the role of advertising

What makes an ‘effective’ advertisement?

That depends on what you expect advertising to do.

Some people believe it should drive sales; others think it must effect behaviour change.

But perhaps these expectations are too high; after all, advertising is just one element of the marketing mix, and each of the ‘Ps’ has a role to play in delivering overall success.

So, what’s advertising’s specific role within the mix?

I’d argue that it is to establish a shared understanding and / or feeling between brands and their audiences.

A highly focused role, but a very important one nonetheless.

Expecting communications to deliver anything more than this is misguided; advertising will never make up for poor marketing strategy.

Similarly, claiming it can deliver anything more is verging on arrogance; advertising will never be the sole reason why someone buys a product.

Following this rationale, the critical objective of all advertising is to effectively share a perspective that we believe will influence and motivate the audience.

So why don’t brands measure whether they achieve this?

Why do we continue to focus on metrics that explore misguided aspects of the communications process?

For example, ‘reach’ is a stalwart of advertising measurement, but it focuses on whether people heard the message, not whether they understood it.

Frequency doesn’t really help either, as we’ve seen before.

In fact, this recent article in the WARC exploring the “effectiveness of ‘commercial communications’” doesn’t even mention the level of audience understanding established by advertising.*

It leads with this finding:

“Some 53% of industry professionals argued that “ads that make
me stop and think” could be classed as being “very effective”

I recognise that ’stopping to think’ can play a role en route to establishing a shared understanding, but as with reach, the metric focuses more on receiving than understanding.

Other dimensions explored in the research include:

Ads that give me new information
Ads that are entertaining
Ads that are informative
Ads that are funny
Executions featuring a product demonstration
Ads that reinforce a message I already know

Again, each of these can play a role in delivering the understanding or feeling that we want to share, but where is the analyis of whether we achieved that end result?

We seem to focus more on measuring the means, rather than identifying whether we’ve achieved our objective.

Measuring this doesn’t need to be difficult; it’s simply a case of asking people whether they’ve experienced the campaign, and what they thought or felt about the brand after experiencing it.

Or, if a brand prefers quantative findings, we could offer respondents a list of potential ‘understandings’ or ‘feelings’ for them to choose from, rather than asking open-ended questions.

But to my mind, what people understand and feel is all that really matters; all the other dimensions are simply ‘nice to know’.

*This is not intended as a criticism of the WARC article, as it merely shares some interesting research findings. Equally, the Harris Interactive study it references is, in context, very informative, but I believe that we need to expand our perspective if we are truly to understand if we are achieving what we’re really trying to do.

think outside yourself

If you want to improve your marketing, forget pushing envelopes, thinking outside of boxes, or any other nonsense-speak recommendations.

Instead, just stop being so egocentric.

Communication is about what other people understand, not what you say.

In other words, it’s not about you, it’s about them.

If you want to engage other people, you need to be relevant to them, and that means starting from their perspective.

Ruby really gets this, and she and her team regularly share the perspectives of the people we want to engage.

Two sentences in a recent post really struck me:

“To Alex…, the technology within their lives is ‘an accessory’;
Alex explains it’s ‘no different’ to his clothing… There is no
gap, no split, no chasm – he doesn’t talk about going offline,
returning online, or anything like that – technology is there…
and he uses it as he wishes and needs.”

The importance of this struck me at the time, but Neil’s reminded me why these perspectives are so important.

He argues that:

“in light of the digitisation of all media, [the term digital] is losing
its meaning; that the days of specialism are over.”

He goes on to qualify this hypothesis, and ends up with more questions than answers (and rightly so).

But I think Neil’s questions arise because of a broader issue: as an industry, we still see the world almost entirely from our perspective.

It’s clear in the way we talk; for example, we refer to activities as “above-the-line”, “below-the-line”, “through-the-line”, or any other point relative to this apocryphal ‘line’.

But where exactly is that line?

It’s on the client’s balance sheet – a reference for finance people and shareholders.

It has very little to do with the people we want to influence.

So why do we still refer to activities in relation to this ‘line’?

The audience certainly don’t care about it, so what’s it doing in our plans?

And this is only one example of our introverted myopia.

Perhaps more concerning is our continued obsession with dividing the world up into different ‘media’.

Why do we do this?

It’s a perspective from our world, not from that of our audience.

As Ruby noted in the article above, people live seamless lives: they don’t distinguish between life ‘online’ and ‘offline’, or even between ‘media’.

Whatever they do, it’s all just part of their lives.

And if we want to connect with people, we can do it through anything we like.

Only agencies and marketers delineate the world relative to media or lines.

So let’s end this self-centred foolishness.

Let’s think about what matters to the people that matter to us, and how we can become relevant to them.

Because if we’re not relevant to them, why would they ever care about us or what we have to say?

amen, forever and ever

The phenomenon of ‘borrowing’ ideas is common to all creative fields.

We take inspiration from all our various experiences, and recombine them to create something new.

However, the extent to which others perceive our creation as something ‘new’ depends on their own individual experiences.

Because the creative process is inherently recombinant, it’s been suggested that there’s no such thing as a new idea.

However, we react to perceived similarities in different ways, depending on the content and context.

Designs like the one below can be appealing, because they modify a clearly recognisable influence:

The borrowing is evident – it becomes homage to the original.

However, in a different context, this ‘borrowing’ can provoke a very different response.

When the campaign below launched, it provoked outrage, because some observers felt it ‘ripped off’ the work of Kozyndan:

[image by Kozyndan, 'borrowed' from here]

So where do we draw the line between subtle homage and plagiarism?

The clip below may add perspective.

It’s a fascinating exploration of the evolution of the most famous 6 seconds in electronic music, but at the same time, it highlights different attitudes to the concept of ownership and copyright:

The real issue is giving credit where it’s due.

No-one will think any less of your creation if you highlight your inspiration.

Indeed, alerting your audiences to other content that they may enjoy might even increase the respect you earn.

And if you need to pay for the influence, then you need to pay.

But if you copy someone else’s work without credit, you’re just stealing.

And that’s not going to win anyone’s respect.

“Keep calm…” image from the wonderful people at Howies
Sony Bravia image featured here
Kozyndan image from this blog post
Ironically, the inspiration for this post came from here. When I first watched the video, I was annoyed, because it seemed so similar to the Amen video above (which Iain Tait featured a few years ago). However, on further reflection, the subtle irony of this new ‘remix’ then became evident – the new work is just another example of the recombinant culture it documents
Finally, respect as always to Faris for giving ‘recombinant’ a place in my vocabulary

influencing influence

Paid opinions are a hot topic for discussion at the moment.

In the past 24 hours, PSFK, Marketing Pilgrim, and 1000Heads have all shared some great thoughts on the subject.

While reading their posts, it occurred to me that people view this issue quite differently, depending on the context.

That’s not surprising – context is always critical – but which specific elements influences our perspective?

In the ‘offline’ world, we seem to have little issue with paid endorsement.

Sports players invariably endorse the brands they use, and most of us seem comfortable with that.

The thinking seems to be,

“If Tiger’s success depends so heavily on the clubs he uses, surely he wouldn’t compromise his success to endorse a brand he doesn’t trust?”

Similarly, come Oscars time, gossip columns lead with stories on which designer was ‘chosen’ by each celebrity.

“If Angelina’s success depends so heavily on looking great at all times, surely she wouldn’t compromise her look by wearing anything less than the best label?”

Such sponsorship seems acceptable to most people.

But when it comes to sponsored editorial and opinion – especially online – people adopt a very different standpoint.

“If a blogger is being paid to review a brand, their review will inevitably be biased”

Why this change of perspective?

Blogging success is (usually) determined by readership, and that readership depends on the respect and trust of the blog’s followers.

So why would any sensible blogger compromise their success for any brand that pays them?

It seems ironic that, when it comes to sponsorship, we place less faith in the actions of the people whose opinions we normally trust than we do in those of celebrities and sportspeople.

What do you think?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

propagandata

I’m a great believer in the value of research, but I’m dismayed by the frequency with which findings are distorted in order to endorse or support a particular agenda.

As I’ve noted before,

“Torture numbers and they’ll tell you anything.*”

So it was with interest that I read this headline in MediaWeek:

“Survey: Consumers Don’t Hate Ads”

After reading the article, I dug a little deeper into the source material – the recently published “Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey: Trust, Value and Engagement in Advertising.”

It’s full of great data, and I’ve been looking forward to this latest iteration of the bi-annual survey.

However, there are two areas in this year’s report that disturbed me.

The first is the conclusion that inspired the MediaWeek headline:

“Consumer perceptions on the value of advertising
are generally positive.”

Let’s look at the data that ’support’ that conclusion [click the image to enlarge]:

[image from Nielsen's report]

You’ll notice that these statements are framed as ‘facts’.

But when the report draws its conclusions on these findings, it states:

“We asked if advertising…

• increases value for consumers (through competition);
• promotes consumer choice (helping consumers exercise their right to choose)
• powers economic growth (by helping companies succeed)
• creates jobs (through economic growth and as an industry in itself);
• is the lifeblood of media (funding a diverse, pluralistic media landscape);
• funds sports and culture (through sponsorship);
• helps make a difference (through public service advertisements);
• often gets my attention and is entertaining.”

These ‘questions’ are quite different to the statements in the chart above.

So, do the data really show that “consumer perceptions on the value of advertising are generally positive”?

I’m not convinced.

My second issue relates to a regular concern [again, click the image to enlarge]:

[image from Nielsen's report]

You probably know what’s coming…

“Peer recommendation is the most trusted [advertising] channel, trusted “completely” or “somewhat” by 9 out of 10 respondents worldwide.”

I’ve talked about this before.

‘Peer Recommendation’ / ‘WOM’ / ‘Consumer Opinions Posted Online’ / ‘Editorial Content’ are not advertising channels.

Rather, they are all consequences of other marketing activities.

People trust them precisely because they’re not advertising.

In their true form, they’re unbiased, and that’s what makes them persuasive and trustworthy.

Sure, brands have tried to hijack them and use them as channels, but that invariably generates mistrust rather than trust, as evidenced here.

I don’t dispute the value of word of mouth, but we need to accept that it’s not advertising; brands cannot ‘buy’ these ‘channels’ any more than they can ‘buy’ sales.

Having raised these two concerns though, I fully encourage you to download a copy of Nielsen’s report and study the numbers for yourself.

So long as you approach them with an open mind and an unbiased agenda, you’ll find them highly informative and very useful.

[As a side note, perhaps we should see the report's conclusions in the context of  this post]

*Thanks again to Kelvin for this wonderful quote.

same difference

Most of us adapt our behaviour to different circumstances.

We interact with close friends and strangers in different ways.

We even behave differently with the same person at different times.

So why do so many marketers try to treat the whole world in the same way?

Everybody’s different.

Pretending your audiences are all the same is only going to upset people.

If you want to connect with someone, spend time understanding them as an individual.

Only then can you identify the best ways to interact with them.

it’s about them, not you

Marketing is all about people.

Other people.

Product extensions, widgets, ‘viral’ clips, price promotions… none of them have any relevance unless they influence the people that matter to us.

If our marketing doesn’t connect with other people, we’re just talking to ourselves.

Many cultures regard that as a sign of madness.

So, let’s stop the madness, and start thinking more about other people.

We might even make some friends.

Thanks to Neil and John for their great thoughts on this.

the evolution of species

The Consumerist reports that Starbucks is

“…testing several new stores in which there will be no
Starbucks branding at all. Instead, the coffee shops will
be branded with ‘community names,’ like ‘15th Avenue
Coffee and Tea’”

The article goes on to report that these new-concept cafés may serve alcoholic drinks and feature live music.

They may even adopt different names for different locations.

A far cry indeed from the cookie-cutter approach that made Starbucks famous (infamous?) the world over.

So why the radical shift in strategy?

An article in the Seattle Times suggests that the changes are designed to reintroduce an absent “community personality” that characterises traditional, local coffeehouses.

Critically, the article discusses the need for a “compelling consumer experience” that “tells a story“.

It is in these three critical words – ‘tell a story’ – that Starbucks may have lost its way.

As the chain expanded around the world, a considerable element of its appeal lay in the fact that it offered something new: a fresh take on the coffee experience.

Indeed, it wasn’t just a café; it was ‘The Third Place‘.

To many, Starbucks told a new kind of story.

But as time went on, and the brand stuck rigidly to its formulaic approach wherever it went, those same people came to know that story a little too well.

And while few would question the consistency of the Starbucks product and experience, that consistency might cause its very downfall.

Because while Starbucks almost always meets its customers’ expectations, there is precious little opportunity for the brand to exceed them.

And that means that Starbucks is still telling us exactly the same story it was telling us 10 years ago.

But, as Darwin stressed, even the strongest of species must evolve in order to survive.

And if brands are all about the stories they tell, they must evolve their stories if they are to survive.

So, while this new approach from Starbucks may sound like a brave move, in reality, it may be the only strategy that can save the brand from extinction.

Read more in these Consumerist and Seattle Times articles.

points of view

This picture captures the essence of advertising.

Depending on how you look at it, you will see either a young woman or an old lady.

Advertising’s role is to focus your attention on one of these perspectives more than any other.

Image from here, with many thanks

advertising is not alchemy

They’re words I dread:

“And then they download the widget / send the clip
to their friends / visit the microsite / sign up for the
newsletter / etc.”

One question: Why?

Why will they do that?

Why will they pay attention long enough to understand that’s what you expect them to do?

And more critically, why would they even care?

Advertising isn’t alchemy; you can’t just expect results to ‘happen’.

The only reason people do things is because they perceive a clear, personal benefit in doing so.

And all too often, we’re not offering our audiences any benefit at all.

We get all excited about the new technologies and gimmicks we’re using in the campaign, but that doesn’t mean our audiences will pay any attention.

Chances are, they’ve got much better things to do.

So, stop trying to work out what people should do.

Rather, work out why they might care.

In other words, identify your communications proposition: the single, clear benefit that people receive simply by engaging with your communications.

Advertising is only a means to an end; it’s not an end in itself.