Marketing in Troubled Times

If you think the economic chaos currently at play on the world financial markets has run its course, may I suggest a rapid trip to the nearest Starbucks for a cappuccino IV.

Because one has to wonder why it is that agencies and advertisers alike continue their marketing march to Hell.

It was Rance Crain, Advertising Age’s editor-in-chief, who remarked in a past issue, “But what’s really broken in today’s system is the amount of very bad advertising that gets approved by top management. Are CEOs so absorbed by trying to make their next deal that they tolerate the inept and stupid ads guaranteed to alienate their best customers?”

These sentiments were echoed in the same issue by none other than the Godfather of Positioning, Al Ries, whose article on branding is brilliant in its simplicity.

“Most advertising is mush, especially TV advertising. Thirty expensive seconds wasted trying to proposition the viewer without providing enough of the brand’s credentials for the consumer to take the offer seriously.”

I ponder this nightly while perusing the ads in the Wall Street Journal over dinner like a parent searching in vain for a lost child.

How can advertisers spend a quarter of a trillion dollars a year (that’s trillion with a “T”) with the ostensible purpose of selling their products and services using ads that do anything but?

Yes, the agencies create the ads, but presumably the CEO or someone in the client’s senior management signed-off on them. I realize I speak heresy of the most inexcusable kind but here’s a news flash – ads are suppose to sell something.

Branding, the mantra of the last decade or so is fine, so long as it is not done to the exclusion of getting your message across and motivating the prospect to go to your store, pick up a phone, or click a mouse.

A review of ads running in national magazines and print media these days calls to mind the powerful scene portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the great Stanley Kramer film, Judgment at Nuremberg.

Lancaster, playing one of several judges who sat on the bench during the Third Reich, on trial for crimes against humanity, sits in stoic silence throughout the trail as Maxamillian Schell, whose academy award winning performance as the group’s defense counsel, tries to convince the Tribunal (chaired by Spenser Tracy) that the judges were not aware of what the Nazi’s were really doing.

During a highly inflammatory cross-examination of Judy Garland’s character (who had fraternized with an old Jewish man) by Schell, Lancaster has finally had enough and stands, his face a visage of fury.

In what may be his most prized performance outside of Elmer Gantry, Lancaster, his voice rising with intensity and volume with each word, tells Schell and the rest of the court that he and the others were aware, and asks in rhetorical outrage:

“Were we DEAF, DUMB, BLIND?”

It is a moving performance.

Lancaster I am not, but the question applies, are they DEAF, DUMB, BLIND?

I am thumbing through Forbes scanning the ads in search of one that attracts interest instantly. There is a picture of a red brick wall that takes up most of the full page, four color ad. It’s a home builder or construction company, I think. But this is a wild guess.

I look more closely because I am writing this article. At the top of the wall is the word Elevate. Perhaps it’s some kind of self improvement program.

I look at the copy that would best be read with the Hubble telescope. But I read it (which I would never have done under ordinary circumstances). It’s an ad for Conoco Philips, the oil giant, explaining “where others see an obstacle, we see a chance to elevate.”

Huh?

Did they have some recent failures, I wonder, and now feel compelled to tell people that they can overcome them?

In short, what in the name of John David Rockefeller has this got to do with selling oil and gas?

I have subsequently seen this ad in other business publications. It is someone’s bright idea for an advertising campaign.

Unbelievable.

Who signed off on this…this…metaphorical brick wall, this Tony Robbinsesque PR ad?

I’m sorry, but what a waste.

I don’t care how sexy the girl, how elegant the design, how sophisticated the message, if it doesn’t generate a desire for the product that leads to increased sales and income; it hasn’t done its job.

I close with what is a self-serving note that nevertheless happens to be true. Your ads should forward a message and a position that have come from the mind of your public – not the boardroom.

That way they resonate and generate sales and income.

This is the kid of research we have been conducting for nearly a quarter of a century. If you want your ads to communicate and generate response, call us.