The shiny new things blind us to the basics

Dit stuk verscheen voor het eerst in Agency Life magazine editie 1, gepubliceerd in juni. Editie 2 is intussen klaar en kan je hier gratis bestellen.

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Wie? Ryan Wallman & Giles Edwards
Wat? Creative Director & Head of Copy bij Wellmark, Auteur van How Brands Blow
Waar? Verenigd Koninkrijk

A few years ago in Cannes, a highly experienced marketer – who we won’t name in the interest of protecting the, er, guilty – said this during an interview:

“I’ve seen more change in the last 5 years than in the 25 years beforehand.”

We’ve never met this person, and for all we know he is a wise marketer who usually speaks sense. If so, maybe the French rosé had gotten to him when this was recorded.

But when you hear this kind of thing from a marketer (and it’s not uncommon), you should be very wary indeed. It suggests a preoccupation with technology and a tendency to put tactics before strategy.

One person who would never make such a claim – or at least not in a positive way – is the astute, occasionally irascible adman-turned-commentator Bob Hoffman. He’s been around for quite some time (no offence, Bob) and has witnessed all the vicissitudes and vacillations of the marketing industry.

This is what Bob recently had to say about the last 10 years

“We have gone through what was expected to be one of the most fruitful and productive periods in the history of marketing and advertising. We have amazing new tools, amazing new technology, and amazing new media that we never had before.

The whole thing was intoxicating and certain to lead to all kinds of new opportunities.

Our ability to personalise advertising and reach consumers one-to-one would make advertising more relevant, more timely and more likeable. Our ability to listen to consumer conversations through social media and react quickly couldn't help but connect brands more closely with their customers. The opportunity for people to interact with media was certain to make advertising more engaging.

And yet, by the almost unanimous opinion of people inside and outside the business, the standard has gotten worse.

Rather than creating advertising that is more relevant, more timely and more likeable, we're creating advertising that's more annoying, more disliked and more avoided. Ipsos data reveals that regard for our industry has been hovering at new lows; the recent studies showed that compared to 20 years ago, twice as many people said they found advertising annoying. As a result, some type of ad blocking app is reportedly present on somewhere between one and two billion devices worldwide.”

As always, Bob’s point is clear. While there may have been a lot of superficial change in the way we do things, the fundamentals remain the same – and we ignore them at our peril.

Een voorproefje uit ‘How Brands Blow’, de opvolger van het succesvolle ‘Delusions of Brandeur’

Bijeengepend door Giles Edwards en Ryan Wallman

Het duo uit zich kritisch tegenover goeroe’s in de industrie en de nonsens die marketeers uitkramen. Ze steken op satirische wijze de draak met hoe branding en reclame vandaag aangepakt worden.

There is endless industry talk about automation, platforms, CRM, AI, AR, VR, ad tech, martech, machine learning, blockchain – the list goes on.

But in my opinion, all this stuff is at best peripheral and at worst irrelevant to the core function of marketing. In many cases, these tactics and tech-tics serve to make marketing far more complicated than it need be.

Much as it might threaten our collective ego to admit it, the truth is that marketing isn't rocket science (and indeed some people argue that it isn't a science at all). This is not to suggest that it's easy – or that there's no merit in newer technologies – but the fundamental principles of marketing are relatively simple.

Mark Ritson captured this point beautifully in his series of Effies campaign case studies.

According to Mark, the 'perfectly effective' marketing campaign is characterised by nine elements:

Diagnosis (qualitative and quantitative)
Clear strategic objectives
Long, mass-marketing branding
Shorter, targeted performance
Tight, differentiated positioning
Heavy, consistent codification (i.e. use of distinctive brand assets)
Greater investment than competitors
Astonishing creativity
Multiple integrated channels.

It's as simple (albeit difficult to execute) as that. If you care about effectiveness, which admittedly doesn't seem to be a given for some marketers, this list should be the reference point for all your marketing campaigns.

The problem, of course, is that it's not sexy (no offence, Mark). It doesn't involve any tech wizardry and it won't be talked about at all the cool conferences. It doesn't even include an acronym, FFS.

And that's why it won't appeal to everyone. As Dave Trott once said: 'complicated seems clever to stupid people'. But smart marketers will embrace the simplicity of Mark's approach, if they haven't already.

And that spells good news for those of us on the agency side, because 'astonishing creativity' is a crucial ingredient in the mix. Despite what some thought leaders and their thought disciples would have you believe, creativity can make a huge difference to the success of a campaign. It shouldn't be some afterthought, slapped on to the tactics like cheap cologne.

Rory Sutherland was recently asked what he considered to be the biggest challenge facing Ogilvy in the next 10 years. His typically frank response was:

'I think that the whole advertising industry has totally lost the plot. It has become obsessed with that part of advertising which is a media targeting and optimisation process.'

The obvious solution is for agencies to focus on making great creative work. Simple, really.

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