Do some miss the days of “expensive advertising”?
Sue Unerman
Global CSO Brainlabs, co-author A Year of Creativity; Belonging, DEI;The Glass Wall, success for women; Tell the Truth. Winner Cannes Lions Creativity for Good, Glass Lion judge
A New York agency man writes here that “the very act of investing in TV, buying a premium billboard, taking an ad in Vogue, became brand building … because of the cost, not despite” and he regrets the “spiral of decline” that online investment represents.
Expensive advertising versus cheap advertising? This is not of course a measure of effectiveness, quality or return on investment. And, as the saying goes, you need horses for courses.
I believe that there are only 2 kinds of “good” advertising: advertising that creates desire and advertising that harvests the demand created by desire.
The IPA have unpicked this to an extent in the latest epic from Binet and Field; “The long and the short of it”, but Brand Responsive communication strategies have been a practice at MediaCom since before the internet (yes, I too can of course remember that far back!) Brand advertising and response advertising must work together in balance. Empirical neutral media planning must balance the two with some overlap between them (think Venn diagram: some desire building ads also drive immediate short term sales and some harvesting demand ads create long term desire and build the brand).
The two different kinds of advertising require different creative approaches, different media approaches, have different measurement challenges and drive different expectations in the audience. We all know this, it is common sense. If you see a long film for a prestige car in a cinema you have different expectations of it from the banner ad for the same brand driving you to a site where you can book a test drive, request a brochure or configure model specifications. The two should also be measured and judged differently. To confuse them is unhelpful. As Binet and Field state one set of success metrics does not necessarily define or predict the other: “Brands should pursue a balance score card of metrics, capable of monitoring both long term and short term effects, and be aware that it is not always immediately clear whether a leading indicator is a more reliable predictor of success.”
In terms of targeting too, it is a mistake to apply the discipline of advertising that harvests demand to the discipline of creating desire and vice versa. A few years ago I chaired a panel at one of our conferences where Mark Howe of Google, Jeremy Bullmore of WPP (and Campaign) and Paddy Barwise, LBS, debated which of the new developments in media should supplant heritage practices. Howe focussed on the Zero Moment of Truth and elimination of wastage that Google could offer. Bullmore gave his opinion that if the marketing team at a luxury car successfully eliminated all wastage and only targeted people who were about to buy a BMW in the next 3 months, then eventually nobody would want to buy a BMW in the next 3 months as part of the motivation for owning a new luxury marque is the prestige it carries in the minds of those who cannot afford to buy one. Eliminate wastage at your peril. “Wastage” needs redefining. Short term or long term? Actual prospective purchasers or those in their peer group who will endorse their purchase?
The balance will change by sector, by audience and by brand strategy. But the balance between building desire and harvesting demand is a necessary consideration for every brand.
Global CSO Brainlabs, co-author A Year of Creativity; Belonging, DEI;The Glass Wall, success for women; Tell the Truth. Winner Cannes Lions Creativity for Good, Glass Lion judge
9 年Your blog Tom put in words what lots of people are thinking.... I believe that the change Katia is that we need to be specific about what we're doing and how we measure it, not that brand building is any less relevant than it used to be.
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9 年tom, do you think that we need as much brand building now as we did before? it seems to me that the nature of both modern businesses and modern consumers now allows for less investment and emphasis on brand building. of course this doesnt mean reducing this to zero, but when compared to previous decades, it seems like there is less need for it now. or is it just that the nature of brand building also changed and what we previously considered as brand building advertising is now less relevant but there are other ways to do it, perhaps more subtly (or just plain differently)? what do you think?
I like the build to my piece and while I think you unfairly mischaracterized my piece, I think you raise some excellent points. For me a few interesting things are happening. 1) Digital media became so obsessed with measuring immediate metrics that they've increasingly optimized online on to chase only "performance" metrics, now any form of brand building ads are considered ineffective online. 2) Given that now all media tends towards being digital, and the media we spend more time with is increasingly digital, ever more forms of advertising chase immediate gratification of real time metrics and optimize against this. 3) A plethora of companies now exist with VC and Seed funding and need to show rapid user growth, CEO's for big brands chase sales now, not brand building for tomorrow. Our focal point becomes closer. So given this we;re spending more time draining the funnel and less time building it, it's this that hurts the eyes and harms the attention span. At the same time we're also seeing many companies chase both branding and performance at the same time because the barriers to entry are now lower, if an app is free then a Click to Download ad can be both the top and bottom of the funnel at the same time.