Hashtags: don’t be the poor trend

26th October 2017

Advertising techniques are becoming increasingly streamlined in nature, but with certain gratifications necessary on specific platforms, there still has to be an element of native thought regarding hashtags and other means of personal advertising

HASHTAGS Are used as means of mobilising and fostering brand community, but as a means of alerting new consumers, it is fundamentally flawed.

Whether you are advertising on TV, online or other means, there has to be a fundamental difference in your delivery in order to appease the fulfilment desired from the consumer.

This has to be the ultimate directive; you cannot seek to enchant new or existing consumers when they are enduring insubordinate moods.

Thus to circumvent these issues, your entire advertising output has to reflect and evoke subconscious emotive resonance, notwithstanding the conscious.

In order to do this, the tendency to produce increasingly uniformed advertising has to be tempered.

Although formatting your video advertising material to suit all platforms can expedite success and improve productivity, the content within them needs to differ.

For instance, the trend of using hashtags has quickly dissolved in the wake of glaring inefficiency.

In 2014 8% of adverts on TV featured hashtags as a means of provoking discussion; in 2016 it fell to just 2%.

Creating a sense of community is vital as you seek to foster the emotive connections and rapport you enjoy with consumers, but with TV and all video advertising for that matter, it is counterintuitive to attempt to leverage this engagement early on.

Trust has to be generated before you can look to engage with hashtags.
Trust has to be generated before you can look to engage with hashtags.

Even if you are seeking to engage existing consumers through targeted advertising, notwithstanding new ones through brand awareness, the ultimate challenge for your business is to earn their trust.

Looking at instant engagement without already accruing the trust of consumers can lead to search that concerns your product, but not on your website itself – you are ultimately losing efficiency.

Experts of course can help; partnerships with regulatory bodies, but nothing will usurp the power that emotive resonance can have on garnering trust.

Hashtags distort and equivocate your advertising; without a clear vision and consistent direction that also assists with generating trust you are losing out on consumers and ultimately, engagement.

The irony emanates from the very intention of the campaign where your business will only immolate as a result of such contrived advertising.

From a direct response perspective you of course will want to ensure that your consumers engage with your business post-purchase, but that can come at the point of sale, as you begin to incentivise the next stage of the journey.

Thus the consumer journey does not stop at the point of purchase, but from a more collective perspective, it does.

The paradox emanates from the very advertising styles that elicit the results you desire: advertising to mass audience at scale appeals individually, while more individualistic marketing fosters community engagement – that is where the juxtaposition must lie.

Therefore as you look to create your own sub-trends within your consumer brackets, hashtags should be firmly left to the social media output of your business.

Ultimately social media does not increase the depth of your consumer base, therefore trying to court new clients using this means of marketing is inefficient and futile.

On the matter of trust; if your business is to utilise video, or in particular TV and its derivatives, you need to ensure that a degree of credibility is inherently instilled.

Rather than hashtags there should be innovations
Rather than hashtags there should be consideration to credibility before you look to engage..

The ASA published its findings today (Thursday, 26 October 2017) on the volume of ads that had to be amended or withdrawn due to irregularities; they ultimately reflect the lack of trust in online advertising.

In the first half of 2017, the ASA had to withdraw 88% more adverts than they had to during the same period in 2016, when in the same period, online advertising expenditure grew 67 times more quickly than TV.

Although just an anomaly in itself, the quality of this piece of data can be reinforced by the declining trust in advertising from consumers.

Compared to 2013, 37% of consumers trust advertising less now, while only 7% trust it more, with 69% not trusting advertising altogether.

The reasoning behind this is a lack of integrity and brand messages that cannot be substantiated.

Trust can only be elicited through actual adaptation to the assertions you make and profess within your advertising.

Hashtags; singular creative tacts that look at mobilising a certain message, are both hollow measures that do not embody your business – you need to encompass your business in the concept you are looking to sell.

Therefore before trust, thus engagement is elicited and hashtags become effectiveness, the sale has to occur first, or at least trust in the product or service.

Space City has been producing TV, online and radio commercials for 25 years, focusing on showcase heavy creatives that serve to gain the trust of consumers.

Contact the team now and utilise the power of response driven advertising to elicit sales increases of as much as 600%.

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