Being direct... AdVantage Apr 2005
If Awareness is a Requirement for Brand Success ... Does Absence of Advertising Necessarily Mean Brand Failure?
Making people aware of a brand is always critical for its success. In the absence of advertising however, can consumer lives
really take a turn for the worse?
In the quest for a 21st Century version of marketing and advertising's 'holy grail', much is being written these days about the importance of brands and branding, as well as on the impact of change on the world in which we live. There is an absolute explosion in the growth of alternative communication channels (electronic and otherwise) as well as the oft-reported steady decrease in real effectiveness of advertising - when compared to the heydays of the 70's and 80's.
All forms of communication require both language and frame of reference in order for meaning to be transferred and effective communication to take place. Unfortunately, more and more people in advertising (probably me included) often use common words to describe their personally nuanced understanding of those words. Examples are: Selling; Advertising; Marketing; Awareness; Consumer; Relationships; Loyalty; Customers; Needs; Buyers and so on.
These simple words obviously mean many different things to many different people, and can easily suffer from compromised frame of reference. In today's changing marketplace, is advertising actually communicating effectively with those whom it is trying to influence, and more importantly, I guess: are the targets thereof paying much attention, anyway?
In a recent column in the Sunday Times, fellow AdVantage columnist Chris Moerdyk quoted some 20-year-old research 'findings' that suggested that without toothpaste ads, 80% of consumers who regularly brushed their teeth, would stop doing so within a decade.
I am mindful of not wishing to enter into an unnecessary debate on this subject, and certainly not with an acknowledged expert in our field and respected colleague, but seriously I cannot let this one go unchallenged, because it is an example of a residual blind belief amongst some - in the absolute and totally linear effect of marketing communication.
There is a growing group of communication practitioners worldwide who seriously consider that advertising is (and maybe always has been) a great deal further down the awareness-importance-pecking-order than we have always thought, and who now strongly advocate communication strategies that leverage the concept described by Robert Heath in his book: 'The Hidden Power of Advertising: How Low Involvement Processing Influences the Way We Choose Brands' (Admap Monographs).
Robert Heath says '….Low involvement processing is the mental state in which most advertising is processed and it explains why most people worldwide honestly believe that advertising has little or no significant effect on their choices of brands. It is something which worries those who work in advertising, because it takes place at very low levels of attention and at once invites the question why consumers are not interested enough to want to pay more attention. The mea culpa response is usually to blame the advertisement, but the truth is that the average customer simply does not see learning about brands as being very important….(anymore) '
There may well be truth in the idea that some consumers will respond (and indeed change their behaviours) as the result of being exposed by the low-involvement effect of advertising, however this certainly does not occur in a 'linear' fashion. Consumers also aren't merely 'respondents' to ads, automatons - devoid of personal judgement, even though they may use different kinds of memory to process such information. The 'linear' viewpoint ignores, for example, that many consumers - regardless of their likely exposure to media ads over the years, may have been trained (since early childhood) to take care of their personal hygiene, and that perhaps toothpaste forms an integral part of their ritual for doing so?
What may even have been true at some point in time when people in general cleaned their teeth with the burnt-out leftovers of the means of cooking dinner - simply isn't any more. Toothpaste has been around for that long that its use in the home will undoubtedly continue - regardless of whether it is advertised or not.
Heath does explain however, how low interest processing, somatic markers and repetition have a very important role to play in how advertising does its job, but that the old concept of AIDA (attention, interest, decision, action) needs a distinct overhaul - in the context of this new knowledge. I recommend that you download and read his paper. It can be found at:
www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg
/rjmc/2001/00000007/00000001/art00005
In his recent paper on branding entitled 'Time to Drop the Branding Iron' UK marketing writer Alan Mitchell also makes this vital point: …'If brands don't produce trusted information as well as trusted goods, why on earth should we believe anything they say…if the communication is focused solely on the interests of the company, and is irrelevant to the consumers' purposes, why should we see it as anything other than an interruption or intrusion…?'
Over the past months I have been focusing on the idea of concurrence (or win-win) and this situation is another that begs for balance between the interests of the marketer and those of the consumer. Last word from Alan Mitchell: '…if a campaign does not offer (understood) value-for-time and return-on-attention, then the consumers of today are unlikely to spend time or attention on it…'
In my view, this is a serious challenge for the future of modern marketing communication, and we should not for one moment believe that consumers these days are simply salivating at the thought that we are going to bombard them with more and more of our messages - and then feel safe in the knowledge that in the absence of these, consumers lives will take a turn for the worse! It's delusional!