Part 1: Common Sense

@rossfarquhar

It’s just common sense, though, innit?

It’s understandable that those in other functions often wonder whether all we do is earn money for exercising common sense.

After all, it seems like the industry is governed by a number of simple and intuitive ‘rules’ that anyone could come up with…

Advertising exists to increase sales.

Advertising works by communicating messages.

To be effective, people have to notice it.

Differentiation at a product level is crucial.

Well, there are some who’d disagree…

Les Binet’s IPA databank analysis suggests

advertising is most effective at justifying a

price premium, not growing volume.

Byron Sharp has shown that while

distinctiveness of brand assets is crucial,

physical differentiation is not

Paul Feldwick has demonstrated that TV

advertising is often effective without

consciously recognising it.

Stephen King, I suspect, would just despair of

all of these common sense notions…

The Problem with Common Sense

A Rule-Based Comfort Blanket

Rather than learning from the past

and consequently improving our

practice, we rely on a set of

intuitive rules as a crutch to drive

our decision-making.

Self-reinforcing

These common sense rules

drive objective setting, which

then drive measurement, which

then drive the thing that gets

produced.

Then when it doesn’t work, the

cycle repeats itself.

Dogma

These rules become entirely ingrained,

despite having no figurehead or

institution, such that they’re almost

impossible to dislodge.

Doing so is like punching in the dark.

Maybe now is the time for change…

…because we’re ineffective.

“Half my advertising works, I just don’t know

which half. Actually, it’s closer to 1% of your

advertising that works, at the most. Your

billboard reaches 100,000 people and if

you’re lucky, it gets you a hundred

customers...” Seth Godin

56% of CMOs feel unprepared for a

drive towards ROI accountability.

The leaders of our industry are worried that

if asked to justify all the money they spend,

they couldn’t.

(Reassuring)

So they spend more money on research to

mitigate the risk…

Pre-testing is “not an objective, predictive

measure of the effectiveness of the

advertising.” Wendy Gordon

Acacia Avenue

Oh.

So all that money spent on testing

stuff actually makes it worse?

Ref: IPA Effectiveness Awards at 30 –

Post-tested ads maximise profitability compared to pre-tested ones.

In order to articulate what we do to those holding the purse strings,

we reduce the discipline down to common sense rules,

and then pre-test, execute and measure against them.

Then it doesn’t work.

And it becomes even harder to secure funding.

And so it continues.

…because there’s a destabilising public contract

“Advertising, [this report] suggests, harms society and the planet by increasing consumerism, manipulating cultural values and intruding into all aspects of our lives.”

Caroline Lucas

Green Party Leader (England & Wales)

In ‘Think of Me As Evil’

Nothing new…

…and some familiar themes…

PERVASIVENESS (marketing harms liberty)

MATERIALISM (marketing makes us consume more, work harder, save less, borrow more)

IMPACTS CULTURE (marketing normalises undesirable behaviour)

“Today’s best and brightest graduates in psychology and cognitive science are snapped up by the advertising industry because they want to know how best to manipulate us… This report should serve as a kind of prophylactic to help stop the advertisers planting desires in our heads.”

Clive Hamilton

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Canberra

But I’m not sure who’s actually running the show…

http://youtu.be/YQXe1CokWqQ

Common sense dominates like dogma, without

figurehead or institution.

But now might be the time for change…

…to improve the effectiveness of what we do.

…to be the foundation of a new, transparent

contract with the public.

What’s stopped us fixing it?

Atheism: A Negative Approach

We’ve behaved like proper

scientists, employing deductive

reasoning to disprove the rules

that common sense marketing

sees us all live by.

The tricky thing is, nowhere is

atheism in the majority.

Belief isn’t fuelled by reason.

Crises without Paradigm Shift:

A Piecemeal Approach

We’ve divided the common sense doctrine into individual strands and attempted to challenge them one by one (e.g. high vs. low involvement processing).

Paradigms can survive minor crises, they’re only ever dislodged by a better alternative.

We haven’t painted the picture of a better, total alternative.

Rebellion without Revolution:

A Fragmented Approach

The enlightened aren’t without

powerful voices.

Individuals and bodies like the

IPA, ISBA, the AA etc have all

been calling for change for

some time.

But they’ve lacked one clear

voice. Instead, appearing as

disparate troublemakers.

The Time for Heresy

“Beliefs are most clearly and systematically

articulated when they are formed via negative.” Lester Kurz

The difference between an infidel and a

heretic is that the latter has the best interests

of the institution at heart.

It’s time for heretics to rise up for the good of

the discipline.

It’s time for a new system of leading beliefs.

Next:

Part 2: The Ten Touchstones of a New Belief System

Part 3: An Idea for an Industry

@rossfarquhar

References and Further Reading

Binet, L. (2009, Quarter 3). The Dangers of Common Sense. Market Leader , pp. 55-57.

Sharp, B. (2010). How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Godin, S. (2006, 10 24). Five common cliches (done wrong). Retrieved May 30, 2012 from Seth Godin's Blog:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/10/five_common_cli.html

IBM. (2011). From Stretched to Strengthened: Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study. Portsmouth: IBM Institute for Business

Value.

Parsons, R. (2010, December 17). UK ad spend up 6.6% in 2010. Marketing Week.

The Market Research Society. (2011). 2010 Industry League Tables. Retrieved May 30, 2012 from The Market Research Society:

http://www.mrs.org.uk/intelligence/industry_statistics

Gordon, W. (1995, March). Advertising pre-testing works - or does it? Admap .

Field, P. (2010). The IPA Effectiveness Awards at 30. Measuring Advertising Performance 2010. London: World Advertising Research Centre.

Alexander, J., Crompton, T., & Shrubsole, G. (2011). Think of me as evil? Opening the Ethical Debates in Advertising. October: Public Interest

Research Centre (PIRC) & WWF-UK.

Packard, V. (1957). The Hidden Persuaders. London: Longmans, Green.

Klein, N. (1999). No Logo. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Knopf Canada & Picador.

King, S. (1975). Practical Progress from a Theory of Advertisements. In S. King, A Master Class in Brand Planning: The Timeless Works of

Stephen King. Admap.

European Commission. (2005). Special Eurobarometer: Social values, Science and Technology. Brussels: Directorate General Press and

Communication.

Heath, R., & Feldwick, P. (2007). 50 Years of the Wrong Model of TV Advertising. Working Paper Series. 3. Bath: University of Bath School of

Management.

Field, P., & Binet, L. (2007). Marketing in the Era of Accountability. Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. London: World Advertising Research

Centre.

Bartley, G. (2006, July/August). The Truth about Heresy? Philosophy Now (56).

Kurtz, L. R. (1983). The Politics of Heresy. American Journal of Sociology , 88 (6), 1085-1115.

Feldwick, P. (2002). What is brand equity anyway? London: World Advertising Research Centre.

Franzen, G., & Bouwman, M. (2001). The Mental World of Brands. Amsterdam, Netherlands: NTC Publications.

Download the full source essay, along with some

much better ones, as part of the IPA Excellence

Diploma’s 2012 ‘Campaign’ supplement.

http://www.ipa.co.uk/document/excellence-

diploma-campaign-supplement-2012

@rossfarquhar