Robert's PlayGround

Illusions

The question remains: is this real or set up? I can't tell - This Derren Brown seems to have a reputation that he might lose so I guess the experiment was done for real (and it's not an acted piece of film). As such I don't find this shocking. After all, ad makers use popular culture and real life to steal their ideas from. But the outcome was quite accurately predicted. In particular the music instrument was hinted just very vaguely and out of context. Thanks Martin for bringing this to my attention!

63

Sixtythree? For a moment I couldn't resist thinking of the Answer to The Ultimate Question Of Life, the Universe and Everything in Douglas Adams' "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy". Sixtythree what? Sixtythree percent of all advertising 'sticks'. In other words: 37% of all advertising is wasted... Thats what I read in an Adage article on the new book "What Sticks". Why does that make me think of Douglas Adams again... Ah, it's probably the Don't Panic! response.

Effective : waste = 63 : 37. That sounds so much more comfortable than the 50% sheer waste of advertising once claimed by Dutch advertising & branding professor Giep Franzen in the ninetees.
Then questions start popping up: have we improved since the ninetees or are we just measuring effect in a different way? when is advertising effective anyway? which 37% is waste? how much money are advertisers wasting on other investments? is 63% efficacy bad, good or great? why is the sub title for the book What Sticks "why most advertising fails..." whilst reporting a percentage of 37? Probably some of the answers are in the book. For some intuitive reason I'm not yet dying to read it.