just to leave people ‘cold’, and as ad agencies if we’re going to be responsible with our clients’ money then we need to look at that.

“We all know that advertising works in different ways, and just because an ad or a brand doesn’t come up in an unprompted survey like this as being liked and remembered doesn’t mean it isn’t doing any good. It can perform better when people are prompted to recall it, or it can work well when seen or heard in conjunction with other mediums, such as radio, billboards, online, catalogues, or other reminders.

“But to have almost nothing producing a ‘watercooler effect’ that is strong enough to be picked up in a survey like this does suggest that both the creativity and the entertainment value of the work we do has declined somewhat, and also possibly that there is now so MUCH advertising in the market that many ads seem to be being effectively ‘tuned out’ by consumers.

“We also suspect that the big switch of media dollars into online has resulted in a fall
in product and brand awareness from the days when the vast majority of media money was spent on TV. Nearly two billion Australian advertising dollars now go into online. That’s a huge switch in advertiser behaviour. Where that growth in online expenditure has replaced expenditure in other mediums, as opposed to supplementing it, there may well have been a fall in both ad and brand standout.”