Creativity is great, but is it selling?

As I was sitting on a US Airways plane yesterday morning trying to prep for the meeting I was attending, I was bombarded by the in-your-face commercials for US Airways, Avis, etc. that were tacked onto the safety instructions on the monitors.  We had not yet reached the point that I could plug in my noise reduction headphones, so I was held hostage by ads I did not want to see about vacation spots and car rental deals.  Later in the short flight, I read Burt Helm's Media Centric column in the latest BusinessWeek.  Interesting read.  Seems that TiVo's Stop//Watch study monitors which ads 20,000 of its households fast-forward through and which they actually watch.  Turns out that the least-fast-forwarded ones this June were for Cort Furniture (a rental company), Dominican Republic Tourism and Hooters Restaurant.  No comment on the last one, but rental furniture?

This got me thinking that we are so constantly assailed by distractions when we are trying to read or just to think that we need to apply finer filters than ever just to get through each day.  During my vacation I went to a couple movies and there were more commercials than there were previews of coming attractions!  I almost expect the next Mass I attend to be interrupted by words from the Church's sponsors.  I don't know about you, but I tend to tune these out or they blur for me unless it is something I really am in the market for at the moment.  And it seems I'm not alone, as the viewers in the study cited were whipping past image ads and, instead, slowing down for ads that included 800 numbers and specific offers.  I do pay attention to the commercial that shows a club where dancers are moving in unison to a Latin beat until the bartender momentarily stops grinding mint leaves for Mojitos.  Problem with the ad, though, is that it told me a lot about Mojitos, but I don't really remember what brand of alcohol it was selling.

Interestingly, another BusinessWeek article in the same issue talked about how Saturn returned to its back-to-basics approach to advertising and marketing after a flight of ads that looked more like BMW performance ads fell flat.

"The emotional connection with Saturn is security and trust," says Daniel Gorrell, president of AutoStrategem, a marketing consultancy in Tustin, Calif.  "You can't suddenly say it's about excitement."

Now I'm not trying to knock our advertising colleagues, but I do think this cut-to-the-chase-tell-me-what-you-are-selling-me ethos bodes well for PR, especially the kind of PR that is very focused on getting direct information to targeted customers through social media channels as well as traditional media and analysts.  And it makes me wonder about all of those major pushes for creative out-of-the-box thinking that for years has been a challenge for PR.  Creativity is great and, given the reduction in the number of traditional media outlets, you have to be extremely creative and smart to get attention.  But maybe customers just want you to tell them specifically what you are selling them and why they should buy it so they can make a decision and then move on.  And that's what good PR does extremely well.