For the love of God, can we stop referring to people as 'eyeballs'.

Here’s an ad that’s caught my eye during the Olympics.

It’s not an Earth-shattering piece of creative, but it’s really simple and well executed. The main reason it caught my attention, though, is it ‘feels big’. It feels like a big brand behaving like a big brand. A brand that feels big creates more than just interest, it fosters trust, it makes you feel comfortable, it earns mental availability. It takes up space in the front of your mind.

Realestate.com.au used to make big ads. They even had Arnie in an ad 9 years ago. But I can’t really remember anything since. This spot feels like the biggest brand in the category reclaiming its place, as it should. One viewing of this did more to lift my consideration of realestate.com.au than the 1000 retargeted ads they served me prior. I’ve been in the market to buy a house for 5 or 6 years, and because of that, I’ve been relentlessly pummelled by horrible, annoying, retargeting from every real estate company imaginable. Mostly achieving me never wanting to engage with them as a company. On their collective reporting though, they were probably celebrating getting ‘lots of eyeballs for the spend’.

And, just on that, can we as an industry stop referring to people as ‘eyeballs’? Those eyeballs are connected to something. People. With hopes and dreams and feelings and emotions and brains and intelligence. It might sound trivial, but I genuinely don’t believe it is. It frames the intent of the work we create. If we think of people as eyeballs, we dehumanise them and devalue the work we create. If we think of people as eyeballs, we serve them 1000 aggravating digital ads that drive them completely up the wall.

If we think of people as eyeballs, we serve them this.

This is an actual ad that Optus is running right now. Featuring an insanely creepy AI generated dude looking like he’s about to go full Joker mode. And here’s the comment section. Credit to Josh Mann for catching it.

Optus is the 2nd biggest telco in Australia. It’s a multi-billion dollar brand. They’ve spent years building that scale and brand equity while fighting it out with Telstra. Here’s the latest Telstra campaign.

Now, I know you’re gonna be like, ‘Dude, you’re comparing apples and oranges here’. Yeah, I know. That’s the point. The last Telstra ad I saw was one of those. And one of these billboards on my way to work.

And the last Optus ad I saw was that abomination. This is the impression these brands have left on me as a person. And that’s how real people experience ads in the world. They don’t care about ‘brand vs performance’ or ‘A/B testing’ or ‘integrated campaigns’. They either get annoyed or entertained.

On paper, media will report that Telstra spent WAAAAY too much on those ‘two impressions’ compared to the Optus ad they re-targeted to me 14 times. But which ad actually left a bigger and better impression on me?

What I’m getting at here is that after years and years and years of obsessive data and analytics and number crunching combined with shrinking budgets, shrinking screens, and shrinking ambitions, we’ve lost sight of SCALE.

I’ve spoken before about how ‘not all impressions are equal’. For years, media reporting has recorded someone scrolling past a shitty web banner as ‘one impression’. Watching a few seconds of a Facebook video as ‘one impression’. A 30 second TV spot as ‘one impression’. A huge billboard as ‘one impression’. And marketers viewing people as eyeballs have then made the decision to scale down their creative and shift their media to cheaper, smaller channels to get more ‘eyeballs per dollar’. But none of these impressions are equal. They don’t make people feel the same thing. They don’t leave people with same ‘impression’ of your brand. In fact, a lot of these impressions are just downright damaging - like whatever that Optus nightmare fuel is.

Look at the latest Nike campaign.

It’s totally divisive and there are people writing about how they love it or hate it, people are arguing over social media about it. Which, funnily enough, means it worked. No one cares about ads. But they care about this. Because it feels big. It feels huge. It’s worth people’s time and attention. When I saw this, my first thought was ‘Wow. Nike is back.’ Because it’s a big brand behaving like a big brand should.

AAMI’s ad running during the Olympics feels big too. So did their previous brand spot. Bigger than any other insurer. For me, AAMI now firmly comes first to mind in the category.

‘Feeling big’ isn’t just about budgets. Whether you’re Nike, or a start up side hustle, you should always be trying to be memorable. And being memorable isn’t just about quantity of impressions, but the quality of them. You should be trying to connect with people on a human level. Make them feel good about your brand. Confident about buying from you. Happy to exchange their hard earned for your wares. This is the key part of advertising that we’ve carelessly thrown out the window in pursuit of empty numbers on a spreadsheet. A tally of meaningless ‘eyeballs’.

There’s no perfect mathematical equation for ‘scale’. It’s just a feeling. Great ideas feel ‘big’. It can be anything, ideas that have been made with care and consideration and craft will feel big whether they’re on a billboard or someone’s TikTok feed.

When we were briefed to work on Ocean Blue’s first ever campaign, the recommendations were digital volume because of the budget. But despite never doing an ATL campaign, they were considered ‘Australia’s favourite smoked salmon’. So, we disagreed. They should feel big. They should feel proud. We instead ran an outdoor campaign, and went for scale over volume.

And it worked. They saw an uplift in brand and sales. And we soon got a second brief for another campaign.

There are some positive signs out there. After years of hammering people with 6 second bumpers and ‘performance’ ads all in the name of getting ‘eyeballs’, we’re finally starting to see a shift. Brands are reporting drops in their ‘brand health’. This is no surprise to anyone in agency land. And as a result, longer, crafted films are slowly re-emerging. Outdoor is having a renaissance. Social is embracing more than just ‘lo fi’.

In a strange way, the Optus ad gives me hope. Armed with AI, brands are going to continue to assault people’s ‘eyeballs’ with cheap, disingenuous, and if we’re perfectly honest, disrespectful noise. And, as per the comment section, people will rebel. They don’t want it. Just like they never wanted garbage SEO articles, retargeting, or ‘hyper personalisation’. And smart brands, with the right intent, will use it well. They’ll use it feel bigger and better, not just to churn and cost cut.

So, in the pursuit of maximising your marketing dollar, don’t lose sight of scale. Don’t lose sight of taking up a bigger space in people’s hearts and minds, not through volume of annoyance, but in the scale of the positive impressions you leave.

Because we’re connecting with people, not waving logos at eyeballs. And not all impressions are equal.

ADDENDUM:

Shortly after posting this article, I watched the new Bodyform spot via AMV BBDO.

Talk about scale of impression. Incredible.