Advertising as a medium has some purposes
- Raise awarenesss
- Increase the reach
- Keep brand recall high
- Increase the purchase disposition
- Build brand imagery
- Build brand loyalty
A particular ad campaign could address one or multiple of the above mentioned objectives.
Now whether a ad is liked by an audience is completely dependent on the audience we are talking about. If the ad is not relevant to a particular set of people, they might feel it is pointless to do that kind of advertising. In your specific case you say u have seen ads of brands which u earlier liked but havent liked their recent advertising.
Now there could be multiple reasons for that to happen and one most likely being the creative agency has goofed up or the client (brand owners) arent clear about wat they wanted ---after all they approved the ad.
But there could be another reason too, lets assume that the brand in its bid to evolve to a different set of consumer or further more to a different generation has to change the language, the tonality and the way it used to communicate. Obviously some of the old consumers of the brand might move away, but that wouldnt be a failure, the success of the campaign would be wen one is able to gauge how many new kind of consumers the campaign managed to garner while retaining the major chunk of its old consumers.
Sometimes the number of new consumers garnered are so high that the loss of old consumers doesnt really seem big.
A good brand however would always evolve and take their consumers with them - in that they would attach new imageries and aspects to the brand (keeping the core constant). Core would link with the old consumers - keeping them tied up. While the way the brand is speaking to the new consumers would build loyalty amongst the new.
Having said that brands which are resorting to cheap, gimicky, slapstick humour type of communication without gauging whether it fits with the brand identity and personality or understanding what it is doing to the brand image are looking for short term gains or are downright shortsighted and not serious about their existenceThe companies trust the advice of the ad agency that develops the advertisement. I create cooperate logo's for companies and its up to me to create the perfect logo.
If I don't do proper background work things could go wrong.
I take pride in what I do and want everything perfect. When I pitch an idea I don't want yes men. With big companies everyone agrees no matter how bad the idea. The Gap ad was frustrating for most users in answers but it did get the attention of everyone on the net. Gap did receive some complaints but I am willing to bet that store sales are up because of the ad and it will be considered a successful ad on yahoo.Advertisers do think before they post, for example if you look at http://www.sellover.com , you will notice that the ads you see are post by people who know that they have to attract buyers.