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Don't Be Cool For Cool's Sake |
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 Don't be cool for cool's sake
Jon Steel - ADMAP April 2010
In 1963, J. Walter Thompson advertising veteran James Webb Young wrote, in How to Become an Advertising Man, “The true Advertising Man … is he who has the knowledge, skills, experience and insights to advise advertisers how best to use advertising to accomplish their objectives.”
If we can interpret the word 'advertising' to include all the forms of marketing communication now available to us, this definition of a job well done remains pertinent almost fifty years on. Good agencies have always worked closely with clients to set the right objectives, and have then taken responsibility for defining and navigating the best route to achieving them.
I'd be surprised if that doesn't seem blindingly obvious to most of the readers of this magazine, whose interests and professional reputations revolve around the pursuit of effectiveness. Unfortunately, as I look around the industry, I fear that not enough work is created that way.
The first problem is that too often the objectives that are being pursued are the wrong ones. With the accountability mindset that inevitably accompanies any economic downturn, too many senior clients and agencies are more concerned with survival than achievement, and decisions tend to be made in the pursuit of efficiency rather than effectiveness. With the average longevity of a CMO now even shorter than that of a football manager, it's perhaps not surprising that many choices are made on the basis of their measurability, rather than their ability to move the business forward.
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Hot Harley - Cool Cash Sweepstakes |
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  Don't miss your chance to win a ton of Cool Cash or a Hot Harley-Davidson XL 1200 Sportster with the Hot Harley - Cool Cash Sweepstakes from Results Radio!
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Social Media Isn't Enough to Save a Weak Brand |
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By Al Ries
Published: November 09, 2009
If you were a first-time visitor from Mars and you happened to drop into a marketing meeting somewhere in the United States, you might assume that marketing people do nothing but talk about "TGIF."
That's Twitter, Google, the internet and Facebook.
There's no question these four revolutionary developments have forever changed the marketing function. Word-of-mouth has now become word of finger.
A key difference: Word-of-mouth leaves an invisible trail in the ether. Word-of-finger leaves an electronic trail on the internet.
In the past, nobody paid much attention to word of mouth, even though by some estimates it accounted for a majority of brand impressions. Today, however, the visibility of word of finger has mesmerized the marketing world.
But will the skillful use of TGIF make you a good marketing manager? I think not. TGIF is only half the story.
Linens 'N Things didn't go bankrupt because it didn't make effective use of Twitter. It went bankrupt because it was a knockoff of Bed Bath & Beyond without a unique identity.
DHL didn't pull out of the U.S. market because it didn't buy enough AdWords from Google. It pulled out of the U.S. market because it violated a basic law of marketing, the law of duality. DHL was the No. 3 brand in a category dominated by UPS and FedEx.
Kmart didn't go bankrupt because it couldn't figure out how to use the internet to promote the brand. It went bankrupt because it was squeezed between Walmart at the low end of the mass merchandiser category and Target at the high end.
Coca-Cola didn't fail to build a leading energy-drink brand in three tries (KMX, Full Throttle and Tab) because it forgot to use Facebook to ignite the brands. It failed to build a leading energy-drink brand because it waited too long after the launch of Red Bull.
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Roy Williams is the author of the 3 best selling "Wizard of Ads" marketing books and President of Roy Williams Marketing in Austin, Texas. Visit the Wizard of Ads website.
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