Excerpt:
But, says Manners, “it makes no difference whether your medium is television, the internet, the outernet or somebody’s underwear. And it makes no difference whether your message is emotional, funny, or sexy...There is only one thing that is truly relevant to consumers, and that is (drumroll please) the product.”
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When marketing doesn’t matter
By Alan Mitchell
Published: September 10 2008 22:56 | Last updated: September 10 2008 22:56
Relevance
Making Stuff That Matters
Tim Manners
Portfolio Books
$24.95, £14.99
Advertisers have never encountered an open space that they didn’t consider a possible advertising medium. What they fail to understand is that ubiquity and relevance are not the same thing. When everything from egg shells to urinals are turned into advertising media, something has gone horribly wrong.”
In Relevance, marketing consultant Tim Manners rails against the many things he believes have gone “horribly wrong” with marketing. Somehow, somewhere, marketers have lost sight of what marketing is really about – which is “to help people solve problems and live happier lives”. Instead, they have created “an epidemic of irrelevance [that] has brought once-powerful brands to their knees”.
Many brand managers have made careers out of trying to make their brands “aspirational”, for example. But, the author thunders, marketers are confusing happiness with materialism. “The entire advertising industry is built on the premise that we can buy our way into being smarter, sexier, cooler or more popular. Deep down we all know this is one big lie.”
Manners reserves his greatest venom for advertising. “It does not help anyone solve any problems or live a happier life. It is simply an annoyance.” Yet, far from admitting this mistake, advertisers are making the same basic mistake again and again in new guises. Some think the answer to doubts about advertising effectiveness is to deliver their message across so many media that consumers cannot ignore them. Some say the secret is to involve consumers in creating their own commercials. Others say the future lies in all things digital. Yet others look to word-of-mouth recommendation, hoping to turn customers into unpaid brand “advocates”.
But, says Manners, “it makes no difference whether your medium is television, the internet, the outernet or somebody’s underwear. And it makes no difference whether your message is emotional, funny, or sexy...There is only one thing that is truly relevant to consumers, and that is (drumroll please) the product.”
So brands need to rediscover their relevance, which means they need better insight, innovation and investment along with excellent design, superior brand experiences and, of course, outstanding value “so they are worth every penny”.
Here, unfortunately, Relevance loses its way. Manners has trawled the press for examples of all things dire and inspirational in marketing and he has conducted dozens of interviews with marketers from companies such as Audi, Avis, Ebay, JetBlue Airways, McDonald’s and Visa. But what follows is a string of interesting but ultimately incoherent bite-sized assertions, snippets and vignettes with little hard evidence and few connecting threads.
The plus side, however, lies in the questions he raises about advertising accountability.
The unstated assumption of most advertising is that it is effective to the degree that it moulds consumer attitudes and behaviours into the shape desired by the marketer. To measure this “effectiveness”, marketers set the costs of the input (the advertising) against the benefits of the output (changed consumer behaviour).
But from the perspective of Manners most of these moulding attempts have nothing to do with solving customer problems. Some initiatives may have this effect, but many will not.
Manners finishes the book with the simple observation that interrupting people is not a good way of winning their attention, that annoying people is not a good way of earning their trust and that “pelting people with endlessly irrelevant messages” will not win their loyalty. “And if we can’t claim their loyalty, we don’t have a prayer of a positive return on investment.”
He concludes: “The ultimate accountability in marketing is not how efficiently or effectively advertising dollars are spent, it is how relevant the brand is to the consumer.”
If he’s right, every aspect of brand building, including advertising, should have to pass the same test of relevant consumer value as products do. Taken further, this could be the germ of a completely different marketing metrics agenda.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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