BY PETER GEORGE
MOST people think of advertising as an attempt to persuade audiences to buy. Toothpaste. Coffee. Vehicles.
Working at an agency in Winnipeg for more 30 years, a significant portion of our clients were selling something far less tangible. We have worked with institutional clients that were trying to influence belief in the benefit of their undertakings. Educating youth. Governing responsibly. Reducing waste. Managing energy resources. Making the world a better place.
These organizations — universities, colleges, governments, not-for-profits — are not always selling products or services. Rather, they seek public support to ensure they can fulfill their mandates.
This kind of advertising does ask audiences to buy something—a perspective. The best way to do accomplish this is to leverage what we know to be effective creative strategies that make advertising messages impactful, informative and memorable.
Ineffective institutional advertising
Playing it too safe
True impact takes guts. Luckily, there are countless examples of effective, award-winning institutional advertising that proves taking a creative risk might be the fastest way to the outcome you want. This isn’t to say be reckless or tasteless but being provocative – emotionally, intellectually and/or visually – creates impact.
If you want to make the most of your marketing budget, then you need to make something with which your audiences want to engage. That may not be easy, but it’s worth it.
Information overload
An institutional ad is not your corporate brochure. All too often, organizations want a laundry list of messages combining disparate topics like sustainability, breadth of offerings and the year they were established into a single communication. It’s better to say one thing in an interesting and relatable way.
At the end of the day, your audience is completely content with ignoring every ad they see. That’s a harsh way of thinking about it but that’s the motivation needed to create great advertising. Create something that will entertain people and be sticky.
Forgetting your audience
Although your institutional message reflects your corporation’s deepest values and beliefs, it can be easy to forget one thing: you’re not making the ad for you, you’re making it for your audience. In the daunting process of development, many get too focused on what’s going on between their four walls that they don’t realize how the ad relates to new and even existing customers.
Consider what will be interesting to the next generation of clientele, not Jim from your HR department. Jim knows your brand, he’s worked here for years, but what resonates with him might not be what speaks to your audience.
How to give institutional advertising life
Know your vision
At the beginning of the process, it’s important your organization understands where the brand is and where you want to go. Reflect on your goals.
Is there an appetite for incremental moves or is there a hunger for bigger change? Work backwards from the end goal. That will provide a benchmark for measuring results and evaluating the effectiveness of conceptual ideas. And it will inspire you and your team to rise to the challenge.
Tell a compelling story
Institutional messages are competing with the cacophony of other content, advertising and distractions out there. Finding a way through all that means finding an approach that will make them care.
Effective institutional advertising needs to stick to one guiding principle: It is still advertising.
If it doesn’t engage, or feel relevant and true, the audience won’t care – even if what you’re telling them is the most important thing in the world. Seeing your ad isn’t enough – you need to make them notice it. If it’s not interesting to them, they’ll ignore it. There’s a reason the “skip this ad” button was created.
The truth is, most organizations aren’t sharing compelling creative. That means there’s more space for you to be the exception, even in a noisy world of constant messaging. By taking the time to understand why audiences should care about your message, you can ensure that your creative expressions are always rooted in an important insight.
Invest in yourself
Changing perceptions, let alone getting people to act on your behalf or become an advocate for you, is an extremely high bar. If organizations are investing in a message showing on commercial channels, they need to break through. They need it to matter, or else their investment will fall short.
You might consider evocative advertising to be risky. But just think, it’s only a risk if there’s a chance it doesn’t pay off. What’s worse than a risk? A complacent audience, an invisible message and a wasted budget.
If you have big goals for your organization, it’ll take some bold approaches to get there. That’s how results are achieved. We remember the first people to walk on the moon, not the ones who never tried.
Effective change can’t be mandated. It must be inspired.
Institutional advertising, at its core, is about changing beliefs and behaviour. And people don’t change what they believe or how they behave simply because you tell them to – ask any parent or school teacher.
When that change happens, it happens because your audience has been inspired – not instructed. That’s the challenge you aspire to with every institutional campaign. Now more than ever, brands need to do everything in their power to be relatable, interesting and above all – human. It’s not a risk. It’s a necessity.
Peter George is a 30-year veteran of the advertising industry. He was CEO of McKim from 2016 to 2022 and is co-founder and CEO Emeritus of the Show and Tell Agency. He is also CEO of ED. Marketing, an ad agency specializing in higher education.
