After all the research, focus groups and C-level selling is done, what's left of the marketing budget is spent on a campaign message. At this point, the message is often so homogenized and watered-down, that it’s madness to think that it would work at all.

Yet, this process is still typical in even the most sophisticated marketing organizations.

Failure is met with shock and surprise. “How could this not work?”  “We tested everything and reflected our consumer’s needs and wants in every picture and copy point.”

Budweiser is a prime example of this myopia. An article in Advertising Age, titled, “Budweiser’s Big Blunder: Letting Consultants Steer Brand” had this to say:

Shortly after August Busch IV was named CEO of Anheuser-Busch, he accepted a company director's recommendation for a consulting firm that would assist with managing the brewer's burgeoning brand portfolio. The firm, Cambridge Group, ended up going far beyond portfolio management. In fact, its exhaustive research resulted in the "Drinkability" campaign that -- four years and millions in fees later -- is considered a major factor in Bud Light posting the first full-year sales decline in its history.

Do you know your audience? Really know them? I wager that despite collecting, collating and deciphering all the research they can about their target, most companies don’t know squat. Just like Cambridge and Anheuser-Busch.

The reason is that most marketing organizations are consumed by their own rigid and collectively agreed upon definitions of their target group, as if it’s a completely unique sub-genre of the human race.

Mark Earls sums up marketing's obsessive dependence on target research nicely in his article, “The New Audience”:

Since its earliest days, marketing has prided itself on putting the people who buy the products being marketed (or the 'consumers', as we've got used to calling them) at the heart of its thinking and processes. You could argue that the fundamental point of marketing (as well as its primary contribution to contemporary culture) is the idea of organizing business around the needs, wants and desires of the people who buy its goods and services.

Along the way, we've come to rely on certain ideas about these people – how they do what they do, how they make the decisions we seek to influence, the nature of the relationship between us and them, and the importance of the role we play in their lives.

He goes on to suggest that this is changing. That perhaps the assumption that thought proceeds action, is in fact wrong:

In recent years, science has encouraged us to rethink much of what we took for granted about the people who make up our audiences. We have learned that thinking is much less important than we imagine in shaping our behaviour. Much of our decision-making is essentially automatic and based on shorthand and heuristics; we often do stuff and make sense of it later. Cognitive behavioural scientists, such as Kahnemann and tversky, and Nudge authors thaler and Sunstein, have catalogued the cognitive biases that have come from our “lazy brain's” use of shorthand and heuristics for decision-making.

Thought can be a barrier to action. Too much of it can get in the way and in fact become paralyzing. Think about it. We learn by doing the things we do, not by being told, or informed. Especially not by an inanimate brand fronting an organization with a vested interest.

So, if you’re trying to change perceptions, it’s important to keep in mind that perception change is a result of changed behaviour, not the other way around. That is, if we are trying to change perceptions then we should probably be thinking about the behaviour change required to do so. And if we are simply trying to change behaviour we shouldn’t put the need to change perceptions in the way as a barrier.

Mark Earls also suggests that the key to behaviour change is in influencing and learning from each other:

Equally, we've come to understand that we are a fundamentally social species. Our minds are supremely adapted for a world of others, rather than for independent thought. Our ability to learn from each other (via 'social learning' and the disembodied accumulation of others' knowledge and skills we call 'culture') is now widely seen to be the key mechanism behind the spread of all kinds of phenomena, from the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, and whether we vote or not, to the names we give our children. Many now believe this must therefore also be the key to changing such behaviour.

The best companies seem to innately know this. Companies like Apple and Nike place less importance on dissecting their audience and more importance on offering products that people want and want to talk about. In Apples case, products that people will line up for when launched, as if they’re attending a rock concert.

I’m going to say something radical. Challenge the target research, if not chuck it altogether.

Dare to be different and meaningful.

Rather than chasing your target, have the courage to attract and lead.

People will buy your brand based on an alignment of values, ideals and attitude - sometimes even more so than if the product actually fulfills a need.

Once again, take Apple for example. It’s not like as if anybody needs an iPad. Yet the internet has been buzzing about it since it was announced. And on April 2, you can bet to see lineups.

Mark Earls concluded his excellent article with this:

Next time you find yourself thinking about your audience, please remember this: they're very different from what we've been told – less considered and deliberative and certainly much more influenced by each other than even they'd like to admit. More importantly, they're not really an audience in the way that received wisdom suggests – passive and dependent on what you offer. They're not 'listening' and, to be honest, they're not yours. If they're an audience at all, it's first and foremost for themselves. And therein lies the opportunity for marketers.

How do you feel about your own marketing efforts? Is it the way you’d like to be marketed to? Is it something you’d be proud to tell your friends about? I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

Here we go again with another self-serving ‘prophet’ predicting the end of brand advertising.

In this case it’s a fellow by the name of Alex Rampell, CEO of a company called TrialPay. He predicts something he calls ‘Transactional Advertising” will replace brand advertising in the near future.

Why? Presumably because that’s what he does.

He explains the value of a brand this way:

What’s the value of Coca-Cola’s brand? Pure math – it’s the Net Present Value (NPV) of the difference that consumers will pay for Coca-Cola versus, say, RC Cola, for the lifetime of the consumer and duration of the brand. When you pay $1 for a Coke versus $.50 for an RC Cola, the $.50 difference is chalked up to the “brand.” (Yes, perhaps there are differences in taste, too – but even with an identical formula and taste, I would argue RC Cola wouldn’t sell as well as Coke). Multiply $.50 times billions upon billions of cans of Coke, and you see the power of brand.

An ok explanation, however, Interbrand estimated Coke’s brand value at $68.7 Billion in ’09. Up 3% from the previous year. Their valuation method is explained here.

As much as I can understand it, here’s Mr. Rampell’s argument in a nutshell:

...what if Walmart refused to stock Coca-Cola, instead stocking just RC Cola? Granted, Walmart stocks Coca-Cola because consumers demand it, and consumers demand it because of the brand that Coca-Cola has created, but that can easily be reversed. If Walmart decided to stock only RC Cola and expel Coca-Cola from its shelves, this would change RC Cola’s fortunes, and harm Coca-Cola, quite a bit.

Why exactly would Walmart do that? A self-defeating, circular argument to be sure.

He goes on to explain the concept further with a little help from Captain Obvious:

Preferential placement of a good or service at/near the point of a transaction is something I call “transactional advertising,” which I predict will expand as a category in the coming years.

But where’s the “advertising?”

This form of transactional advertising exists today, although you might not know it. Proctor & Gamble spends great effort and expense (though it pales in comparison to their brand advertising spend) to ensure eye-level placement wherever its products are sold.

Oh, I get it. Shelf placement and POP!

To be fair, point-of-sale is becoming more sophisticated and will continue to do so, especially with mobile transactional software, mobile apps, 2D bar codes, augmented reality and the like. Still, it’s not competitive to brand advertising, neither will it replace it. It’s simply the final stage of the purchase funnel.

Oddly enough and as much as Rampell claims that he coined the term – ‘Transactional Advertising’ has been around since the ‘80’s. I recall a couple of Canadian retail agencies using it as their unique point of difference.

He finishes with an admission about his masterplan:

Today you see very little in the way of transactional advertising online; rarely does one brand pop up in another brand’s checkout experience.

Unless it’s a house brand, wouldn’t a brand have to pay for that opportunity? And if so, given Rampell’s earlier comparison, what if it’s RC Cola versus Coke, who’s going to win that bid?

Why, the one with the best known and valued brand I suspect.

Who is this guy and why is TechCrunch giving him a soapbox? Another argument that belongs with “A Marketing Era of False Prophets and Failing Results.”

An excellent article on the history of advertising written by Randall Rothenberg for Ad Age. Certainly an article that new people in the business should read and study.

He finishes the article with this:

But as we near the end of the broadcasting era, at the twilight of the advertising century, this much is now clear: In the spark of creativity lies the future of business.

This is a fundamental truth, regardless of changing technology and the advance of metrics. Though, Bill Bernbach in the 1960's said it best when challenged with the silly idea that advertising is science:

Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

He also said:

However much we would like advertising to be a science-because life would be simpler that way-the fact is that it is not. It is a subtle, ever-changing art, defying formulaization, flowering on freshness and withering on imitation; where what was effective one day, for that very reason, will not be effective the next, because it has lost the maximum impact of originality.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Avi Dan makes some very good points in this AdAge article. Rapid change in technology and consumer behaviour is something every brand marketer should be paying close attention to. However, given the average 11% budget allocated to online marketing (in Canada), most aren't. Failure is the consequence, as the tenure of the CMO will continue to decline from the current average of just 18 months.

• While consumers and retailers embrace these innovations, one group seems to be conspicuously lagging behind the rapid technological evolution of the marketplace: marketers. Consider this: Ten years ago, at the beginning of the decade, consumers spent 30 minutes online. Today it's four hours, according to Media Metrix, twice as much time as they watch TV.
• In this decade broadband expanded from 3% to two-thirds of American homes. Yet marketers barely adjusted their approach. While investment in digital advertising has crept up some, roughly 90% of budgets is still spent on traditional channels like TV.
• A good place to start is reviewing the scope of their relationships with their agencies. CMOs must demand that all of their agencies, and not just the digital shop, become technologically savvy.
• Marketers should strive for mutuality and non-partisanship in brand stewardship. Today, it is ensconced with the "traditional" agency, while other disciplines play a supporting role. Of course, if you spend 90% of your budget with traditional agencies, that makes sense, but it also leads to silos and makes integration hard.