If advertising is such a powerful tool, why don't advertising agencies run their own campaigns advertising themselves? Why don't they use expensive ads to 'build awareness' to 'reinforce brand attributes' and 'extend the demographic touchprint?'
Because ads, for the most part, don't do much good.
That's precisely the position of "Why Don't Ad Agencies Advertise?", a piece by Simon Sinek that appeared in the April 17 issue of BrandWeek.
Apparently, clever advertising campaigns don't help agencies attract clients. Which is probably why so few of them actually use advertising to promote themselves. But that unfortunate fact doesn't stop them from persuading their clients to keep the faith and invest in lavish campaigns.
There's a larger question here, though. It was served up to me by a precocious seventh-grader at the local Middle School Career Day. (I foolishly agreed to fill in for the real Advertising guy, who was stuck at a commercial shoot in Connecticut.)
The kid asked me, "Why are commercials so lame and stupid?"
I gave her the official you-don't-get-it answer:
"Well they only SEEM to be lame, because you aren't the target market. Sure, a commercial for a retirement fund or furniture polish will bore you, because they're directed at people with different needs and concerns.""No," she said. "I mean the ads for kid stuff."
I ducked the question, and called on some other kid, who wanted to know how much money you get for being in a commercial.
But here is the answer I would have given, if I had had time to figure out what I thought.
"Why is most advertising so lame and ineffective?"
As I see it, there are inherent and organic problems with the very nature of 'advertising.' And there are other problems created by the peculiar way it is devised and sold. All of which kicks the stuffing out of most advertising efforts
1. For one, the task is nearly impossible.
With an ad, or even a campaign, you are trying to influence the behavior and attitudes of millions of people you don't know. (No, those psychodemographic profiles don't count. You have never met those people, so you don't know them.)
I have close friends that I have known for decades, and still can't predict what will persuade or excite them every time. It is infinitely harder to determine how your combination of pictures and words -- or your 15-second vignette -- will affect a few million complete strangers.
More impossible still, you are trying to spin the behavior of these unknown people under completely unknown conditions. Who is distracted that day by marital discord? Who has gas pains? Who just lost $250 in an office pool? Are they reading your ad on the train? Or sitting in the can at home? Are they watching your commercial with a roomful of friends? Or alone? You don't know. You are shooting in the dark.
The chance of hitting on an idea that persuades a lot of people is small. Yes, it is entirely possible. Ideas and concepts catch fire all the time. But the odds are about as small as coming up with a hit record or best seller.
2. Most advertising is a rude interruption
Marketing guru Seth Godin points out that conventional advertising is all about interrupting people while they are doing something else. It is selling by barging in.
"I know you're reading that magazine article, but look away. Listen to me talk about this swell new car.""We're going to stop this program for a minute, while I try to get you to connect emotionally with this deodorant."
"Quit eating dinner and talking with your family. I have important news about auto insurance."
"You're helping your daughter with her homework? STOP doing that. Come to the phone and talk mortgage rates!!!"
You're lying on the beach, reading your detective novel. Someone comes by, stands behind your book, peers around the page at you. "Hey! You are spending too much for equity trades!"
That's what you're trying to do with conventional advertising. It's dang hard to butt in, unbidden, and interest people. Most will ignore you, the way they tune out those flashing, blinking ads surrounding the online article they're reading.
3. Agencies have no idea what works. There is no body of knowledge.
Most companies have no way to discern how much advertising affects their sales or market share, simply because there are too many variables in the mix. Naturally, agencies have invented all sorts of surrogate markers and metrics to prove their cases. "Well, we weren't actually trying to increase sales, but to nudge perceptions, increase impressions, and establish presence and linkage with desirable venues."
Okay, but exactly what will nudge perceptions, in this particular case? It's guesswork and gut feel, plain and simple. Sometimes you guess right. Even if you do, you still have no idea how that nudging will affects sales.
Even more telling, if you visit six agencies in search of truths and principles, you will get six different answers to the same question. Each agency has their own mantra about what powerful advertising is. "White space," says one. "Emotional resonance," says another. "Permission marketing," says the other. "Intrusive and disruptive dissonance," says the one at the end.
Mostly, the pitch is whatever the founder thinks is true. Or whatever a client once liked about their work. It is mostly superstition, folklore, or some attempt at a memorable hook.
Engineers and lawyers and architects and electricians must pass tests of their core competence and knowledge before they can practice. How much steel do you need to support xx pounds of load?
Advertising copywriters and designers, on the other hand, can work by 'feel' and 'instinct.' What do you really have to know, aside from some insider's vocabulary?
Nothing.
You just get this, you know, idea.
Sure, we advertising pundits can point to all sorts of reasons why certain campaigns worked, and why others tanked. But this after-the-fact analysis is useless chatter.
Because the question that matters always comes before the fact: "Of these three different campaign ideas on my desk, which will influence sales the most?" "What will excite our customers? What will make people like us?" That's what most companies need to answer.
And mostly, we're all guessing. (See reason 1.)
4. There's no incentive for agencies to produce 'good' advertising.
By 'good' I mean productive and effective advertising; advertising that affects sales, persuades customers and provides long-term value to the brand or product.
Oddly, the dynamics of the business push advertising in other directions entirely.
A cagey ad executive admitted to me that agencies don't grow big and successful by producing powerful advertising; they get big by attracting big clients. Period. There are no other parameters.
How do you attract big clients? By showing storyboards and PowerPoints that appeal to the advertising and marketing managers of big companies. And by bringing 23 people to meetings to show depth of resources. (I don't disparage ad agency executives for this. They are not dopes. They have figured out the right pressure points.)
A further quirk. The larger the company, the more important your PowerPoints and charts, and the less important the power of your advertising. Is there any correlation between the size of an advertiser, and the quality of their advertising? Are the ads from huge companies with big agencies any more effective, pound for pound? I doubt it.
In a huge multinational company, you can often get away with dull advertising because no one can say for sure whether it helped or hurt. The situation is way too complex, and is probably influenced by 96 factors other than your ad.
In the agencies themselves -- in the so-called 'creative strategy' meetings -- the pretend question is, "What will work in this market, for this customer?"
Of course, what everyone is really trying to figure out is "What will win us this account? What will get this campaign approved? What will get the budget increased? What will get Mary/Jim/Duane/Margot all excited? What will make me look good?"
When I submitted copy to the copy director, I wasn't trying to increase sales. I was trying to write something he liked. He, in turn, was trying to find something the account team liked, which meant something they could sell to the client. No one EVER cared if it sold product. The question never arose.
Again, I'm not denigrating this. All these people made more money than me. They understand the business, and are doing what it takes to succeed in that game.
This, of course, presents the advertising and marketing manager at the company with an impossible task. They are looking at a 68-slide deck of charts and quadrants, and a roomful of storyboards, and trying to decide:
- Which of these ideas will actually work?- Which of these will my boss like?
- Which of these can I justify and rationalize thoroughly -- just in case it bombs?
- What is the safest way to go here?
- Will the CEO like this?
Again, the advertising and marketing execs are only doing the smart thing. Since no one will be able to tell how the campaign worked, the best move is to go with the prejudices of your boss, or the path that puts you in the best light, whether it tanks or not.
None of which encourages more effective, more persuasive advertising.
My recommendation?
If you were planning on spending $5 million on conventional advertising, I would allocate $2.5 million to PR instead. (Okay, it won't work for toilet paper.)
Not that PR is the be-all and end-all, either. But from where I sit, the foof-to-results ratio of PR is alot better.
I would take the rest of the money and spend it on jazzing up the product, courting your existing customers, wooing bloggers and journalists, negotiating for better shelf space, and giving product FREE to influence leaders, and existing customers.
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* At one time, I thought that direct marketers (direct mail and infomercial people) were the only ones who new exactly what worked and what didn't, since they could directly measure sales from their advertising.
But I grew disillusioned after a few meetings with a direct marketer of credit cards. Every time we brought up an idea, a dour-looking woman at the end of the table would thumb through a fat binder labeled 'Learnings.'
And she would say something like, "In the March 2004 test the blue backgrounds pulled more than the green. And lifestyle photographs on the outside envelope did poorly, compared to close-ups of faces alongside low APRs. We have no learnings on photographs of pets."
They admitted, however, all this data didn't help them predict how the next mailing would work. Usually, packages beat the control only when they broke some rules. It's an iffy, guessy business.
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