Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Blanalytics and JabezMarketing are both right. It depends, and most agencies (and most clients) are too eager to change advertising too soon.

The real decision, it seems to me, should be based on the exposure levels to the heaviest viewers. If your heaviest viewers (the 20% of your total audience that have seen the commercial x times) see your ad more than 20-30 times in a 2-month period, for example, it may be time to change the copy.

What this really suggests is that your media weight is one key determinant of commercial wear-out. If you air the commercial at very high levels, it's going to wear out faster than if you're at lower levels. It kind of makes sense, doesn't it?

I've used television commercials in my "generic" discussion. The concept, though, applies to print, radio, outdoor, even matchbook covers.

And it still depends on a zillion other factors -- not the least of which is the creative itself. Some concepts and executions have a slower decay rate than others.

There's an old saying that "advertising wears out in the boardroom a lot faster than it does in the consumer's livingroom."

If you have good copy that's working, leave it alone until you see signs that it's not working any more. Don't get hung up on rules of thumb. It's not like the commercial suddenly wears out one day and stops working altogether. It just goes from "really great" to "great" to "good" over a period of months. If you can pick up when that decay begins, you'll have a month or two to prepare a replacement before it's time to make the switch.

Hope this helps. I've been through this issue a lot over the years ... for the companies I've been with and for clients (and once for an advertsising agency who hired me to convince their client to do the right thing and let the commercial work, when the client was ready to pull the plug on it prematurely).