I hate shopping for electronics or appliances, and not only because I don’t really care much about those things. What I hate more is that the fresh-faced employees at those big box retailers always try to sell me the $19.95 extended warranty to cover the $125 microwave. It makes me question if the $125 I’m spending is for something everyone except me knows isn’t going to work as well as I’d hoped.
It’s not a new concept, or one limited to things we buy that break. Back in 1861, department store magnate John Wanamaker lamented, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
As much as we intend to invest wisely, our measurement on return is iffy at best. Click throughs and clip reports and column inches can’t calculate the elusive, intangible magic of marketing done well. In our fervor to ferret out what isn’t working, we’ve lost faith in what always has. Honesty. Relevance. A gorgeous picture and a great headline. Asking you to spend money – more money – making sure your money is well spent? Save it for the extended warranty.
Posts
There is a subtle difference between the extended warranty and a marketing campaign. Like you, I shy away from spending the extra bucks to cover the new appliance, but I also know whether my new television is working or not - I can see it with my own two eyes. But the ad campaign - what impact has that had on my sales? Are revenues up because the integrated campaign is working? Should I blame below quota performance on my agency? Here’s a suggestion - spend a small percentage of your marketing budget to measure what is and is not working, and fine tune the mix. In addition, have the courage to create and implement marketing campaigns that leave no doubt when it comes to ROI. A breakthrough campaign that creates the right kind of buzz will make its presence known on the top line.
So THAT’S who made the wise (and still true) observation about advertising spending. I have the privilege of teaching Principles of Advertising at Butler University, and I always use that quote (alas, unattributed) to help the next generation of advertising professionals understand what we in the ad biz know from experience: much of what we do still can’t be reliably measured on an accounting ledger. The very best companies still run mediocre ads and rake in millions each year. Meanwhile, the best and/or most advertising in the world has yet to transform a mediocre brand into one that engenders “loyalty beyond all reason.” Which is soup? Which is art? Only the customer gets to decide. And advertisers still have to pay for the opportunity to be part of that decision-making process.
JeffyCool - I can see your point of view, but I have little experience in my 22+ years of having results measurement in any way improve subsequent outcome. What we measure are the events of the past, which can give us some sense of the future - but only a sense.
Bill Bernbach says it more eloquently than I:
“However much we would like advertising to be a science - because life would be simpler that way - the fact is that it is not. It is a subtle, ever-changing art, defying formularization, flowering on freshness and withering on imitation; where what was effective one day, for that very reason, will not be effective the next, because it has lost the maximum impact of originality.”
Suppose you are my client. How would you respond if I offered to design a cool home or office for you for $125 bucks then, for an additional $19.95 up front, redo it later if it didn’t work out? Interesting marketing strategy. I would need to bump up my prices of course; however, you get the drift. I’ve always felt the best marketing strategy (relationship strategy) is to “do unto others as they would like you to do unto them.” A friend once told me, “Either always do it right the first time, or advertise.” Apparently, the big box retailers need to advertise.
I believe much of the elusiveness of measuring advertising results lies in improper goal setting. How many times has a client come to you with ambiguous goals like, “I want to build awareness,” or “We need to expand our customer base”? These goals don’t lend themselves to measurement. If I own a tree service and a customer tells me “I want some trees gone,” how am I supposed to know how many trees they want removed and which ones? I’d need to know specifics so I could do my job to the best of my abilities and make my customer happy. It’s no different in advertising. Clients need to have specific goals in mind and if they don’t we, as their communications partner, need to help them define their goals in the onset if we ever hope to measure success with any sort of accuracy.
Thanks for the thoughts. It’s inspiring me to [attempt] to sharpen my own perspective. At the risk of crying sour grapes, I think my issue has been using MARKETING outcomes to measure the performance of marketing communications. Way back in the day, I remember learning the Four Ps of marketing: product, price, place (distribution) and promotion. The work of marketing communications addresses only one of those, promotion, yet we continue to measure success as if we were affecting all four. If an ad campaign or public relations program inspires intent to purchase, but upon inspection, the product is inferior, unavailable or inappropriately priced, we would call the communications effort a failure. By the same token, if the campaign makes the product a household name, yet nobody buys it, we’d fail as well. I believe the success of a good campaign is the Gestalt of the tangible and intangible results. Anyone have ideas of how we can measure that??