Marketing isn’t advertising, is it?
March 17, 2008
I was astonished to read that Deloitte’s marketing director Nigel Pyke believes that two million pounds spent on a national advertising campaign was money well spent:
‘External reaction has been positive; those that had seen the advertising were 22% more likely to consider using Deloitte services in the future than those who had not,’ he writes in this month’s Professional Marketing magazine.
Pyke also identifies another success that has resulted from the campaign, which saw the firm take over the entire advertising space around the IMAX cinema neat Waterloo station in London.
‘Internally, the campaign has created a great buzz amongst our people receiving positive feedback and a thirst for more, with 86% saying they would like to see Deloitte invest in further advertising,’ he says.
Duh? Well it’s not quite that simple. During the campaign, Deloitte went on an internal charm offensive designed to make staff aware of what was going on. It is therefore hardly surprising to see the results claimed. But…does this translate into increased client acquisition or additional work? Those questions remain unanswered. ‘More likely to consider’ doesn’t cut it for me. Which brings me neatly to the title of this post.
John Dodds recently wrote an interesting post on marketing where he says:
Marketing is not an expense, it’s an investment cost that is inherent in the creation of your product/service from development through promotion and distribution and on to the sales experience and post-sales service. That’s a subtle accounting distinction but a crucial one. The price you pay for not understanding marketing is much worse than mediocre products - it’s commercial extinction.
This is something with which many businesses struggle. They think that by pushing messages out to the world in the form of advertising copy, they will in some way magically attract business. It doesn’t happen. At least most of the time.
Hugh MacLeod has proven that by adopting smarter ways of engaging with people, you can do a lot more with limited budgets. In his Stormhoek campaign,
Hugh showed that tying a commodity product to an unorthodox method of communication could yield spectacular results. He showed that by getting a tailor to talk about the industry in an interesting and engaging fashion, sales could be improved to the point where Thomas Mahon’s order book is full well into the future.
The same principles Hugh expounds can be applied to the profession. They’re simple, direct and have genuine impact. It helps if you have a big foghorn like Hugh’s with which to amplify the message but then for most professionals, getting local attention is good enough. We have the tools, we only need the ingenuity and courage to go out there and say something both compelling and different.
Comments
10 Responses to “Marketing isn’t advertising, is it?”
Got something to say?
Who was it said that marketing is finding out what the customer wants (x) and then making sure you give it to them? I think it was John Jansch in his excellent book “Duct Tape Marketing”.
That definitely isn’t an alternative definition of advertising. Would it be too simplistic a view to say that advertising should come after marketing and should be making sure the customer knows you can give them (x)?
M
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In the traditional view of marketing, advertising plays a large part. The problem is that it has been proven to be a broken model if it is for lead generation purposes. It’s fine for brand building/maintenance which is why there are all those Daz and Guinness ads on TV - a medium which is increasingly under threat along with mainstream media.
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Dennis,
“We have the tools, we only need the ingenuity and courage to go out there and say something both compelling and different.”
That requires a lot of real thinking which is not easy to buy. I am not sure Stormhoek campaign said anything compelling, but it surely said it compellingly different.
I have read your earlier blog about sponsored feeds vs AdSense type of advertising, but since I am new to all this, I could not understand the model and how it works. Could you point the place I could learn this? Thank you in advance.
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@Gregory - if you follow the Stormhoek model then it achieves by being compellingly different so to the extent it isn’t overly compelling of itself didn’t matter.
As to the sponsored feeds thing - this is very much an experiment into discovering what works and what doesn’t. My belief is that content matters to the point of being a compelling differentiator. Everyone who has seen the concept is intrigued but in truth we don’t know if it will work or to what extent it will be successful. Others have faith and that’s what counts.
On AdSense - I’m agnostic leaning towards anti- because the advertiser isn’t necessarily rewarded on results but only on clicks. There is also the assumption that consumers are actively looking for something whereas I may only be information gathering. However, those who do use AdSense say it works for them more times than it doesn’t and therefore the pay per drink model is worthwhile following.
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Dennis, do you think TV advertising will become obsolete then?
M
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@M: Obsolete is perhaps too strong a term right now but you only have to look at the viewing figures to realise that people’s viewing patterns are changing. The younger generation in particular spends little time in front of the TV, preferring the ‘entertainment’ they can get on the Internet. No-one has figured a successful model for monetizing that content (yet) indicating that advertising in this medium would not be welcome. But again, we haven’t seen the sort of experimentation and failure necessary where innovation is concerned to ‘know’ what is likely to work.
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As if on cue, a blog post comes saying advertisers are clueless when it comes to the internet
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All the love that Hugh had for Stormhoek still did not prevent Orbital going down the tubes because of a greedy exec in Jason Korman. Pity that the balance is still tipped in favour of the blood sucking elite. Unfortunately Hugh is still hanging with Korman. Real tough.
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Classic old marketing - I almost expected to see reference to the 4 P’s…Good marketers now work out where their ROI is coming from and when - and typically have better intelligence to back this up. You’re right - more likely to consider is hardly a measure of success.
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Advertising is a part of marketing. Marketing has several faces from requirement analysis to sales.
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