Babies and Bathwater
A colleague and I had a debate last week with some business people about brand and retail marketing.
We believe there is a simple truth and captivating narrative about their brand which needs to be promoted more. They believe they have the balance about right with their advertising, promoting the brand and directly driving sales.
Econometrics and ROI were mentioned and we got measurably tired.
Ever since Dave Trott was a boy, and Lord Leverhulme made his famous quote, battles have raged about advertising’s effect, how it drives sales and what is wastage.
I am a student of Jeremy Bullmore and his story (which I can’t find online) about why Coke consistently see’s off cheaper, taste-test winning sugar-water makes me believe the brain has space for brand imagery to ferment.
Jonathan Durden also tells me most media targeting is only like shooting for the plughole when there are lots of reasons to stir-up the rest of the water in the sink.
Back to our brand chat, they had recently run a big Outdoor campaign, I hadn’t noticed.
I hope we’re not seeing creative and media brains pandering to the fame of bigger, fatter, digitally shaped Outdoor ad campaigns, at the expense of other more traditional Outdoor formats. Often a budget is allocated to the Outdoor channel by the media-nerd’s channel planning sausage machine. If someone wants to pay £50K a fortnight for a share of time on a single LED screen, however busy the road is, this likely works against the many thousands of posters (6 sheet) and billboards (48 sheet) needed to deliver one of Outdoor’s simple, brutal strengths, ubiquitous coverage. Almost everyone sees broadcast Outdoor campaigns, like product placement in your life. If the mix of word, image and colour is eye-catchingly simple, the brand will be stored in the brain, waiting to be triggered into action.
I also understand posters, particularly nationwide packs of 6 sheets, are better value now than they’ve been in a decade.
Outdoor struggles to shine in most econometric models, mainly because the time at which it’s noticed is hard to measure and people often don’t remember, or are unaware, they’ve even seen it.
I hope the ad industry’s love of all things new at the expense of the old isn’t leaving some brands’ health at the mercy of the ROI mob, and to the detriment of staying dry at the bus stop when it’s raining.
You can read my other blogs and about what I do here: www.balloo.co.uk
