Who doesn’t love a good ad? Isn’t there a jingle you heard on TV as a kid that you still hum to yourself? A catchy slogan you still find yourself quoting sometimes? A commercial you forwarded to friends the Monday after the Super Bowl? Really good and effective advertising tends to stick in the brain. However, the ads that can stick around even longer are the marketing campaigns that go terribly, terribly wrong. 

Plenty of infamous ad campaigns come to mind, from LifeLock’s CEO making the decision in 2007 to publicize his own social security number and dare people to steal his identity (Spoiler alert: they did. Thirteen times.) to Pepsi’s disastrous 2017 short-lived short film starring Kendall Jenner. 

The argument could be made that for these mega brands, all publicity is good publicity. Case in point, we’re still talking about these advertisements years later. However, for small and medium-sized brands, making a huge advertising mistake could be the difference between gaining or losing a loyal customer. If a brand’s name sparks immediate derision or annoyance in the mind of consumers, it’s not unlikely that they’ll give their business to a competitor. 

If you don’t want yours to be the agency that takes the blame for the next widely-criticized advertising campaign, it might be time to consider marketing approval software. This software gives you and your company an extra layer of protection, ensuring ads have been thoroughly reviewed for any mistakes or deviations from brand identity. 

What Are the Effects of Bad Ads?

As stated above, not all publicity actually is good publicity. A spectacular flop of a marketing campaign may create something for people to talk about around the water cooler, but that kind of word-of-mouth isn’t likely to strengthen the brand of whatever product a failed campaign was trying to sell. Instead, bad advertising is much more likely to alienate potential customers, damage the trust of existing customers, and destroy any positive brand association the product you’re trying to sell might already have. 

Besides the way bad ads and marketing can severely harm the relationship between brand and consumer, it’s also costly! At the end of the day, a failed ad campaign means that you spent a significant amount of money on an effort that will result in a loss of customers and loss of revenue, severely damaging your bottom line. 

How Do Bad Ads Happen?

Sometimes you happen to catch a snippet of media – whether that be a TV show, a movie, or, yes, advertisement – so offensive, poorly made or misguided that you can’t help but wonder: How did this even get made? In the case of bad advertising campaigns, the answer could stem from any number of reasons.

Misguided Objectives

What are you actually trying to achieve with the ad you’re putting out? Trying to create awareness of a new product? Generate excitement about an existing one? A common problem that can cause marketing campaigns to fail is having either too many goals for a single campaign or lacking a quantifiable objective at all. Good marketing campaigns have a single, measurable goal, and work to achieve that goal in their ad copy and production.

Unclear Messaging

If the objectives for your campaign are unclear, then the messaging might come out muddled, as well. Campaigns that fail spectacularly often do so because their messaging is so unclear or misguided to be incomprehensible at best, or outright offensive at worst. A successful campaign should be a strong, clear call to action directed at the target audience. 

Misunderstanding The Audience

Of course, reaching out a hand to potential customers works best if you know who those customers are. Good advertising campaigns should know their target audience! Creating successful ads should involve asking yourself: who is this campaign trying to reach? What does this target audience care about, and what do they need? If you have a strong understanding of the consumers you’re trying to reach, it’ll be easier to create a campaign that resonates with them and meets their needs. 

Poor Execution

Sometimes, good intentions just aren’t enough. Even great ideas can turn into terrible ads if those ideas aren’t realized and executed properly. That’s why it’s so vital to have an actionable, clear plan for executing your campaign, and to make sure that everyone involved knows what the plan is, what their role in that plan is, and how to perform their role. 

How Does Marketing Approval Software Help?

So what’s the best way to curtail the damage done by bad ads? Well, the best way to head off the harm caused by bad advertisements is to make sure they never see the light of day in the first place. That’s where marketing approval software comes into play!

Marketing approval software takes all of your marketing projects, designs, documents, feedback, and messaging, and centralizes it in one accessible hub. Before any marketing assets see the light of day, this software standardizes review and approval from relevant internal and external stakeholders. Marketing approval software also makes approval requests an automated part of the workflow, making it even likelier that all content is on-brand and mistake free before publishing.

The best thing about this software solution is the way it’s designed to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks between creation and publication of the content being reviewed. Besides saving time by centralizing and standardizing the review process, it also makes communication clearer, enhances transparency, and helps companies set and maintain higher standards of quality control. 

Ashore Makes Sure Your Campaign Won’t Miss a Step

Bad ads can embarrass your company – and, worse, damage the brands of both your agency and your client. Marketing approval software creates a strong internal approval process that ensures that you’re providing clients with the best work possible, and Ashore is here to come aboard and provide you with the perfect software solution.

Our platform is designed to streamline communication, encourage collaboration, and most importantly, help you perfect the proofing process. Ashore centralizes feedback in one place, so your email inbox won’t runneth over, and includes features such as workflow staging, automated notifications, version control, and proofing timelines, so that your proofing process is as effective as possible, and the collateral you produce always hits the mark. 

Sign up for a free account on Ashore today to start sending proofs, or request a one-on-one demo to learn more!