A Case for Creative Versus Average Marketing
[This post is in response to a conversation I had on the Enterprising Minds podcast. Check it out here or wherever you consume your podcasts.]
Why would so many companies be ok with launching, and standing for such bland marketing?
It has always seemed strange to me that there are so many companies that are willing to put out half-assed, lackluster creative for their marketing initiatives. Whether it's in their strategic plans, 1,000 ai-created social posts, or the emails they send out that only speak to their products. These marketing attempts fail to actually connect with their audiences & potential customers because their focus is more on not rocking the boat & doing whatever is necessary to produce the single-digit R.O.I. that won't get the teams that created the campaigns fired.
Aside from the obvious answers of being fearful of an economic downturn, or too many layers within an organization, what could be some of the reasons so many fall into this trap?
Attribution Has Focused Us On the Wrong Things
One of the greatest things from the creation of Web 2.0 was the ability to attribute our online marketing spend to specific tactics and outcomes. However, it’s this ability to attribute performance that has played into our obsession with safe bets.
How many times have you found yourself, or heard your colleagues, saying these:
I know that these XYZ phrases convert at a 20% better rate than if we were to speak as a normal human being.
Position 1 on a SERP typically has an XX% CTR and exponentially diminishing returns after that.
The first phrase, at first glance, seems totally reasonable, but the details are important. What conversion are you optimizing for? What phrases are you targeting that support that type of conversion? Are you manipulating phrases to match search engine speak like “hardware store near me.”
How many times have marketers been in meetings where the leadership and their colleagues will look at competitors’ ad copy and landing pages and the first recommendation is to copy what they’ve come up with? Just to see what happens and always under the guise of A/B testing and being “scientific” about these things.
This situation is totally about taking out as much risk as possible from having to create copy that could fall flat on its face. But really what’s the worst that happens? You launch the ads, a few people see it, you discover the copy isn’t working, and you change the copy. In other words: Marketing.
According to a 2014 study reported by Business Wire: 82% of Americans ignore online ads, ahead of television ads at 37%. In a more recent article (2022), eMarketer reported on a study that found that on average 40% of US internet users are utilizing ad blockers on their devices.
Even if you launch with the copy you’re not sure about only the people without ad blockers will see it and most of those are likely to ignore you anyway!
So why do we spend so much time and energy trying to perfect this? Because it’s very easy between the ad platforms and analytic tools companies use to show that we put in $1.00 and we got back $1.50. Rand Fishkin has a fantastic keynote presentation from the 2021 MNSearch conference about this very topic. I highly recommend it.
We Only Train Business People to Think One Way
I don’t think it is only an analytics problem, but rather this problem is much larger with how we train marketers and businesspeople to analyze problems and make business decisions. Rory Sutherland, the Vice chairman of Ogilvy UK, summarizes this well in his TedTalks and the post below. If you choose not to read the whole post the bit that sticks out to me are the lines:
Behavioral economics has shown that this [standard economic theory] often provides an incomplete, and sometimes highly misleading, view of human motivation, often blind to things that aren't quantifiable.
Standard economic models will always assume that the way to improve travel is to make it faster, and the way to improve food is to make it cheaper or more plentiful. And so on.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with this - except that it can often blind you to less logical, more creative solutions.
It’s the assumptions that are baked into these models that are at issue. For example, rational decision-making on the part of the consumers about whether or not a product meets their needs.
These assumptions lead to particular ways of thinking that are only reinforced by the statistics and finance classes that accompany any business-related education. Numbers become a security blanket as we look to optimize the utility we gain from product-specific forms or functions and their price points.
A Case for the Creatives
When you look at the most creative marketing and advertising that’s been created for products like the VW Beetle or Apple, you find ad copy that draws from topics and ideas that on the face of them don’t seem related. It’s the play on words like “Think small” for the VW Beetle’s introduction to the US market that captured your attention. Not to mention all the white space on the creative they created.
Or the anti-institutional, “big brother” imagery used for Apple’s 1984 desktop computer introduction.
It’s the ability of the creatives to bring these disparate ideas together in a manner that grabs your attention that has provided so much value to these companies and played such a massive role in establishing the brands in the minds of consumers. Not just establishing the brands in the minds of the consumers but also differentiating the brands from the incumbent players and making a stand for something.
Granted these are two of the “Hall of Fame” campaigns, but I do think this is the ideal approach to marketing and advertising. We can do cool things that actually mean something, that are visually interesting and are interesting from a wordsmith’s perspective.
If we look at a third Hall of Famer, Nike’s Just Do It, on the face of it you ask yourself, “What does this have to do with athletic clothing or shoes?” Nothing. What it does do so brilliantly, like many of the most successful initiatives, is that it taps into the one thing we’ve all experienced when we think of working out or getting into shape: motivation.
We all like the idea of getting into better shape and being healthier, but it’s that initial starting point that’s the biggest hurdle for many of us. Having someone tell you to “just do it” is a powerful motivator for a communal species like human beings. It’s the emotional empowerment of the message that makes it work. Not the rational messages like “You’ll live a longer life if you run.”
Clearly, I’m still mulling over these questions about in my mind. I’d be curious as to any research or resources you may be able to recommend. Or if this brought up any ideas in your mind of topics to explore.
