In 1980, advertising absorbed roughly two-thirds of all marketing expenditures by manufactures; by 1990, advertising’s share was no more than one-third. Part of the decline was due to the fact that advertising had lost some of its thrill for consumers.
A study performed in 1992 showed that consumers considered advertising less in decision-making. Of the cross section of Americans studied, fewer than 15 percent of people relied on advertising in buying appliances, 10 percent or fewer in buying furniture, 7 percent or fewer in making banking decisions, 9 percent fewer in buying automotive supplies and 17 percent fewer in purchasing clothing. Was this because there were too many messages being shoved into the pipeline or because an entire generation had become immune to advertising?
Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel, Generation X defined some forty-seven million 17- to 28- year-old Americans as a generation that was lost to advertising. Madison avenue latched on to this proclamation and soon advertisers began trying different ways to reach this generation.
X-ers soon were appearing in ads everywhere. Subaru ran a campaign in which an X’er compares the car to hard-core music, a converse ad featured an X’er yelling “We don’t want to be in a beer commercial” Sprite ran an ad featuring a young man saying “he is sick of some celebrity trying to sell him something,” gap ran a counterculture icon series featuring Anthony Kiedes (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers).
This audience had been advertised to so many times, that they were no longer taking the sales pitch. They were essentially saying “ok, the jig is up, at least if you’re going to try and sell me something, do it well and don’t take yourself too seriously.” This spawned commercials like the energizer rabbit marching through fake commercials of other products, Subaru ads that mock the zero to sixty acceleration, parodies of bimbo beer commercials and Pepsi ads that mock taste tests by showing chimpanzees as subjects.
Another approach advertisers took to get noticed was to sell so softly that the product is almost overlooked. In the 80s the product was deemed to no longer be the hero, and in the 90s the product was not even a participant.
DDB Needham Worldwide created a series of Ads for Bugle Boy jeans that showed busty bikini-clad women frolicking across the screen for thirty seconds. Calvin Klein ads showed images of young women in jeans fondling themselves or young people making love on the beach.
Agencies continued creating ads like this because their targeted audience was responding. Perhaps the audience wasn’t immune; they were just tired of hearing the same boring things for too long.