Description

Media Alzheimer's disease is characterized by forgetting familiar media usage behaviour and the associated inability to recognize it when dealing with today's online advertising formats.

Causes

Due to increasing life expectancy and the accelerated succession of media innovations, the disease is being diagnosed more and more frequently. Neologisms are deposited in the collective memory ("skipping"), which makes it increasingly difficult to retrieve analog, but older memory content ("zapping away").

Symptoms

Those affected show increased insecurity when dealing with commercials and repeat the same question every 30 years: "What if someone doesn't want to watch my commercial after a few seconds?" Sufferers react with confusion when others say things that they cannot classify: "Make a movie that people voluntarily want to watch in its entirety." Independent brand management is severely restricted.

Complications

The internet company involved in most of the cases is itself suffering from media Alzheimer's disease. Its conviction that advertising placements should not be distracting and should be relevant has fallen victim to forgetfulness: interrupter formats are proliferating on the company's own video platform. And it "forgot" to deliver skippable video ads to users of ad blockers.

Published so far:

Cataract (celebriti invisibilis)
Campaign break (damnatio memoriae)
Obsession with order (normomania)
Customer distemper (procure distemper)
Director's Cut (conceptus amputatis)
Salmon jam (risum interrupta)
Premature mark effusion (ejaculatio logo praecox)
Idea bedsores (decubitus idea)
Panic-progressive disorder (morbus pendulum)
Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)
Probonose (thrombosis facsimile)
Commercial accent syndrome (dyslalia promotoris)

Description

If the speech melody of a presenter or off-speaker changes in a way that can be interpreted by listeners as an accent of a foreign language, this is known as commercial accent syndrome.

Cases

Overall, only a few cases have been documented, but they have gained a certain degree of notoriety due to their unusual appearance. For example, the case of a 36-year-old German who suddenly spoke with a Swedish accent. The long-standing narrator of American action movie trailers finds the resulting forced restriction to a furniture store brand a great burden. A 26-year-old Austrian woman speaks TV commercials for sparkling wine drinks and underwear with what appears to be a French accent. A farmer from Appenzell shows a different way of dealing with the disease. His seemingly Italian accent developed overnight, giving him numerous speaking roles for pasta, scooters and online marketplaces.

Trigger

Commercial accent syndrome is caused by neurological changes. Even light blows to the back of the head, for example by a concept manager present in the recording studio, can cause it.

Therapy

An effective treatment is still pending. However, initial successes have been achieved with the aspiration of stereotypies. This is done endonasally; in chronic poly-stereotypic cases, the entire cerebral cortex is also removed.

Published so far:

Cataract (celebriti invisibilis)
Campaign break (damnatio memoriae)
Obsession with order (normomania)
Customer distemper (procure distemper)
Director's Cut (conceptus amputatis)
Salmon jam (risum interrupta)
Premature mark effusion (ejaculatio logo praecox)
Idea bedsores (decubitus idea)
Panic-progressive disorder (morbus pendulum)
Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)
Probonose (thrombosis facsimile)

Description

We call a celebrity who is less well-known than the brand they are promoting a cataract. In rare cases, this constellation can cause the celebrity to mutate from a C-type to an A-type. In the majority of cases, however, there is a reciprocal clouding of the image and even a total loss of the brand image.

History

The disease has been documented since the early days of advertising. Even back then, the so-called vampire effect was observed, which enhanced the value of testimonials such as Napoleon and Mozart, but weakened the products they advertised. Today, Napoleon slices and Mozartkugeln are at best a generic term.

Symptoms

Cataracts can occur at any age. At a young age, it affects beauty pageant contestants and YouTube bloggers, later also former TV announcers and ski racers. The massive appearance of the gray star has shifted from on-pack stickers to Instagram. Typical endorsements include self-portraits next to cars (#lovethiscar) or cold drinks (#myfavoritedrink).

Diagnosis

The low recognizability of the testimonials makes it difficult to identify the disease. Comparison with the list of participants in the jungle camp has become an internationally accepted indicator. One of the most common methods of making a cataract visible is to mention his name under his photo.

Published so far:

Campaign break (damnatio memoriae)
Obsession with order (normomania)
Customer distemper (procure distemper)
Director's Cut (conceptus amputatis)
Salmon jam (risum interrupta)
Premature mark effusion (ejaculatio logo praecox)
Idea bedsores (decubitus idea)
Panic-progressive disorder (morbus pendulum)
Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)
Probonose (thrombosis facsimile)

Description

Campaign disruptions are the result of personnel changes at management level, often on the client side and sometimes on the agency side. They are encouraged by the urge to quickly leave a personal mark with something new.

Anatomy

The campaign is a fabric that connects the recent past with the near future of the brand. The fabric consists of individual flights in different channels. If an ego arches into the gaps between them, finished presentations, planned film shoots and long-standing business relationships can be disconnected.

Forms

A direct campaign break occurs when the decline in market share exceeds the fluctuation rate in management. An indirect campaign break begins with a quiet cough in introductory meetings and statements such as "review communication on a regular basis". The existing team can then invest time and money to show that personnel changes are long overdue on their side too.

Treatment

In most cases, an impending fracture cannot be averted. Interventions during the acute phase are controversial and can even accelerate the hernia. A maximally invasive procedure is widely used, in which a mesh (that of the new leader) is implanted into the fracture site. Although scars form at the edges of the mesh, there is no fusion with the surrounding area.

Published so far:
 

Obsession with order (normomania)
Customer distemper (procure distemper)
Director's Cut (conceptus amputatis)
Salmon jam (risum interrupta)
Premature mark effusion (ejaculatio logo praecox)
Idea bedsores (decubitus idea)
Panic-progressive disorder (morbus pendulum)
Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)
Probonose (thrombosis facsimile)
 

Description
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an obsessive-compulsive disorder that manifests itself in an inner urge to establish design guidelines (CI rules). The associated loss of flexibility leads to severe impairments in everyday creativity (idea development). Those affected defend themselves against the compulsion as it seems pointless, but are unable to counteract it voluntarily.

Obsessive thoughts
The fear of being held responsible for possible disaster leads to mental circles around certain topics. Spacing: Changing positions of logo and headline could make the brand invisible. Imagery: Perhaps text-only solutions torment the reader with emotional coldness. Brightness: Clouds, dark shadows or black lines may plunge the target group into deep sadness.

Compulsive actions
The clinical picture ranges from obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions to elaborate compulsive rituals (CI workshop). In order to reduce tension, the compulsion to order requires the exact execution of a ritualized chain of actions.

Diagnosis
Constraints of great complexity and bizarreness are recorded in writing (CI manual). New actions that creep in in the meantime must be included in the report as exceptions. However, this usually delays the binding conclusion of the report to such an extent that a completely new system of rules develops in parallel.

Published so far:

Customer distemper (procure distemper)
Director's Cut (conceptus amputatis)
Salmon jam (risum interrupta)
Premature mark effusion (ejaculatio logo praecox)
Idea bedsores (decubitus idea)
Panic-progressive disorder (morbus pendulum)
Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)
Probonose (thrombosis facsimile)

Description

Customer distemper is a viral disease that can occur in companies that purchase services from other companies. The disease is characterized by extreme price sensitivity, accompanied by a greatly reduced ability to perceive quality.

Initial stage

The customer distemper virus from the B2B virus family enters the company via the shareholder value approach and initially infects the purchasing bodies, where it multiplies rapidly. After a few months, the first behavioral abnormalities (savings constraint disorders) towards advertising agencies, such as the sending of price inquiries and confidentiality agreement forms, occur. At the same time, there is a progressive weakening of the marketing apparatus.

Final stage

The company then goes through the actual pitch phase, at the end of which the agency decision is made. The contract is awarded via a reflex form and is awarded precisely when the threshold values specified by the company match the information provided by a provider: Price per unit of idea (semi-finished product), delivery deadline, shelf life of the campaign and liability if the ordered advertising impact does not materialize.

Prophylaxis

The only way to protect yourself is to get vaccinated. For basic immunization, a visit to the marketing department is recommended for young buyers; for older purchasing managers, a visit to a film shoot.

Published so far:

Director's Cut (conceptus amputatis)
Salmon jam (risum interrupta)
Premature mark effusion (ejaculatio logo praecox)
Idea bedsores (decubitus idea)
Panic-progressive disorder (morbus pendulum)
Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)
Probonose (thrombosis facsimile)
 

Description

The director's cut is a deep gash that wounds a film right down to the concept layer. This applies in particular to short-format commercials. The director's cut is to be distinguished from the making-of, in which an intact concept is merely covered by a thick audiovisual scab. Showreels, online communities and film juries are the main areas of distribution for the director's cut.

Causes

Director's cuts are created post-production through jobs that are completed in and of themselves and that a director rubs up against. Their purpose is to demonstrate their skills as an autonomous craftsman without lateral influences from briefings, pre-production meetings or finished broadcast copies. During the incubation period, contact with outstanding story elements leads to trimmings, which together form the actual cut.
Axel Eckstein is Executive Creative Director at Leo Burnett Switzerland. He writes about the pathological in advertising and marketing in every Advertising Week.

Symptoms

Abnormal length growth is very frequently observed in the affected films. This is accompanied by focus jumps and white fading. In severe cases, the music layer undergoes a complete metamorphosis. Very rare: the naming of an alternative client brand in the final chart.

Prevention

Effective preventive measures are not yet known. In order to avoid complications, any concept residues that remain in the incision should always be rinsed out completely.

Published so far:

Salmon jam (risum interrupta)
Premature mark effusion (ejaculatio logo praecox)
Idea bedsores (decubitus idea)
Panic-progressive disorder (morbus pendulum)
Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)
Probonose (thrombosis facsimile)
 

Description

A laugh jam occurs when a humorous element of a presentation (e.g., punch line of a commercial) triggers the affective mouth movements typical of laughter, but after a certain time delay, these are occupied by feelings of doubt or gloom from the cerebral cortex.

Causes

So far, two causes of laughter congestion are known. In the most common cases, those affected by laugh jams assume that other people do not laugh at the same things as they do. In the remaining cases, they assume that an orally transmitted punch line cannot be reproduced in another form of presentation (usually filming).

Diagnosis

For diagnosis, the patient is presented with a calibrated film script: someone comes up with all sorts of ideas to avoid being released from prison because there is no nice furniture waiting at home. If the patient smiles, but then makes statements such as "Prisons are for bad people and therefore not funny," laughing jam has been established.

Prevention

One proven way to avoid laughter jams is to trust your own feelings. Preventive action also comes from confronting what you voluntarily share. This includes video clips shared online of parents exposing their own children, or those with dogs jumping against glass doors, but also nude selfies of celebrities.

Published so far:

Premature mark effusion (ejaculatio logo praecox)
Idea bedsores (decubitus idea)
Panic-progressive disorder (morbus pendulum)
Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)
Probonose (thrombosis facsimile)

Description

If the name of the sender appears too early in a commercial or in any other narrative format, this is known as premature brand effusion. The sender experiences its climax before the story has itss.

Features

The outpouring almost always takes place within the first few seconds. Not infrequently, it occurs before the penetration of the advertising message in the consumer ( " ante portas " ). According to some experts, however, the early mention of the brand is not always " premature " . If a concept is missing completely, for example, then there is also no structuring of the film, text or event into dramaturgical sections that require a certain sequence.

Follow

Premature brand effusion is a dysfunction in which the implementation partner is unable to control the timing of the logo insertion itself. This results in considerable strain in the relationship between the campaign maker and the audience. A feeling of powerlessness on the one hand is accompanied by a lack of narrative satisfaction on the other.

Remedy

One well-known method of avoiding premature brand effusion is the squeeze technique. This involves squeezing all of the product's benefits into the story shortly before the highest pressure to name the product. If vignettes are also used, test subjects report a delay in climax of up to 6 times.

Published so far:

Idea bedsores (decubitus idea)
Panic-progressive disorder (morbus pendulum)
Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)
Probonose (thrombosis facsimile)

Description

Idea soreness refers to ulcers that form when ideas sit around for a long time. Then, when you still have a lot of time before implementation or when implementation is not planned at all. Particularly at risk are mature campaign architectures that have been presented several times in different committees.

Symptoms

Concepts that have been thought through to the end, but have not yet been made, get pressure marks on exposed parts such as the headline or the key visual. If the pressure lasts too long, irreversible damage is done to the basic conceptual framework.

Origin

The damaging pressure is created simply by people involved (client, creative, consultant) or uninvolved (friends, relatives, house staff) repeatedly looking at the design. After some time, sore points become visible, e.g. a word that is ambiguous, a story that not everyone understands, or an ad that shows different people than the TV spot.

Treatment

Pressure relief is the top priority when it comes to idea bedsores. This is done by rearranging the layout elements and rebuilding the presentation slides at regular intervals. If the sore spots are small and dry (punchlines), it may be sufficient to cover them with a voice over. Larger areas are treated with a sterile solution. In the case of professional therapy, it must be remembered to make cutbacks from the idea.

Published so far:

Panic-progressive disorder (morbus pendulum)
Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)
Probonose (thrombosis facsimile)

Description

Probonosis is the term used to describe the clogging of the juries of creative competitions with works that were created without a client commission.

Origin

Today, Probonose mainly occurs in the environment of endurance creatives who use methods to increase performance. This has the effect that more creativity can be transported per award entry. At the same time, however, this makes the jury discussion more viscous, which encourages the formation of clots of anger. These become entrenched in the decision-making processes and, in extreme cases, lead to the collapse of entire categories.

Investigation

First, the judges examine the suspicious work and feel it. Feelings of tension in the text-image mechanics serve as a possible indication of probonosis, but are considered imprecise as they can also have other causes. Further clarification is provided by a show of hands. In contrast to the Mediaplan examination, this method is significantly less stressful for those affected.

Risk factors

The probability of a probonosis increases if several works submitted to the competition overly excite the central suspicion system. The main risks are unusually tidy layouts without coupons or spoilers, case films with agency employees and relative rather than absolute advertising impact figures such as "doubling the number of Facebook fans" (i.e. from 1 to 2).

Published so far:

Panic-progressive disorder (morbus pendulum)
Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)
 

Description

In a panic-progressive disorder, there are extreme fluctuations in the assessment of opportunities and risks in connection with advertising campaigns. Typically, the change between the two opposing affective states occurs in situations in which a concept is not available in its final form. In other words, as long as you are working on it.

Trigger

Mood swings are usually triggered by irrelevant aspects of a presentation. A TV commercial title such as "Das Malheur" can trigger a panic episode. Conversely, the title "The bright spot" for the same movie can mark the beginning of a progressive phase.

Phases

During a panic phase, those affected lose all hope (of good test results). This can even go so far that death by ideation is seen as the better alternative. In a progressive phase, on the other hand, praise is effusive (because CI instructions were followed exactly).

Causes

Three factors ensure a high probability (predisposition) of a panic-progressive disorder. 1. the lack of imagination is just as great as the lack of decision-making authority. 2. a traumatic experience caused by a critical comment on the company's Facebook page. 3. contact with marketing textbooks that contain chapters on ad design.

Published so far:

Margin inflammation (gastritis profit)
Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)

Description

Marginitis occurs when a company's protective profit cushion, especially that of an agency, is under attack.

Course

The profit cushion normally consists of one third each of project fees, flat fees and commissions. Inflammations usually begin in the commission layer, which briefly becomes success-based and eventually dissolves completely. Gradually - sometimes over years - cost discussions corrode the other layers as well.

Forms

The most important forms of disease are chronic. Nicotine and alcohol can play a role here, because the long-term loss of corresponding advertising budgets tears sensitive holes. Far more frequently, however, margin inflammation occurs as an autoimmune disease, the pathogenesis of which has not yet been fully clarified: The natural defense system, which normally fights hostile costs such as free coffee and freelancers, forms antibodies against its own principles. Free pitch presentations are the result.

Diagnosis

The only reliable method of analysis is the margin mirroring method. For this purpose, a dedicated line is laid from the corporate center to the branch office. This procedure is not painful and the initial gag reflex quickly subsides. The CFO can now view the cash flow in the new business pipeline in detail on a screen, right up to the top of the production organs.

Published so far:

Success strabismus (strabismus successus)
Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)

Description

Eye movements are usually synchronized so that both eyes focus on the same central target (often a marketing or communication target). When squinting for success, however, one eye looks at one's own brand while the other eye simultaneously and continuously focuses on the most dangerous competitor brand.

Symptoms

Squinting at success can lead to double images. For example, the self-marketed coffee beans overlap with the capsules of the innovation leader. Or your own smartphone philosophy intersects with the current design of the challenger. The attempt to transfer double images directly from the brain to specific products or advertising media causes headaches. Not for the cross-eyed person, however, but for everyone else.

Therapy

If the healthy eye is covered, the squinting eye is forced to look at its own strengths again. If this does not happen, the squinting eye should be covered (inverse occlusion). Although the healthy eye will then also start to squint, in the best case scenario it will also observe what others are doing and both visual axes will be approximately aligned.

Operation

If the person concerned can follow a presentation of in-house developments while reading newsletters from competitors on their cell phone under the table, the squint angle is so great that a surgical correction makes sense.

Published so far:

Gold fever (febre auri)
Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)

Description

Gold fever is a mildly contagious infectious disease caused by the gold fever virus. Creative professionals serve as intermediate hosts for the virus, transmitting it to regular photo, film and radio productions.

Pathogen

Gold fever viruses belong to the family of reputational viruses. Two subspecies are known. Aurivirus extramile makes dialogs funnier, pay-offs more surprising and logo charts more beautiful, while the virus of the far more common species Aurivirus focus is designed to restore rudimentary basic ideas destroyed by pretests.

Transmission

The gold fever virus is transmitted by retrieving an alternative version of the manuscript as soon as the advertising client has left the filming location or recording studio for good or only goes to the toilet briefly. The entire production team can become infected with the exception of lighting technicians, who have lifelong immunity.

Course of the disease

Gold fever leads to an increase in working hours on both the agency and production side, while at the same time reducing the profit level. In the actual execution phase, the affected creatives show brief mood boosts, which are neutralized in regular spurts by budget managers who are still present. In 0.5 percent of cases, a second phase of the illness manifests itself with an award win at an Eastern European festival.

Published so far:

Platitourette (repetitio nausea)
Visual fetishism (stimulus best practice)

 

Description
Visual fetishism is understood as behavior in which an object, the so-called fetish (yogurt, car, sweater), is to be depicted in a schematic advertising manner in such a way that arousal occurs. If the stimulus seems impossible without the fetish, the behavior is considered to require treatment.

Forms
Characteristic is the precisely defined way in which a fetish must be photographed or filmed. In food fetishism, for example, artificial raspberries fall into cream yogurt at 360 frames per second. Automotive fetishists (paint erotica) respond to reflections and split mass. Fashion fetishists have the drape of clothing retouched until they experience visual satisfaction.

Causes
The motive is still unclear today. According to a theory of Freud, the always same presentation of the fetish symbolizes ritualized actions of one's own mother, i.e. security. Skinner, on the other hand, suspects that the fetishist is simply reacting to the pressure of conformity of his professional group, rather than to the target group's need to be able to distinguish offers.

Distribution
Visual fetishism occurs almost exclusively in triangular relationships between client, agency and production company. The consumer is left out, as the fetish has become a complete substitute for the genuine communicative act with him.

From the current Print edition the advertising week.

Platitourette (repetitio nausea)

Description Advertising that suffers from Platitourette's syndrome makes statements that occur very frequently and always in the same way. Although these so-called marketics are preceded by complex internal coordination processes, they occur without the involvement of the conscious mind.

Symptoms

Typical of the advertising material concerned is the frequent use of meaningless adjectives such as "tailor-made", "individual" and "perfect", with each product category having its own symptoms. Food packaging, for example, repeats "carefully" and "exquisite" in a pathologically exaggerated manner. In automobile advertising, "agile" and "confident" are considered prevalent. In its severe form, platitourette leads to the repetition of entire phrases such as "innovation by tradition" or "hits for kids", often in combination with grimacing (laughing and nodding at an advertising presenter).

Causes

The cause of the disease is thought to be a peripheral point in the briefing where the brand tonality is fixed. The attributes defined here are looped directly through to the advertising material, bypassing the creative cortex.

Psychosocial consequences

Outsiders generally ignore statements made by people with Platitourette's syndrome, which in turn can lead to a reinforcement of the inconspicuousness. The fact that the symptoms are largely invisible makes it difficult to remove the taboo surrounding the illness.