Do you agree that As More Power Shifts to Consumers the Need Grows For 'Renaissance Marketers'?

　

Together with a deeper understanding of Interactive Marketing

Communication.

Interactive marketing communications isn't new, but it's gaining momentum as

power shifts from the marketer to the consumer and as marketers recognize the

power and efficiency of taking a integrated approach to engaging consumers.

Several studies indicate that achieving effective Interactive Marketing

Communication campaigns is marketers' primary concern, one research study

indicated that, properly executed, interactive marketing is considerably more

effective allowing a Client to half his current advertising budget and be, at

least, 50% more effective.

"COST EFFECTIVENESS: Professor E.L. Roberto, PhD, Coca-Cola

Foundation Professor of International Marketing reviewed the £5 million of

independent research conducted on behalf of Interactive communication and

provided this summary as to the techniques cost efficiency:

"The Interactive "Event(s)" participating brands generated recall scores that

are more than 50% productive than normal advertising. The effect on purchase

intention is just as impressive if not much more.

All these productivity increments are attainable at a reasonably inexpensive

budget. One Client revealed that for its participating brand, its quarter

television expenditure was $5.7 million as compared to its interactive budget

of $0.5 million. This 1:10 ratio has been obtained in Interactive experience

in other countries."

However there is considerable uncertainty about how to staff, design, manage

and measure the success of such programs.

For too long, marketing functions have been vertically organized by media

type. This approach is mirrored on the agency side, with class rewards based

on discipline-specific P&L models. These must be torn down.

On the client-side Marketing and Brand Managers must involve and lead a

team of colleagues who have the responsibility, vision, understanding and

commitment to engage in a media-agnostic planning process. And this team of

enlightened marketers must be willing to let strategic goals -- not historic

patterns -- drive budget allocations.

Achieving strategic integration requires a top-to-bottom reinvention of the

marketing organization. This transformation must be led by holistic

professionals who are system thinkers, customer-centric believers, innovators

and dreamers.

These individuals should be cross-trained to understand the entire marketing

spectrum and learn discipline-specific skill sets. And to specifically

understand the real meaning of the word "communication" Increasingly, these

leaders will need strong quantitative skills -- in order to analyze the

data-rich resources and leverage mathematical tools now available, especially

if they are to drive cross-disciplinary approaches that fuse disparate

consumer-engagement channels. Above all, they need to be superior team

leaders who have the insights, talent and passion to take marketing integration

to new heights.

Engaging in conversations with relevant markets (Interacting) will become an

important source of knowledge and innovation, the quality of this market

intelligence has already (and will do so more in the future) proven to be more

accurate than research and will determine market share.

Without interactive communication your efforts to create new products and

markets will be taking place in a vacuum.

　

　

　

So Many Clicks, So Few Sales

Pay-per-click advertising seems like a dream. But up to 35% of

all the clicks you pay for may be fraudulent.

It didn't make any sense. Kevin Steele, co-owner of Karaoke Star, a Phoenix

retailer of karaoke equipment, noticed that the number of people clicking on his

paid search-engine ads had shot from 200 to 800 a day. But despite the apparent

jump in traffic, sales hadn't budged. Steele and his partner, Diana Frerick, had

built their business on Internet advertising, and more clicks almost always

meant more revenueâ€"which the pair had invested in a new office, more inventory, and a call center to field technical questions.

Steele thought he had pay-per-click advertising down to a science. Karaoke

Star spent about $2,000 a day on search-engine ads at Google and Overture, a

subsidiary of Yahoo focusing on keywords like "karaoke","karaoke player,"

"karaoke song"to generate about $6,000 a day in sales. Suddenly, it had to

budget the same amount just to get $3,000. With each keyword costing

anywhere between 40 cents and $3 a click, Karaoke Star found itself being

nickel-and-dimed to death. "One day we were doing great, says Steele, "and

the next it was as if someone had turned off the lights."

The problem was click fraud, which occurs when people click on paid search

ads with no intention of buying anything. In some cases, the clicker is a

competitor that wants to force a rival to burn through cash. Other times it's

someone from an affiliate site that hosts search-engine ads and receives a small

commission for every click. It could be a team of users clicking repeatedly on

an ad. Or, most commonly, the fraudulent clicks are automated by "hitbot"

software.

Experts estimate that 20% to 35% of all ad clicks may be bogus. Whatever the

number, it's as if thousands of people are charging you for window-shopping.

Steele says the fraudulent clicking has cost Karaoke Star nearly $400,000 over

the past two and a half years.

The paid search ad market is essentially a grand auction. Advertisers bid on

specific keywords; the terms with the highest demand fetch the highest prices,

and the advertisers that pay the most get the highest placement on the search

engine's webpage. Because affiliate sites earn commissions based on how many

clicks the ads receive, there's a lot of incentive to claim as many clicks as

possible. Paid online search is a nearly $3 billion business and it's easy to

see why. Popular keywords can get very expensive very fast.

The major search engines all acknowledge that click fraud is a problem. In a

recent SEC filing, for example, Google warned investors that "if fraudulent

clicks are not detected, the affected advertisers may experience a reduced

return on their investment which could lead to loss of advertisers and

revenue.

What's an advertiser to do? If you think you've been charged for bogus

clicks, you might be able to convince a search engine to credit your account.

The problem is, getting a search engine to hand over a record of your

advertising activity is no easy feat. Search engines treat such data as

proprietary and are loath to share it. Karaoke Star's Steele and Frerick, for

example, expressed their suspicions to Overture and were given some "token

refunds, Steele says. But Overture steadfastly refused to tell them who was

behind the bogus clicks. Nor would it give Karaoke Star the data it needed to

figure it out itself.

Fortunately, Karaoke Star as well as a number of other online karaoke

stores received an anonymous e-mail tip from someone claiming to be a former

employee of Ace Karaoke, a competitor in City of Industry, Calif. Attached to

the e-mail, according to Steele, was a video that showed an automated click

fraud program employed by Ace Karaoke to target the stores. Frerick and Steele

retained a lawyer who has contacted Ace Karaoke, as well as Google and Overture,

and informed them of his intention to sue. Why target the search engines?

"Because Google and Overture make the most money from click fraud and have

the least amount of incentive for taking simple precautions to prevent the fraud,

says C. Tab Turner, a plaintiffs' attorney in North Little Rock, Ark., who

represents Karaoke Star. Overture and Google declined to comment on the matter.

Ace Karaoke's owner, David Su, denies the charges. "At this stage, there is

no way for advertisers to prevent fraudulent clicks from being billed to their

accounts.

Unlike Karaoke Star, many advertisers are reluctant to complain out of fear

that the search engines, which provide most of their traffic, could blacklist

them. "At this stage, there is no way for advertisers to prevent fraudulent

clicks from being billed to their accounts,says Jessie Stricchiola, president

of Alchemist Media, a click fraud auditing firm in Hollywood.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to taking legal action. There are a

number of click fraud auditing tools available including Click Lab, Click

Defense, and Click Detective that are designed to alert you to suspicious

clicks. The cost can range from $29.95 to several thousand dollars a month,

depending on the amount of traffic your site receives. Or you could hire a

consultant like Stricchiola to analyze your traffic and broker a deal with the

search engines. But Stricchiola, who charges between $250 and $450 an hour,

warns that it often costs more in time and money to identify the problem than is

actually lost to click fraud. There are also alternative search engines, such as

Brooklyn-based BlowSearch, which guarantees that its advertisers will not

receive any automated clicks on their ads or they'll get their money back. Of

course, BlowSearch gets only a tiny fraction of the traffic of the big search

engines and offers less bang for the advertising buck.

In the end, you may have little option but to accept fraudulent clicks as a

cost of doing business and recalculate your expected advertising ROI

accordingly. That's what Karaoke Star is doing. Of course, it's also reserving

the right to sue.

Be brutally honest, do you have any idea how advertising works?

How advertising got itself into its present mess. No? Perhaps you console yourself

with the thought that it doesn't matter that you don't have a clue because there

are plenty of smart marketing people out there who do. Well, here's the tricky

part. Yes, those smart marketing people do indeed have a shrewd

idea on how to steer the world out of marketing chaos. The bad news is, they're not

all the same prescription. In fact they are different prescriptions. Very

different.

We snigger at fortune-tellers yet continue to take seriously the word of advertising

and marketing people, professions definable as people who have found a way to retain professorial

tenure even when their predictions turn out to be entirely wrong. Read the rival

pronouncements of the world's top advertising people and you soon find yourself

agreeing that their guess is as good as anybody else's. Because in Marketing

and advertising nobody knows anything! Even more disturbing, the arguments

about Social Media and how to fix advertising that we hear today are but a

queasy echo of those we heard years ago regarding the introduction of Commercial

TV...and didn't that work out well? Similar arguments about involvement, The

Internet, Social Media et al are today being regurgitated over the current

crisis. So what should we be doing? I really don't know except that we should

really study the meaning of the word communication a little more urgently. My

only excuse is that the people we rely on to know don't have a common style either.

　

Wake Up Marketing - Face the 21st Century

　

　

　

Your innovation-averse culture must go!

Marketing and advertising are on the slide. When will these once great

businesses confront reality and fight back? Because at the moment both

Advertising and Marketing have become innovation-averse cultures! Both

professions are risk-averse, innovation-averse and antipathetic to new

ideas.

Worse than that they are totally lacking in accountability because those

given responsibility do not have the requisite authority and knowledge to

discharge it.

So what's behind the decline and fall? Most certainly a sclerotic marketing

system that doesn't have the power to re-examine the need for massive

re-evaluation of the process of advertising and marketing. It's antiquated,

early 19th Century concepts do not work, (if they ever did!) they still do not

have any true accountability.

It may be that the future scholar identifies Advertising's sclerotic, twisted

concepts of communication as the biggest business weakness of all.Simply put.

An early 19th century concept cobbled together by a small number of

opportunistic men cannot properly function for the Western world at the

beginning of the 21st century. The current system of Advertising &

Marketing is an anachronism.

Among business people cynicism about advertising ability to deliver grow, now

with the advent of the Internet, this can only increase this cynicism.

The twin challenges to advertisings' 60-year old hegemony are enormous. The

first is a total misunderstanding of the word "communication" and a misplaced

belief that "creativity" is the sole criteria for the success or otherwise of

advertisings ability to sell products and services. Secondly there is a broad

global trend towards the internet together with the frightening inability of

advertising to be totally accountable, in the case of the latter just how long

can this stupidity last? Just when does Marketing dare to balance the

budget?

It could well be that the future business scholar will identify marketings

sclerotic, twisted business decision-making system as the biggest weakness of

all. Put simply an early 19th century business concept cobbled together by a

small number of business men cannot properly function for the West as the

number one business method for the 21st century. To-day it can be said that

Advertising and Marketing are an anachronism which is why so many articles

abound as to the way advertising is going. Nowadays some senior executives call

trust the scarcest resource of all and marketing enhances such an attitude!

It has been said that Marketers are stuck in a world between the old rules

and the new rules. To deal with the new rules of changing media, technology and

consumer behaviour, many marketers delegate emerging marketing solutions to a

handful of external partners or internal 'experts'. In doing so, they have

enabled the rest of the organisation to behave much like it did ten years ago,

clinging to the old rules!

　

　

Lets Face it. There is no answer to the Advertising and Marketing Crisis!






Both Clients and advertising agencies are deluding themselves. Marketing has

to accept there is no way out of its decline.For one blood-curdling moment it

seemed that the marketing world had woken up to the fact that their preposterous

industry had finally been caught in the act.

Pepsi ,the world's leader in advocating and implementing new-age marketing

nonsense, and now paying the price for its foolish belief in the three-headed

marketing monsters: "branding," "engagement," and "conversation." (Here's a tip

for anyone left alive in the Pespi marketing department. There is one thing, and

one thing only, that advertising is about -- persuasion. All the rest is word

games and chit chat. Got it?

Last week it was reported that after years of fighting Coke for first place

in the soft drink category, Pepsi-Cola had fallen to third place.The L.A. Times

called it "...a stunning fall from grace."

Pepsi saw their U.S. sales volumes in 2010 fall sharply, by 4.8% and 5.2%, respectively... The

U.S. soft drink market is about 74 billion dollars. Therefore a 5% drop in Pepsi

market share (which is about 10%0 cost them well over $350 million on the Pepsi

brand alone!

The goal of advertising is to create a clear awareness of your company and

its Unique Selling Proposition. Unfortunately, most advertisers evaluate their

ads by the comments they hear from the people around them. The slickest,

clearest, funniest, most creative and most different ads are the ones most

likely to generate these comments. See the problem? When we confuse "response"

with "results" we create "attention getting ads" which say absolutely

nothing.

The business owner is uniquely unqualified to see his company or his product

objectively.He is on the inside, looking out, trying to describe himself to a

person on the outside looking in. It's hard to read the label when you're inside

the bottle. Too much product nowledge causes the business owner to answer

questions that no one is asking. This makes for extremely ineffective

advertising.

Marketing has to accept there is no way out of its decline. The rot began

when we chose never to take heed of Professor Ehrenberg's statements on

advertising effectiveness! Because nothing has changed despite all the ballyhoo about Social Media,

Facebook et al. Wherever ads appear, especially on Social Media, Ehrenberg's resolute focus on the

facts what data actually tells us led him to challenge many a marketing bandwagon

such as loyalty'. You may wish to improve the brand's performance by improving

customer retention', he observed, but without a higher market penetration it

just won't happen. His work on advertising effectiveness was equally

challenging. He argued convincingly that there was no evidence that advertising

persuades anybody to do anything; advertising can only ever be a weak' force

that improves brand recognition and/or jogs consumers'

memories.

Interactive Marketing Communicatiom

allows you to explore the multi-dimensional benefits of understanding customer needs in a digital era.

Customer loyalty is seeing several trends rapidly overtaking existing

understanding. Platforms of the future will record every interaction - they will

understand consumer preferences and pre-empt evolving needs.

Interactive Communication, properly executed, includes the next generation of

loyalty schemes. Embracing the fourth dimension of loyalty Interactive Communication comprises

every aspect of digital advertising and is totally accountable!

Interaction and The Outdated Idea of Mass Marketing

Advertising together with Broadcast Media, finally bite the dust!

Because no longer is the Marketing message, "We want your money". To day the Marketing message has to be "We want your opinions".

Because the moment you put that into real practice you can have everything you've always wanted, sales, customer relationships and also Brand loyalty.

However replacing research with interaction changes all the opportunities to successful marketing. "Yes", you can say," "Interactive Events will create my new products"

However at the moment Big Business is not making the correct decisions regarding interaction. Maybe some people within these organisations know and understand what's happening out there in consumer land. But the dreadful fact is that giving their voice to such statements would, more probably, seriously damage their career growth!

These days I search everywhere for the headline "Interactive Communication is a winning combination for all…The Client…The Media…and last but by no means least…your customer"!

It never appears.

Interactive Communication finally allows the revolution to commence. The revolution against one-size fits all advertising; the bland all-knowing corporate voice, the lack lustre politicians busily furnishing their own nests…from our money.

The fact of the matter is your customers, you, me and everybody else, do not trust business. We find it highly insulting to be treated this way and we mistrust you in numbers far greater than you or your advertising/marketing people allow for.

Dialogue, two-way conversations, would start to change these hostile attitudes. You really do need to commence interactive events - right now. And you can do so in existing media.

Before I go on, I must emphasise that on no account let your Advertising Agency tempt you into spending big bucks on the Web. Already the Advertising-as-Usual crowd is pouring billions into the Web, however be warned, as they said in the "Cluetrain Manifesto", "So you advertise on the Internet…so what"? If you think you are wasting money on Advertising-as-Usual be very careful. The Internet, possibly is a bigger waste of money than Advertising-as-Usual, and, as we all know, right now that is one Mother of a huge waste of money!

"Why?" you may ask "has it all changed from the safe secure way of marketing in the past".

Simply put, Advertising-as-Usual, together with its handmaiden Broadcasting-as-Usual have treated us with too much contempt. According to a recent article in the Times, TV executives commonly think of viewers' phone revenue as "moron tax". And this attitude of utter contempt pervades the executives of advertising and Broadcast-as-Usual, and expresses itself in all the offerings of a rip-off culture, from government to TV companies.

And bear in mind that Advertising-as-Usual and Broadcast-as-Usual hold Clients in great contempt as well. They rejoice in removing large chunks of your Marketing Budgets, to then waste them in rip-off ventures that only worsen the publics' contempt for you…so in effect they are spending your money to get you into a ever worsening situation.

The Worst Possible Cure!

Every day you're exposed to more than four hours of media. Most of it is optimized to interrupt what you're doing. And it's getting increasingly harder and harder to find a little peace and quiet. The ironic thing is that marketers

have responded to this problem with the single worst cure possible. To deal with the clutter and the diminished effectiveness of Interruption Marketing, they're interrupting us even more!

Use Interactive Marketing Communication and solve all your communications problems in one go...plus becoming totally accountable and cut clutter - immediately!

　

Better Marketing Without Reform? - Forget it

The current state of Marketing is such that the need for change and "New Models" are desperately needed.

The trouble is the "New Models" will not prove to be financially sustainable without substantially changing the way advertising and media services are organised. The first thing we must do to start to tackle the problem is to embrace our lack of knowledge about the process of communication. We must allow outside organisations to question the fundamental ideas that shape current advertising. We must allow them to innovate and keep the money saved through innovation. That way there is a chance that advertising and marketing will keep improving without costing more. One thing is for sure. We can't carry on as we are.

Pretending that without reform our money will go further. This is definitely the time for creative innovation in Marketing, not the ridgid belief that Marketing and Advertising can still show us all the answers to our problems – it never has and it never will.

Our only hope lies in a fundamental re-examination of the Marketing values we have lived by in the past 30 years. Our future depends not on whether we get through this, but how deeply and truthfully we examine its causes.

So just when are we going to prick our bubble of denial?

Because the Advertising and Marketing world is living in a world of denial. They use rhetoric that blurs their perceptions and have become addicted to the world view it represents
At the same time reinforcing themselves by a stream of cheery models engaged in consumption and leisure, they shuttle from workstation to mall, increasingly insulated by a media consensus that leaves out the rest of the world. We have had a band of denial built around ourselves, thus this belief cost us the capacity to self-correct.

Thus this delusional self-image is finally catching up with us. And make no mistake marketing will benefit hugely when reality breaks through.

　

　

Interactive Communication, properly executed,

provides a win-win-win scenario for all participating parties.

For the first time in the history of commercial communication, participating parties can

expect to benefit from appearing in interactive communications

"Events".

For communication to be successful mutual self- interest has to

be satisfied. Consumers need Interactive Communication. People desire to be taken account of, to

affect change, learn and personalise their relationships with their environment. There are a

phenomenal number of reasons which cause people to interact, which go far

beyond just giving them things. When people participate in interactive

marketing communication "Events" they are told that their efforts and feedback

are of positive help to the advertisers. Moreover, by participating, they then

learn and understand the message from the advertiser, personalise their

relationship with the advertiser and their products (or services). The

benefits for participating advertisers? For the first time advertising

becomes totally accountable with payment by results only.

Interactive communication provides intelligent sales through feedback and involvement. Thus

allowing the building of intelligent databanks. Thus the interactive

Medium becomes accountable and more effective. By the very nature of

interactive "Events" the audience are captivated by the technique.

Interaction alters the way viewers/readers perceive advertising, instead of being viewed as

interruption your advertising becomes a pleasurable and meaningful source of

information. There is a substantial increase in the reading/viewing figures and

it readily counters zapping.

The lack of accountability has damaged the advertising...
 ...and marketing industry, it is the real flaw behind the advertising crisis. There has to be a complete change of thinking and regulation of the world’s marketing industry. Certainly Clients cannot risk again the degree of unaccountability that have been practised up to now. Advertising agencies need to change their behaviour, they need to re-establish relations with their Clients and gain a better understanding of the communication process.

In the past British advertising was based on protecting and looking after the client’s interests as well as their own. Advertising agencies should not be ashamed to return to these principals.

I am amazed at the spinelessness of British advertising people in defending the lack of accountability, the gross commercial clutter. They appear as parties to a conspiracy to fleece monies from marketing budgets under the futile guise of creativity.

There have been few outspoken admen, those that do speak out as to the inefficiencies of advertising are mocked and reviled never receiving a satisfactory response to their, valid, criticisms.

However Interactive Communication, properly structured, will allow advertising to return to more honest, accountable marketing!

　

　

Consumers are deaf to the babble of the advertising class.

It is true to say that all the advertising in the world won't bring the customers back!

Spending a huge fortune on TV advertising?

Rest assured these days your advertising slipped into the huge gulf of

mistrust, disbelief and total lack of interest that now separates the

Advertising Class from everybody else. This gulf is so full of disbelieved

advertising and ignored blogs,sales promotion gimmicks,direct marketing and

irrelevant banners/radio commercials.

The cynicism about advertising is so pervasive that it embraces almost all

marketing activity. Use a statistic? It's a lie. This cynicism extends to

the media, all advertising is seen as fiction inside an untruth wrapped in a piece

of spin! Most advertising proceeds as if there was still a reasonable degree

of trust. As if the message was still getting through, still be listened to,

still being weighed up. It must be hard to be in Advertising and to carry on if

the truth were faced.

For example, the rubbish that the food industry has fed people for decades,

along with its (literally) toxic products and the lies and omissions that it has

disseminated, well now is the time to challenge this concerted project of

misinformation, corruption and silence together with the programme to keep

people as ignorant as possible about factory farming. Myths trotted out

regularly.

The incredible plethora of choices consumers now possess has a downside, and

it's called exhaustion. An overwhelming number of possibilities complicates

every buying decision. Add to that all the other more baroque aspects of modern

life, such as two-income households, frequent divorce.

and remarriage and blending of increasing traffic,

shortening news cycles, and 100 channels of cable television, and you wind up

with a consumer group that feels very over loaded and harassed.

Stand back. Stop thinking like the operator and start thinking like a

customer. Better, talk to real customers. Or, better still, to real

non-customers. What do they want? What is missing for them? Customer focus is

important all the time, and is one of the main advantages that small firms enjoy

over their apparently stronger and more profitable larger rivals. In good

economic times, it's almost inevitable that, for big companies, the needs of

customers will drop down the list of corporate priorities, to some degree. This

creates an opportunity for small firms with a distinctive customer offering to

move in and clean up.

　

　

It is refreshing to hear more discussion around the shortcomings...

of social media rather than the constant proselytizing of a still baby-fresh and

misunderstood communication channel. However, possibly a more constructive way

of thinking about those shortcomings is to consider the growing gap in

expectations of what social media can and should achieve for a brand.

The IBM Institute of Business Value just published a study

comparing the differing perceptions of business leaders and consumers regarding

social sites. The most interesting find from the study was the ironic business

misperception that consumer's would rank discounts and purchase opportunities at

the bottom of their list of reasons to engage with a company's social site. It

actually ranks at the top of their list.

Companies need to design experiences that deliver tangible value in return

for customers' time, attention, endorsement and data. -IBM Institute of

Business Value.

Time and attention really are the currencies of our customers. Those expenses

are precious for them and they want something in return for it. Simply providing

conversation's will never be enough. No brand is interesting enough to entice

just by being available. Although the social space is cheaper, quicker, and

ever-present, a brand still needs to provide those nuggets of material value to

drive significant engagement.

And Interactive Communication does all that...and more! To discover more contact:

Paul Ashby on (UK) 01934 620047 or paulashby40@yahoo.com. Cell 'phone 07586259605.

Just some of the benefits of using Interactive Communication

　

Produces measurable results.

Greater Product awareness.

Longer Product Recall.

Substantial Sales Uplift.

Better Customer Data.

Stronger customer interaction.

Less expensive than regular advertising.

Cuts thru commercial clutter.

Resolves selective perception & cognitive dissonance.

Gives greater response to your mainstream advertising.

Strengthens consumer purchase commitment.

Improves perceptions of your brand(s) benefits.

Raises Brand awareness & preference.

Maximises revenue.

Increases the communication value of your marketing activity.

And...Is Media Neutral.

What has emerged from the data available,

was clear evidence of the lack of credibility or engagement that most brands

can expect from their forays into social media.

A spokesman for TNS said "Many brands have recognised the vast potential

audiences available to them on social networks; however, they are failing to

understand that these spaces belong to the consumer and brand presence needs

to be proportionate and justified."

However when you use Interactive Marketing Communication you get total

engagement and total credibility. Seeking more information on Interactive

MarketingCommunication?...contact Paul Ashby on (UK) 01934 620047 or

paulashby40@yahoo.com

If ad agencies want to regain their position as valued contributors to a company's success,

then they must also help their clients focus on promise

delivery. If agencies only care about making the promise and not about helping

ensure that the promise will be kept, then they are shirking their

brand-building job. It is, after all, the synergy between promise and

performance that represents ultimate success and that's true for the agency

and the client.

So is advertising dead/dying, or merely having temporary breathing problems?

I'm very Interested in learning what readers think.

　

Our marketing world balances on a sea of mediocrity!



There is a name for what advertising agencies do, " rubbish ", and our

predecessors appreciated much better than us its ultimate destination: ruin!

Almost all of what advertising agencies do is best summed up in one word

parasitical. By creating advertising out of thin air we have reduced the

purchasing power of more deserving members of society. What would happen if

everybody behaved just like advertising agencies?

Marketing and Advertising is a classic example of the term "the fallacy of

managerial expertise",an attempt by experts to blind us with science to

justify their overpaid existence.

The experts will tell us that the present advertising and marketing crisis

are simply the result of abuses and excesses in a system that is basically

sound. All that is required is for some faults to be corrected. Do not

believe them! The reality is that the problem is systemic and a little

tinkering here or there will achieve nothing in the long term.

What is needed is a root-and-branch re-evaluation of that most curious of

inventions, marketing and advertising, and how it can be used to serve the

interests of the community. To start with the experts must explain in the

simplest terms how advertising actually works together with supporting

evidence! The truth is that advertising and marketing have not suddenly

become useless but that they were never really useful in the first place!

Yet it is a fact that that the key to understanding how international

marketing and advertising operates and why the world is in such a mess is

discussed virtually nowhere in mainstream circles.

The picture has become a great deal more complicated, the huge problem of

clutter, otherwise known as meaningless noise. Together with the gibberish

that has become the new marketing speak, IT jargon...utterly meaningless and as

far away from communication than ever before. And still no one has produced

one iota of real evidence that advertising works at all!

The role of advertising has been diverted by new expertsto media buying,

sales promotion, computer speak, direct marketing but in essence they are mere

variations of the same basic three-card trick! With the advent of the PC all

sorts of marketing emerges, again devised by those same experts who did not

know what they were doing from the beginning. Moreover, the illusion becomes

self-reinforcing. Those involved in the process sitting behind their computer

screens, no longer control the beast they have created.

Advertising breeds more advertising and the only people who win, in fact the

only people who have ever won, are the media owners which is precisely why the

media owners desperately do not want the system to change! But the system

relies entirely, as do all Ponzi schemes, on two assumptions, 1) That

advertising works, and 2) the assumption of continued growth, hence its inherent

instability. Once that growth is threatened the whole edifice collapses.

Marketing...a very simple and devastatingly effective swindle, but largely

invisible because it has become so deeply embedded in our culture. The

consequences of that swindle, the desperate need for economic growth together

with the environmental and cultural despoliation it engenders require some

radical thinking that one encounters nowhere in any of our Business Schools...or

elsewhere for that matter!

OK, so some people have question my assumption (?) that advertising doesn't

work, fortunately there is enough evidence supporting my claims and I will

commence to detail that evidence in future articles. For example:June 2005

issue of Harvard Business Review reporting on the effectiveness of 500 various

consumer and B2B marketing programs: 84% resulted in less market share, not

more Most customer acquisition efforts did not break even Fewer than 10% of

new products succeeded Most sales promotions were unprofitable Advertising

ROI was below 4% Doubling advertising expenditures for established products

increased sales just 1% - 2%

The role of advertising has been diverted by new experts

to media buying, sales promotion, computer speak, direct marketing but in essence they are mere

variations of the same basic three-card trick! With the advent of the PC all

sorts of marketing emerges, again devised by those same experts who did not

know what they were doing from the beginning. Moreover, the illusion becomes

self-reinforcing. Those involved in the process sitting behind their computer

screens, no longer control the beast they have created.

Advertising breeds more advertising and the only people who win, in fact the

only people who have ever won, are the media owners which is precisely why the

media owners desperately do not want the system to change! But the system

relies entirely, as do all Ponzi schemes, on two assumptions, 1) That

advertising works, and 2) the assumption of continued growth, hence its inherent

instability. Once that growth is threatened the whole edifice collapses.

Marketing...a very simple and devastatingly effective swindle, but largely

invisible because it has become so deeply embedded in our culture. The

consequences of that swindle, the desperate need for economic growth together

with the environmental and cultural despoliation it engenders require some

radical thinking that one encounters nowhere in any of our Business Schools...or

elsewhere for that matter!

OK, so some people have question my assumption (?) that advertising doesn't

work, fortunately there is enough evidence supporting my claims and I will

commence to detail that evidence in future articles.For example:June 2005

issue of Harvard Business Review reporting on the effectiveness of 500 various

consumer and B2B marketing programs: 84% resulted in less market share, not

more Most customer acquisition efforts did not break even Fewer than 10% of

new products succeeded Most sales promotions were unprofitable Advertising

ROI was below 4% Doubling advertising expenditures for established products

increased sales just 1% - 2%

Showing the results of just one exposure to an interactive "Event" against the reach and frequency model of traditional advertiing.



Client: Reckitt & Colman.

Brand: Setamol 500

Category: Analgesic.

Research: AGB

"Findings from this Post Event Survey shows impressive increases in scores for those who saw the Event in comparison for those who did not. Results are consistently superior in all three key market measures: Prompted-Brand-Awareness +92.6%, Past-Four-Week-Purchase +47% and Definitely-Will-Buy +47%.

　

　

Client: Warner Lambert.

Brand: Listerine.

Product Category: Mouthwash

Research: Market Intelligence Corporation.

　

"Gains in all key measurements were recorded among consumers exposed to the newspaper interactive event, versus those not exposed. These gains were: Unaided Awareness 39%, Aided 11%, Past-Four-Week-Purchase 55% and Next-Purchase 97%. This translates in total market gain of 8% for Unaided-Awareness; 2% gain in Aided-Awareness; 11% increase in Past-Four-Weeks-Purchase and 19% in Brand-Next-Purchase."

　

　

Client: Warner Lambert.

Brand: Listerine.

In-Store Sampling Programme.

Research: Market Intelligence Corporation.

Research Protocol: Interactive Sampling was conducted in 6 stores with other 6 matched stores used as a control group where sampling was conducted without the interactive elements. Additionally, other stores that had no sampling programme at all were monitored. Purchase behaviour was monitored for three months. Actual inventory and cases sold were monitored.

"For the month of November (time of sampling and commencement of survey) an increase of 129% in actual purchase was obtained in those stores where the interactive sampling programme took place versus those (control) stores where the interactive sampling did not take place.

The average for the three month programme, November, December, January was a gain of 36% in purchase, versus those stores where the interactive programme was not held."

　

Client: Nestle.

Brand: Nescafe Excella Coffee.

Product: Instant Coffee.

Research: Market Intelligence Corporation.

"Substantial gains in all key measurements were recorded among those readers who were exposed to the interactive event versus those who were not. Unaided Awareness of the brand increased 19%; Aided-Awareness increased 10%; Past-Four-Week-Purchase increased 33% and Brand-Next-Likely increased 31%. In the total market these increases translated to a 4% increase in Unaided-Awareness; 2% increase in Aided-Awareness; 8% increase in Past-Four-Week Purchase and 8% increase in Future Purchase-Intent.

Follow-up programme in same publications seven months after above programme.

As a result of the feedback from the above programme, the creative was strengthened to focus on a secondary feature of the above. OpinionGram responses from this programme event suggested this repositioning.

"Increases in all key measurements were recorded: Unaided-Awareness + 60%; Aided-Awareness +8%; Past-Four-Week-Purchase +70% and Next-Brand-Purchase +54%.

The effect on the total market among those exposed versus not exposed was in the magnitude of: Unaided-Awareness +12%; Aided-Awareness +2%; Past-Four-Week-Purchase +15% and Brand-Will-Buy-Next =11%."

In an effort to convince the marketing industry that it is a powerful ...

...advertising medium, Facebook has begun singing a new tune. Or maybe its an old

tune. According to Mashable, they made a big presentation recently:

"Facebook on Monday continued its mission to

convince the world's top marketers that the standard means of measuring an

online ad's performance, the click-through rate " doesn't

matter."

And what does Facebook now say is the true measure of advertising value?

Their Director of Pricing and Measurement...proposed that the industry rely on the two

measurements that have served TV well...reach and frequency." Back to the future!

Facebook is so lost in its quest to prove its advertising relevance that it has tortured the logic of

advertising value beyond comprehension. Their business model is now based on completely

contradictory principles:Their pricing structure is based on the value of clicks.

But their business philosophy is that clicks have no value. They better make up their mind pretty

quickly or this may go down as one of the all-time great business shambles.