Interrupting people and shouting at them is a very unnatural form of human communication. So why is this still the main operating principle of marketing?
Please read and comment on today’s newsletter, Advertising is the worst kind of marketing.
“So, what are your scarce maketing resources?” I have asked many people.
“Time, money and people,” are the most likely answers.
True.
But there is a fourth scarce resource: Customer attention.
You need to view customer attention as a finite resource. It is a rationed good, and you must use it frugally and wisely.
In the old days of brute force branding, it made sense to focus on exposing your customer to your marketing messages as many times as possible. After all, the working paradigms were “cut through the clutter” and “capture eyeballs.”
Now, things are different. If you waste your scarce ration of customer attention on merely invading your customer’s field of vision or sound, you will quickly wear out your welcome, and the customer will elect to ignore you. (“Capturing eyeballs” is so old-school) On the other hand, if you focus not on just invading your customer’s senses as often as possible but on fewer, richer interactions, your customer will appreciate you, notice you and, more likely, be moved by your message.
Your customer’s attention is as valuable to him as your time, money and people are to you. Use this fourth scarce resource wisely.
This week’s Time Magazine reviews Geoffrey Miller’s book Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior. The book makes the case that much of our behavior can be traced to self-advertisement in the pursuit of mates. One quoted section in the review caught my attention. The reviewer titled this paragraph, “On the futility of consumer capitalism:
“We take wondrously adaptive capacities for human self-display — language, intelligence, kindness, creativity, and beauty — and then forget how to use them in making friends, attracting mates and gaining prestige. Instead, we rely on goods and services acquired through education, work and consumption to advertise our personal traits to others. These costly signals are mostly redundant or misleading, so others usually ignore them. They prefer to judge us through natural face-to-face interaction. We think our gilding dazzles them, though we ignore their own gilding when choosing our friends and mates.”
Although Miller is writing about general human behavior, many companies make the same mistakes with marketing. They “forget” how to use basic human skills for attracting customers, relying instead on manufactured, unnatural, flashy means of communication, such as advertising, which are ignored most of the time. Customers, instead, prefer to judge companies through natural face-to-face interactions. Parallel to what Miller says, advertisers think their gilding dazzles customers, though the advertising professionals that produce this gilded communication make their own personal purchase decisions in the same way non-marketing professionals do: not by evaluating advertising, but by evaluating the constellation of more relevant interactions that happen through the normal course of doing business with a company.
Human communication is not about what you present, it is about how you are understood. Why is so much money and effort spent communicating companies’ messages in ways that are so inconsistent with the way we live our non-marketing lives?
1. You did it last year.
2. Your competitors are doing it.
3. You think “getting the word out” is the answer to all of your problems.
For years, marketers have used customer segmentation as a tool to make their jobs easier. By “lumping” large groups of customers together, based on what those customers have in common, marketers can send mass messages to those groups of customers, and make use of broad media outlets.
The problem: This is convenient for marketers, but it doesn’t do much for customers. While marketers are focusing on what makes one customer like many other customers, each customer is focused on what makes her different from everyone else.
This out-moded view of customer segmentation was valuable in an advertising-based world, because advertisers could look for media habits that customers in these segments shared. Problem #2: We don’t live in an advertising-based marketplace anymore, and media habits are not a very good proxy for purchase intent.
If you want to connect with your customers, and create strong, sustainable relationships with them, it’s time to turn the traditional model of customer segmentation on its head. It’s time to focus on what makes customers unique, not what makes them interchangeable.
Is this easy? No. Is it necessary? Yes. Why? Because this is the way your customers see themselves.
You may have noticed that I get pretty opinionated (and occassionally a bit strident) when talking about stupid advertising decisions. Here’s my conversation with Charles Payne on Fox Business just before the recent Super Bowl self-aggrandizing, vanity-filled, crappy-investment advertising orgy:
At least Charles let me answer his questions. Here’s the video from my conversation with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business before last year’s Super Bowl: (The difference: Fox was selling Super Bowl ads last year, NBC was selling them this year.)
Here a related blog post: The Advertising Algorithm is an Anachronism
I just don’t buy it, now more than ever.
The equation:
(super-duper creative ads + big audience) = buzz = changed customer behavior = great advertising ROI
… is virtually always false.
This week’s Super Bowl proved it even more. A few hundred million dollars were spent on media, plus another, let’s say, $100 million on ad production, and most of it was lost in a cacophony of guacamole, Pinot Grigio, competitive noise and a great, buzz-worthy football game. Yes, conversations about your business can spur sales, but those conversations can rarely be manufactured and drilled into consumers’ minds with the self-indulgent “creative-based” pseudo-science that the advertising world tries to foist on corporate America.
If I hear one more person defend Super Bowl advertising because “it’s the only time you can reach such a big audience at one time,” I’m going to vomit. The only time reaching a large audience all at one time matters is when you want to generate timely, collective behavior, like voting in an election. But, last time I looked, we all go to the grocery store one at a time, so why is there any advantage to reaching all of us at once? In fact, it’s a huge disadvantage to reach a large audience at one time, because the number of people who don’t want to buy your product increases at an increasing rate as audience size increases, and the audience begins to resemble the entire population.
“Oh, but what if you’re Coke or Budweiser? It works for them, doesn’t it?” It might, but if it does, it’s not because the ads themselves worked, but because the ads are just one small part of the brand harmony these products create. Coke and Budweiser can afford to spend this kind of money to complement the rest of their customers’ experience with the brand.
“Hey, but Monster.com hit a home run in 1999, and came out of nowhere with only one Super Bowl ad, so why can’t we do that?” Yes, crazy, speculative, risky investments like Super Bowl ads once in a while work, and you might also win if you put all of your money on Red 14 at the roulette table. But, it’s much more likely that you will lose your money. Exceptions don’t prove the rule. They only prove that exceptions are possible once in a while.
“But the ads are so entertaining, that people pay attention to them.” I’ve got a great idea. Let’s have a new category in the Academy Awards for Super Bowl advertising. DDB Chicago and Weiden & Kennedy can accept their awards there for amazing creative, and we won’t confuse ourselves trying to prove that the advertising experts have any special insights into what makes consumers buy and what drives business results.
Now I’m going to really surprise you: In one sense, the Super Bowl isn’t a bad idea because it is so expensive, but because it is so cheap. Huh? Here’s the story: $3 million spread across 100 million people is 3 cents per audience member. If you only spend 3 cents on a customer encounter, how can you expect it to be meaningful? All you are doing is bouncing light off of 200 million retinas, and the effect can only be superficial. The Super Bowl is the epitome of “a mile wide and an inch deep.”
We are living in a never-before-seen economic meltdown, where customers are scared and strapped for cash. If you want to earn the love, loyalty and business of today’s customers, you can’t do it just by interrupting their days, millions of people at a time, with :30 second or :60 second ads. You need to focus on connecting with fewer people, but in a much more meaningful way.
Differentiating yourself with advertising is usually futile and, at its best, very short-lived. Differentiating yourself with relationships is lasting.
The new equation:
(Brand Harmony across many interactions) x % of those interactions that are relationship-building encounters = clear, compelling customer beliefs = profitable customer action = profitable business.
Ah, the week each year where I get to be extra-contrarian and make fun of people who waste shareholders’ money on vanity publicity. It’s time for the Super Bowl!
Tomorrow morning, January 30th, I will be interviewed on Fox Business News (click here to find the station in your area) between 7:45 and 8:00 AM eastern time. I’ll be interviewed by Charles Payne.
Then, on Sunday during the game, author Sally Hogshead and I will engage in a fun, real-time, online debate on tompeters.com. We’ll be tweeting back and forth on Twitter, with the tweets being continually updated to a post on tompeters.com where people can comment. Join us! (Sally will interviewed from the game site Sunday morning on The Today Show)
So, what kinds of questions do you think people are asking this year about Super Bowl advertising? Is it a better idea or worse idea in this economy? Who is it right for and who should stay away?
And, here’s my Super Bowl Rant on tompeters.com from last year. I still hold to my convictions, only more so.
CNN’s Lou Dobbs conducted a poll tonight on this question:
Do you think it’s irresponsible for companies bailed out by taxpayers to spend millions of dollars naming sports stadiums?
As of late this evening, 93% of people voted “yes.” I’ll discount that a bit, assuming that the kind of people who are attracted to Dobbs’s least-common-denominator pandering populism would be more likely to vote against anything that big, bad businesses do.
So I don’t really care about the answers; they don’t surprise me. It’s the question itself that interests me. It assumes these sponsorships are a waste of money. And, as described on the show by guest host Kelly Pilgrim, it assumes that the only reason for putting your name on a sports stadium is to stroke the corporate ego.
Generally, I’m not a fan of these kinds of sponsorships. (Although it’s worked out well for the Wrigleys and the Busch family.) But, to me, the real question is: Do companies who receive bailout money have a responsibility to be extra-smart with how they invest that money in attracting and keeping customers? Or … Do all companies have a responsibility to their shareholders and employees, in this economic climate, to be extra-smart about how they invest that money in attracting and keeping customers?
My cousin, economist Peter Yastrow, asked a rhetorical question yesterday: Do you cut your capital expenditures or advertising in this situation? My answer was that if you phrase it that way, cut the advertising. But if you ask, Do you cut back on investments in capital improvements or investments in building customer relationships, it’s a completely different question.
One of the most important investments companies can make in this economic crises is in strengthening their customer relationships. The more discerning assessment of this question asks not if you should spend money on marketing, but if you need to be smarter about it. If that’s the question, I’ll vote with the 93%.
This video is a great satire on the world of brute force branding. It’s from Geert Desager of bringtheloveback.com.
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In addition to writing, I spend most of my work time helping companies unleash their potential by creating better connections with their customers. This happens through my speaking events and through Yastrow & Company consulting engagements, where my team and I help companies figure out who they intend to be in the future, and then engage the entire company in creating that future through strong "We" customer relationships.
Before starting Yastrow & Company in the mid-90s I was vice-president of resort marketing for Hyatt Hotels. My experiences in the hotel business showed me clearly that most marketing doesn’t happen in the marketing department. Customers are paying attention to all interactions with a company, not just the promises made in traditional "marketing communications."
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