With hundreds of ads bombarding consumers every day, great creative is central to successful advertising because it grabs attention, resonates with its audience and makes the ad memorable and easily recalled. As Leo Burnett once said, "Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at." And people pay more attention to ads they enjoy - "We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in," says Craig Davis, ad man extraordinaire.
Millward Brown’s Best Liked Ads have been celebrating South Africa’s favourite TV commercials since 1984. These are the ads that have been rated as the most liked by the South African audience, whom we believe to be the most important critic - the person who ultimately chooses to buy your brand or not.
Looking at the 2015 winners, we see a combination of humour, nostalgia/slice of life and babies and kids dominating the top 20, with many of the ads having a very distinct South African flavour. “You have to strike an emotional chord that resonates with the target consumer,” says Natalie Otte, Head of Millward Brown South Africa, “and clearly great creative with a local focus is doing just this! Many of the ads tell a story reflecting the brand’s purpose beyond just functionality.”
It’s really important for ads to be relevant, to both the consumer and the channel; brands need to choose the right moment and the right audience for their messages. We know from testing hundreds and thousands of ads in South Africa, to get your message right is really hard. Ads that are easy to understand, single-minded in their purpose and tell great stories deliver better message take-outs with their audience.
“In the increasingly cluttered and fragmented media landscape, the ability to measure the effect and efficiency of different media activity is paramount. So for the ones that do cut through, agencies and marketers are clearly making their creative work harder driving strong liking for the ads,” says Lizelle Shawe, Head of Millward Brown’s Adtrack.
Congratulations to the following agencies and marketers:
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About Adtrack
Adtrack™ is Millward Brown's proprietary advertising testing system, evaluating the impact and liking of all brand advertising in South Africa for over 30 years. The resultant database stands at over 90,000 TV adverts tested, and more than 1.2 million interviews conducted, making this database one of the largest of its kind in the world. For more info on Adtrack click here or contact moc.nworbdrawllim@ewahs.ellezil
