Award Show Skepticism: An “Effie” for Old Spice?

I wasn’t entirely shocked to see that the Old Spice social media video campaign had won an Effie – a lot of people in the ad business seem to have decided this campaign was the grand epiphany of social media effectiveness. Except, I’d done some reading about the effectiveness of the campaign and found its results entirely unclear.

So let’s consider the “Effie” award from the American Marketing Association. Their website tells us:

“The Effie Awards were founded in 1968 by the American Marketing Association, New York Chapter, as an awards program to recognize the most effective advertising efforts in the United States each year.”

Great description. They must be better evaluated than the curated art shows that most other awards have become (like Cannes, Clio’s, and most others).

What led to awarding the 2011 Old Spice Campaign? Here’s a link to the Effie PDF about the campaign (click here). The PDF regales us with statistics claimed to reflect effectiveness. Mostly they are the usual big online numbers. And I notice:

1. They claim the total cost of the campaign was less than $500,000. Guess they didn’t think it was important to mention the $3M to $10M spent creating the first spot and airing it in spring of 2011 starting with the Superbowl. (TV is highly effective at driving social media action.)

2. Old Spice sales for the product line had already gathered tremendous momentum in 2010. Their brief claims sales were up over 60% in 2010 vs. prior year. Hmmm. That’s a nice starting point for more growth.

3. They report all the expectedly big social media numbers. But I’ve written elsewhere my skepticism about accepting big numbers just ’cause they’re big. (Link here.)

4. Then there’s complete chaos. They claim Nielsen says UNIT sales were up 125%. But they offer a graph with units on the side but which labels the 125% increase as “YouTube Responses”. Huh? Which was it? What’s really going on here? That’s far too sloppy to evaluate “effectiveness” and I’d drop one of my students most of a letter grade for that kind of mistake.

5. The last line caps it all off. Question: “Anything Else Going On That Might Have Affected Results?” Answer: “No other factors”. No mention of the TV campaign, the coupon campaigns, co-op ads or specials at the store? Riiiiiight.

Except, there is this article in AdAge. (Link here.) This article concludes that the Old Spice Q2 sales increase was attributable to the coupon campaign – not social media.

While the social media campaign was on, P&G also mounted a significant coupon campaign for the product (guess they forgot about that when submitting for an Effie). In the end, the Old Spice increase was roughly the same as increases of competitors who had mounted the same type of coupon campaign. And competitors (like Axe) who hadn’t used coupons hadn’t grown.

In other words: Coupon appear to be responsible for the product line growth – not social media efforts. And this means any claim of superior effectiveness needs a huge asterisk right next to it.

What Can We Conclude About the Old Spice Campaign? Clearly:

1. The brief is wrong when it suggests there were “No Other Factors”. Old Spice is part of a highly robust market with co-op ads, coupons, and a lot of retail action. Nothing – NOTHING – operates in a vacuum.

2. The brief is meaningless without a picture of the competitive environment and relative growth during this period.

While I don’t know what process led to the award, it seems realistic to suggest that the award should have caveats – if its not pulled entirely. At least, this is what an award show that cared deeply about effectiveness would do.

What Can We Conclude About the Effies? Not much. This is a single award and campaign. However, they didn’t do serious fact checking (it’s not like AdAge is a tiny and unimportant advertising publication). And they published a write up that is factually incorrect.

So do Effies have any connection with effectiveness? They might not. The Old Spice campaign was very clever, highly unusual, a new application of social, etc…. But none of that matters when you call your award an “Effie”.

The Sad Award Truth. Effies aren’t alone – they just claim to be better. Truth is, there is NO way to create an award that credits effective advertising.

Awards start to fail at one of advertising’s first critical steps: targeting. Effective advertising targets an end consumer. Judges are NOT those consumers and they never view award submissions within the reality in which consumers consider the ads. (Only industry associations for vertical markets can have any hope of judging target market impact.)

Once this failure starts, there is no way for awards to be anything more than they’ve always been: the more carefully crafted ones are curated art shows and the less well crafted are mere popularity contests. To create an award that is anything else would require judges to dedicate hundreds of hours of their time and be supported by a staff dedicated to developing independent judgement.

Still, the Effies could have done better. This campaign might still get an Effie if they’d had a complete submission that showed more effectiveness insight. And perhaps there was data submitted that wasn’t made public. But the public release showed egregious gaps. There’s no way those should be rewarded.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

There Is No “ROI vs Brand” Dilemma When You Know Your “Profit Horizon”.

Far too many “smart” (aka self-conciously cool) agencies these days proudly seek talent from anywhere EXCEPT business backgrounds. They believe, they say, that these fundamental skills for understanding arcane concepts like “profit” get in the way of true creativity. (More on this mis-direction in a future post about an ad biz culture I call “creative correctness”.)

But this outright avoidance of business skills in the agency business has led us to the endless (and frankly silly) discussion about deciding between “ROI” and “brand”.

Bunkum. There’s no contradiction between these two – not when you think like a business. The needs of your business must be met – and that means creating advertising which brands AND delivers ROI.

ALL advertising must return an ROI. Brand is meaningless if it doesn’t generate profit. I don’t care when you need it, at some point brand MUST return an ROI or you shouldn’t be building a brand.

Sadly, this means that all those arcane sociological wonderment theories surrounding brand ONLY have value if they help create profit. Otherwise, they are lovely little theories that agencies use to get their next work – but which clients should ignore.

Of course, it can be tricky to craft an ironclad calculation of ROI. And the reality of a vitally active market makes it difficult to separate an unchallenged advertising profit out of numbers affected by a wide range of efforts. But that’s no excuse. You must create a reasonable approach for estimating ad profit.

ROI Proponents are Also Wrong. It seems that the primary reason we talk about ROI these days is that online enthusiasts are desperate to find a way to steal budget from brand efforts.

As a result, massive venture capital investments have funded a plethora of content claiming that ROI oriented efforts trump long-term brand work. But they don’t. Brand building is extremely valuable.

“Profit Horizon”. A More Useful Construct. As agencies, we need to plan our every activity with a clear understanding of what I’ll call our client’s “profit horizon”.

In other words, if they spend $X today, when and how must profit from revenues driven by that spending cover the cost of the advertising and how much additional profit must result?

There are different types of simple approaches to this…

1. A few companies must have an instant profit horizon. Think of the traditional DRTV phone sales plays. Or, the direct mail instant profit needs. But also, a great many retail situations require advertising to drive immediate sales via store traffic.

2. Quite a few more companies will have a 6 to 24 month horizon. If they spend the money in this year’s budget, it must turn a profit soon. Not in 5 to 10 years, but in the next x months.

3. Very Large Companies May Be in a Position to fund long-term brand development. In these cases, full profit may not need be returned for 5 to 10 years. But even in this case, we should be developing ways from the first day to estimate profit created through advertising.

More Complicated Profit Horizons. Agencies and their clients will be far more successful if they can look at more complicated scenarios – perhaps like this:

Must recoup 30% of advertising cost within 6 months.
Must recoup another 30% of ad cost within the following 12 months.
Remaining ad cost plus a 40% profit on the revenue driven by advertising must be recovered over the following 2 years.

The advertising business serves companies with a 6 to 24 month profit horizon worst. These companies know that their long term health will be better if they step away from hard sell advertising. But as soon as they offer this wiggle room, agencies snooker them into failure. Perhaps agencies refuse to accept business reality. Or, too many agencies may know only one type of advertising. In either case, agencies recommend to these companies the same type of work they’d deliver for Budweiser and Coke – long term branding. And if the company agrees, then they usually go out of business.

Regardless of Approach, Agencies Must Learn Business. I heard a former W+K guy speak a few years ago and suggest that the problem in advertising is clients don’t “get” creative. So he recommended that clients need to learn all the creative subtleties he espoused. In truth, he just sounded frustrated that clients won’t approve just anything – that they ask for results.

I think the opposite: Agencies need to learn how to plan and speak in business terms. And, they should modify their operations in two ways:

1. Add “Profit Horizon” to Creative Briefs. It’s not always easy to describe or calculate. But it must begin to live in the mind-space of your creative and account teams. And that means adding it to the brief.

2. Start Hiring Trained and/or Experienced Business People. Your agency will never succeed at viewing Profit Horizons unless you can engage a healthy discussion about business, with businessmen and women. And that requires being able to read a P&L while talking in terms that the business understands.

Fortunately, when your advertising returns better business results, your agency business should grow. And that helps us all.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

“Dude. It’s Not Our Problem”: ThinkGeek.com Blows their Brand This Time

It would make sense that oddity website ThinkGeek.com would be intimately familiar with de-motivator posters from Despair.com. It’s just sad that today’s customer rep picked the one that says “We’re not satisfied until you’re not satisfied”.

I just got off the phone from my worst customer service experience in…well…a long time. And this catalog that tries to look advanced and clever made the most fundamental customer service mistake: they rambled extensively out of their way to dodge responsibility.

The Order. Planning enough pad for shipping time, my wife placed an order with Think Geek on December 14th which included Minecraft T-shirts for my son and my nephew – both Minecraft enthusiasts. Think Geek finally processed money from our account on order December 19th. (Huh? Five days later AND a Sunday? Clearly a bad sign.)

By late evening of December 21st we hadn’t seen the order so we went to track it. Except, it wouldn’t track. The US Postal Service website gave us a message saying essentially “We have no record of physical contact with that order.” This was…um…somewhat concerning so I called them.

Calling Think Geek’s Customer Service. I was encouraged when the phone was quickly picked up. But that was the end of encouragement.

After explaining the situation, the representative put me on hold. Then he comes back and tells me they don’t know anything about the order. Because: “The Post Office loses orders all the time so it’s their fault. I work in shipping and know they’re pretty bad.”

My Head Starts to Explode. It’s the holiday. Things happen. Everyone is stressed. And we manage similar customer service on behalf of branded clients. The idea of an order problem isn’t foreign to me and they probably couldn’t have had a more understanding customer on the phone.

Except they responded with: “not our problem”.

Of course its your problem. If it’s true that a shipping company loses orders all the time, then you shouldn’t offer that option. Or, you could warn that “using this shipping option may cause your order never to arrive because we use a really unreliable supplier”.

The Explosion Goes Nuclear. I ask, “What are you going to do.” Here’s the various levels of the response:

“We can resend most of the order. But, between when we told you we sent an order and now, we ran out of Minecraft t-shirts. So, we’ll just refund your money and call it good.”

“Hey, look, it’s the Post Office that lost the order. So it’s not our fault and that’s all we can do. Why don’t you call the Post Office.”

I responded: “I know how shipping happens and this tracking information doesn’t guarantee it ever reached the Post Office. It might have fallen into a crack in your facility or off the palette before it reached the Post Office. So it is quite concerning that (a) you blame the USPS and (b) all you want to do is give my my money back.”

To which my representative replied “what do you want me to do”. When I explained that most operations offer something to indicate that they really value their customers, he replied “we don’t do that and this is all I can do”.

At which point I resort to: “What part of ‘these are Christmas presents’ don’t you understand? Their value is far higher than their cost.”

The B52 bomb bay doors open and, in my best Major ‘King’ Kong impression, I climb onto the bomb and yell “yee haw” as it sails into the air. (This nonsense might make more sense if you, check this link. Or not.)

Let me suggest two rules to help your customers avoid exploding heads:

1. Never ever say its not your responsibility. Your company made all the choices. Therefore, it IS your responsibility – no matter what you may want to think.

2. Brands build when you have a clear policy for making customers happy when the process screws up. There will be problems. And you can’t make everyone happy. But nuclear fallout was easily avoided in this situation had he immediately acknowledged responsibility and suggested Think Geek go slightly out of their way (not hugely – just something to show they took responsibility).

Instead, “Think” Became “Don’t Think”. I will be cautioning my son about purchasing any more items from Think Geek. They proved unreliable and – yes – flakey. (Maybe it’s branding – aren’t Geek’s are supposed to be flakey?) My wife and I will never again purchase from them for a birthday or holiday – because we can’t rely on delivery.

In the end, they are sending the in-stock items with some level of expedited shipping (snarkily referred to by my rep as “more reliable than USPS” – like it was our fault for choosing one of the options they offered). They will refund payment for the two Minecraft t-shirts (the things we cared most about). And, will give us a $7.95 gift certificate which is the amount of the standard shipping. (It took an extended argument on my part to get this to happen – an argument that cost them hourly wages and loss of brand value.)

My rep fully executed the Demotivator. He seemed happy. And I’m definitely not.

But I don’t think the story is over. My experience may have been an aberration. So I’m going to send them a link to this post and offer them the option of replying with a comment. And I’ll even amend this post if there’s something useful to offer.

So stay tuned…

Addendum December 26, 2011. I have received new information from ThinkGeek.com. Jamie Grove (listed in his signature as VP, Evil Schemes and Nefarious Plans (aka Marketing)) send me a solid response on Christmas Eve after my complaint was forwarded.

His email responds well for a company under these circumstances. Apparently what I was told on the phone was wrong. Rather, the order was submitted after the date for last Christmas delivery with standard shipping (a reality that wasn’t clear to my wife when she placed the order).

For the moment, we await it’s post-Christmas delivery. I’ll update my thoughts further once we have confirmed this is the case.

Addendum #2 January 2, 2012. So, we have received the items that were re-sent by the phone rep. The original order may be lost in the ozone. As a patient consumer, I’ll wait until the end of the week and wrap this up. But, the hope offered in Mr. Grove’s email is wearing thin at this point.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Cable Cutting & Self Righteous Attacks on TV

I get pretty miffed when the “cable cutter” enthusiasts try to argue that online video will drag society out of the depths of depravity found in TV programming.

After all, what are most teens watching online? You can bet it’s NOT Masterpiece Theater or Nature. More likely they’re watching video’s of guys becoming eunuch’s when skateboard tricks land them on handrails.

This attack in TV is nothing new. I remember making it a few times in youthful enthusiasm while in college. Still, proponents of new media too often sound like sci-fi books — promising a “glorious future” where the internet changes mankind. (They are, of course, merely the latest to claim to remake humanity in thousands of years of such movements.)

What they forget is the history of human entertainment. Let’s do a quick review, shall we?

- 1900 years ago, the penultimate entertainment venue was the Coliseum – do you prefer Christians eaten by lions, life & death ship battles, or live gladiatorial murder? Yup. Pretty enlightening.

- During the middle ages, public execution seems to have been quite popular. I don’t have the Nielsen’s, but from what I read most families found it difficult to skip such gruesome events.

As life progressed, public entertainment continued in this vein until quite recently (when you consider mankind’s long history).

In other words, TV might just be the PINNACLE of mass human entertainment – NOT it’s nadir. After all, it’s clear humanity can find some pretty base things entertaining.

Today’s TV isn’t so bad (unless you want to suggest Glee is similar to live gladiatorial contests taken to the death). Certainly we continue to see life/death drama – except now it’s without loss of life or limb.

Is the web better? Or is it worse? You can find some enlightening viewing on the web just like you can find enlightening viewing on TV (I’d argue TV economics create more of it and of better quality).

But the web lacks the constraints of network, government oversight, and societal moral imperative – so far too often it turns back the clock to real life loss of life and limb.

Maybe literature is far more enlightening. Have you looked at what passes for “sophisticated” reading these days?

Cormac McCarthy novels like “No Country for Old Men” revel in brutality that can even include cannibalism.

The highly popular Dragon Tatoo series is filled with sadistic rapes and other brutality (primarily toward women).

The most popular reading for younger (and older) women these days is Twilight where vampires are featured in teen love and full blood baths.

I think I’d rather watch some episodes of Grimm.

So… American Idol is horrible programming? Riiiiight. Everyone gets to dis-like things as a matter of taste (I particularly dis-like gore). But none of us should get high and mighty. After all, Survivor, Glee and Pawn Wars are far healthier for humanity than the vast majority of the video on the web.

And that means, never (EVER) try to tell me that “web entertainment is better”. 5 billion cat video’s. Kids nearly killing themselves. Horrible disaster filmed first hand. And people claim that web entertainment is healthier than 30-Rock, XFactor and The Daily Show?

Call me once you come down off your high horse. Until then I’m turning on the TV.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

iPad 14 – Electronic Magazines Prove (once again) That Content Trumps Bells & Whistles

Here’s an important tech axiom: Developers have far more interest in applying application bells and whistles than people have in using them.

I learned this lesson on my first project out of college. In that project I designed a network of Apple 2′s to display wire wrap harness instructions for avionics assembly at General Dynamics. (Back then I was a software engineer with a couple of degrees in mathematics.)

People all around me were saying that “Apple offers color so this project needs to use it”. And, when I noted Apple’s spec that we lost half our resolution instantly, they responded with soft-logic theories that the increased information from color would make up for that loss.

But the spec wasn’t entirely honest. Once I decoded the Apple II display it turned out the spec was only accurate if we restricted ourselves to 3 colors (2 + black). But if we used 8, we would drop our horizontal resolution by 8 and vertical resolution by 4 to 16 times. (This rookie analysis apparently impressed my boss and we worked in green & black.)

More importantly, it was the right choice for the human equation we were working with. Wire harnesses for a cruise missile were assembled by people and required accurate connections for large bundles of wires. It goes without saying that making an interface that didn’t respect the workers just to apply the sexiness of color would have hurt product & reliability for…um… well…missiles tipped with powerful explosives (sometimes even nuclear).

Fast forward to the iPad. Throughout my career I’ve watched engineers struggle with this very same trade-off question (usually without the life & death implications). Now, magazine publishers are going right back over the same territory – this time with the iPad.

When released, there was a lot of hoo-hah about how cool magazines and illustrated books would be with the gadgetry available. (Spinning 3d models, integrated video, animated pages, etc.)

So I bought an iPad comic book. Found some neat wizardry. But when it came to enjoying what was on the virtual-page, the wizardry wasn’t a help. But then, I know I’m not really a comic book guy so I figured I might be missing something.

Always optimistic, I bought the first Wired magazine. Again, cool wizardy. And even better gizmo’s to impress my friends. But better readability? Not really. In fact, it was pretty hard to follow the articles with all these new options. When I wanted content, I got meaningless cool.

Apparently my experience is the norm — NOT the exception. Summarizing what, apparently, many magazine publishers have found, one publisher offers a carefully worded suggestion that the bells and whistles are a “secondary benefit” to consumers. Significantly, this reaction is the same for gadget magazine Popular Mechanics AND more human content magazine Good Housekeeping. (link here)

Taken literally this comment would imply: Write good content first. Add bells & whistles later.

But my suspicion is the better response is: Gizmo’s are only valuable to readers in exceptional circumstances. Otherwise, it’s all about content.

(To be fair, Martha Stewart’s empire claims that they’re finding their most sophisticated apps returning the best results. I’m not familiar with those apps, but can imagine that they aren’t trying to be magazines. Gizmo’s are a lot more useful in recipe books & how-to’s.)

Certainly, there will be exceptions. But I spent years in advanced technology companies. DEVELOPERS are the ones that want sexy gizmo’s. People only want them when they are the best way to get the value they want. (Being the best way for a developer to get their next job really isn’t enough.)

Incidentally, as a TV/video specialist, I feel the same way about video. Use TV and video when it’s important – when it is right for the job you have to do. Otherwise, use good photo’s, animation, and well written content. Browsing corporate websites, at most only 5% of online video has a valuable purpose. Most often, it’s video wallpaper which often inhibits consumer success on the website. (Ironically, the worst I saw last year were video’s create by YouTube to promote itself. YouTube may know a lot about hosting video, but it was – and may still be – clueless about using video as part of marketing.)

So guide your content work answering one critical question with honesty: Are the choices you’re making important to what the consumer is seeking from your iBook/iMagazine/website/app? If not, spend your money on something more valuable.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved.

Drive Your DRTV Success by Testing BEFORE Scripting

Saw a press release this morning from a DRTV business claiming to have “validated” a “test before investing strategy”. (Link Here.)

The announcement is from As Seen on TV. And it’s an odd announcement for quite a few reasons:

Why would they think a “Test Before You Invest” new? Companies have known that these strategies save millions for, um, say – hundreds of years.

This is one of DRTV’s weak spot. In the traditional yell & sell DRTV business, there’s this curmudgeonly disbelief about any testing except hard core sales results. On the other hand, I’ve taken hundreds of campaigns through research & test processes for DRTV in my 20 years in the business. Advance research proves to also be exceptionally successful in DRTV (when modified to fit with our unique challenges). At Atomic, we help companies avoid investing where they shouldn’t and help them invest better when they do.

Hmmm. So maybe they created a new method. Their release notes that they tested 3 products on live TV and they sold well. Um, yes? And….? People do THIS all the time and have for a few decades.

Maybe they’re claiming that these live shopping tests prove the products can be successful DRTV products. That might be newsworthy. But they don’t actually say that.

So all this leaves us with a widely publicized announcement that doesn’t say anything.

The truth is that you CAN and SHOULD use advance testing to creates successful DRTV campaigns. It should start with consumer research to get the most reliable results. And continue with a methodical test regime.

But most DRTV agencies (even the biggest brand ones) lack the discipline to use testing to succeed. Most don’t know what types of testing drive success. And it’s an extremely rare agency that produces finished work that has learned from the testing. Most often, producers are given testing then just do whatever they would have done without it…and run headlong into failure the vast majority of the times.

It’s a good thing that As Seen on TV cares enough to talk about testing. But, it’s too bad they didn’t really do what their release headline suggests.

Here’s, then, what I recommend: Do advance testing to improve your DRTV success rates. But take care. Live shopping tests are historically unreliable. Quite often, products which succeed on HSN will fail when they try to transition to DRTV.

And that means, we’re left with what has always been known in marketing. If you use consumer research to guide your project (BEFORE you put pen to paper scripting), you will improve your DRTV success rates…if you also ensure that what you find makes it into the production and campaign execution. (Here’s an article I wrote in Response magazine on this topic.)

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All rights Reserved

New Book: “Building Brand with Direct Response Television”

With the October edition of Response Magazine, we have released my book “Building Brand with Direct Response Television“. This book takes an unusual look at DRTV – focusing on it’s biggest potential power: building brands while driving immediate sales (at retail as well as direct).

This book is the result of the past decade when I’ve written extensively about direct response television (DRTV) and it pulls together a comprehensive view of how DRTV can build brand, drive retail, and, in the process, dramatically change the marketing game.

Underlying the writing are the “Six Degree’s of DRTV” developed at my agency to focus on getting far more impact from DRTV campaigns than either yell & sell or soft brand DRTV delivers.

Starting with the fundamental value & continuing strength of TV, the book progresses through critical topics including campaign strategy, creative, and campaign execution. There is a special chapter devoted to the common retail problem we call the Shelf Potato and which I write about in my other blog (link here).

To find out more about the book and for links to the order page on Amazon visit this link.

Enjoy the read.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

GoogleTV: “More Returns than Sales” (Logitech)

I was skeptical of GoogleTV. It seemed Google fell prey to corporate hubris – believing they could build anything and make the marketplace think it’s valuable.

And from the start Google revealed they had no coherent strategy to deliver value to consumers. Instead, announcements made it clear they were in a desperate ploy to steal ad revenue away from traditional TV.

Trying to create something from nothing, Google claimed that you’d love web searching for TV programs – and it would be soooo much easier than changing a channel, choosing from your TiVO, or looking at an onscreen TV guide. Right.

Now we find that even Google’s partners are badmouthing the effort (link here). According to Logitech, the product’s are so buggy they’ve taken more returns than they have sold. Yikes.

And this week, Logitech’s CEO suggested their Google TV-powered launch was “a mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature”.

Other tech companies should take note. Too bad the various Silicon landscapes (valley, forest, desert,…) seem impervious to finding significant learning from failure of consumer products.

In part, success selling to businesses far too often convinces technologists they can succeed with consumers, too. But the marketing required for consumer success is far, far different from the marketing that leads to success with businesses.

Most critically, successful consumer products MUST offer significant value – and consumer’s won’t work very hard to find it. That requires developing a clear eyed vision that can tell the difference between important and insignificant value. And it requires that companies become sophisticated at ways to tell consumers about that value. Google failed at both.

Truth is, Google’s announcements of its TV work have been from Shakespearean — “full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

The lack of coverage of GoogleTV suggests the press wants so badly for the anti-TV story to succeed they’re willing to ignore reality. Still, GoogleTV’s hollowness reminds us of Eliot – “This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

A Baker’s Dozen Truths About Brands and Brand Advertising

Brand has become the marketing religion of our time and takes on outsized importance in every decision. And that leads to a bunch of lists – each claiming to reveal “the” absolutes of brand building.

The following makes no claim about summarizing absolutes. But the more lists I see, the more I love the far more humble and practical sense of brands found among this bakers dozen. And, the more I think they reveal important things that enthusiastic brand enthusiasts seem to have forgotten:

1. Brands build through YEARS of consistent efforts.

2. No, really. Brands build far slower than anyone wants to think.

3. Building a brand requires not only years, but consistent execution throughout that time.

4. Convincing consumers of a product’s unique value creates brand far more quickly than does lifestyle communication.

5. There are many ways your business can leverage advertising to drive profitability other than “Brand Building”.

6. There are many flavors and types of advertising – all will build brand. That means so-called “brand advertising” may be exactly the wrong way to build your brand.

7. Most brand theorists seem to love exotic and abstract theories of brand. But you’ll only see profit if they generate a practical advantage.

8. The emotions that create economic power for a brand are not usually hot blooded emotions.

9. Creating passionate connection is only possible for a small percentage of brands – and then only with a small percentage of their consumers.

10. You can create tremendous profit advantage from brand – without succumbing to the pressure to drive for artificially passionate connections.

11. Most consumers don’t want to be friends with your brand.

12. Brands, companies, and products have life stages – each requiring very different types of brand advertising, brand communication, and brand development. Sadly, most brand theory is driven by the experiences of mature consumable brands at companies like Pepsi, P&G or Johnson & Johnson. There are many life stages where these lessons don’t work.

13. Brands follow the Double Jeopardy Law postulated by Ehrenberg: “Brands with less market share have far fewer buyers and these buyers are slightly less loyal (in their buying and attitudes).” (Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow, Page vii, Oxford University Press, 2010). In other words, brand loyalty is less important to building a brand than is bringing new consumers to purchase the brand.

These are few absolute rules of branding. Each situation raises unique brand realities. But that is also no excuse for ignoring the brand laws and guidelines that experience AND statistical analysis can show us. (Read Sharp’s “How Brands Grow” for a great set of laws derived from statistical analysis of brand results.)

And now the real bottom line. Far too many suppliers (agencies, consultants, production companies) want to use work on your brand to get their next job.

So stay grounded and don’t get lost in the wilderness of brand theories. The ultimate goal of a brand is to increase profit by driving the same or more sales with less cost. How do your brand efforts stack up?

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

How is it that Television Keeps Getting MORE Vital, Not Less? (Including Some Surprising Thoughts from Jobs.)

There’s something in the water of technology centers in the US that drives an idea that digital media always means revolution. It’s been there a very, very long time. And it makes pretty outrageous claims about technology’s impact.

But when it comes to “revolution”, more often than not, human reality keeps getting in the way. Nowhere is this more true than with the digirati myth that TV will diminish and fade into the past.

Steve Jobs offered us a dose of reality in 1996 - and reveals a wisdom about technology that should become more widely embraced. (It’s reprinted in the new Wired special edition about Jobs.) In this article, two quotes about current topic stand out.

“What’s the biggest surprise this technology will deliver?
The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t.”

“These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that. But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light – that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”

“The Next Insanely Great Thing”, Originally Published February 1996, Wired Magazine

Nielsen offered dose of reality on the TV issues this week –  with new numbers on time and place shifting. (Link here.) The message from Nielsen? Time shifting and place shifting (e.g. mobile access) of TV programming is primarily EXPANDING TV’s role in our lives.

Funny thing is there has always been an elite in the US that looks at TV viewing with smug & self-righteous satisfaction. They usually claim to “never watch TV”. More recently, the claim we hear is “I skip all the ads”. (Funny thing is that, while there have always been some people who ignore or skip, experience suggests these statements project behavior people want to believe about themselves and ignores the tremendous influence of both TV and TV advertising in their lives.)

And there is a great love of anti-TV myths – from telling us over 50 years ago that sitting too close is bad for your eyes (false) to telling us more recently that infants who watch too much TV have weaker language skills (quite a silly idea which studies don’t confirm).

Despite all this TV antagonism, why doesn’t it die?

Perhaps TV gives the mass of people what they want. Yes, everyone complains about TV – but it’s simply human to complain about something as pervasive as TV. Besides football, what else would fill water cooler conversations? Of course, none of this complaining decreases TV ratings.

Interestingly, Jobs discussed TV in that same interview. His thoughts suggest he was also anti-TV – but reveals some interesting wisdom.

“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, your realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. … It’s the truth.”

(In the ommitted area, Jobs observes that this is far more depressing of an idea to him than the idea of a network conspiracy.)

And all this means…? First, there’s nothing to suggest Jobs’ has it all right. I disagree with his depression. The Roman’s had the coliseum. In the middle ages, even more macabre things were high entertainment. And public executions remained entertainment throughout the 19th century.

Looked at against history, TV gives us a wide range of refreshingly harmless entertainment. Of course, every individual will give us a different viewpoint about which TV is good and which is bad. And that’s one of the beauties of TV.

It’s time for the tech biz to grow up and learn some key things about TV:

1. TV delivers viewers tremendous value today – WITHOUT digital revolution.
2. TV will thrive in a state not far removed from what it is today.
3. Digital enthusiasts should be cautious about upending the TV ecosystem because it will be far easier for them to screw up TV than to make it better.
4. Successful digital companies will respect TV’s value then enhance it rather than replace it.

TV will always evolve. I wonder what it will look like in another 10 years? Probably a lot like TV, but different. After all, in Jobs’ words “things don’t have to change the world to be important.”

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved