There was an excellent article in yesterday’s Media Guardian bemoaning the lack of creativity in the Christmas advertising by the main British retailers. Naresh Ramchandani noted that most of these companies had seen disappointing sales over the festive period (although it’s likely that the general economic uncertainty played a part in that) and compared this with Uniqlo. The Japanese fashion retailer released a series of poster ads featuring a strange family of cashmere puppets modelling Uniqlo’s cashmere products, which is probably post-modern or something.

Whilst the article doesn’t include sales figures for Uniqlo, it does have this quote from their UK CEO, Simon Noble:

Cashmere was Uniqlo’s strongest seller in December and Uniqlo had a very strong Xmas in which advertising had a very strong impact.

We’ve talked about Uniqlo’s inventive use of marketing before, but the reason that I mention it now is because it strikes me that a lack of creative thinking could also be the main problem with Facebook’s advertising system right now.

On logging in yesterday I was faced with the message that you can see in our main image above; for those who can’t bear to look, the ad reads:

Discount Dermalogica

Low price dermalogica skin care. Up to 30% off. Also beauty room in Leicester.

Now even ignoring the fact that the ad sounds like its been written by a computer rather than a human being, why on earth am I being shown this ad? Aren’t Facebook ads meant to be incredibly relevant, targeted as they are by demograhic data including sex, location & age? So why am I being shown an ad which, without wishing to make sweeping generalisations, seems aimed at females in the East Midlands?

There has been lots of discussion, both online & off, about the danger of Facebook users deserting it in droves, although much of this discussion has focussed on supposed abuse of personal data. In fact it seems to me that a more likely scenario which ought to be keeping Mark Zuckerberg up at night, is one in which people get fed up with being shown rubbish ads, and decide that they’re not willing to put up with these in return for using the services Facebook offers.

The fact is that many people are quite happy to part with personal information to online service providers, if it results in a more personalised, and therefore richer, experience. A 2006 survey found that 57% of consumers would be willing to provide demographic data for a more personalised service of this sort, which is the sort of statistic that should put a smile right across Zucrerberg’s face.

But until he can work out to induce creativity in his advertisers, of the sort shown by Uniqlo, he might want to worry that 57% of consumers might feel that providing personal information for a service which is anything but personal is something they really have no interest in doing. And that’s something which could make the recent valuations of Facebook’s value little more than meaningless statistics.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.