The discipline of marketing and advertising is hardly new.
The classic text on direct response marketing, “Scientific Advertising” was published as long ago as 1923.
So it is something of a puzzle as to why large companies, who spend large sums on their marketing, often make what appear to be elementary blunders.
A recent case pointed out by the great Drayton Bird involves UK giant Tesco…
“The other day Tesco’s shares took a beating when for the first time since 1968 they issued a profits warning. Their new chief executive admits with admirable honesty that this was because they changed their promotional approach and got clobbered.
I may be maligning them but I suspect this needn’t have happened. For me the first law of marketing is to test. A friend who worked for Revlon founder Charles Revson told me Revson used to test everything including price in an area before he launched a product nationally.
It is hard to believe they tested their Big Price Drop promotion properly before they gave up the other promotions that were working well. Promotions pretty much identical to those which helped their competitors snatch business from them – and which have worked for years.
Incidentally, I wager Big Price Drop is not as good as The Big Save. I know that because I am a copywriter, and I know that what something does for the customer (save) beats what it is (price drop) every time. That took a split second to occur to me, but if I had a big shiny office fitted out with hot and cold running planners and account handlers I could charge you, assuming I wrote nice long report, a few grand for it.”
Worth reading the whole piece “Big Price Drop = Big Share Drop: Tesco’s Three Mistakes”.
Couple of pretty basic points (poor testing and poor choice of wording).
Now, I know that nobody’s perfect and if you’re an active marketer you’re going to make mistakes now and again. In fact, if don’t “make mistakes” you’re probably not trying hard enough.
However, business is hard enough without making what are really unforced errors. Tesco can survive this…a typical small business has less leeway.
And here’s another example…
…this time relating to positioning.
Again, not a new concept and pretty mainstream in the world of marketing.
The seminal work “Positioning” by Al Ries and Jack Trout was published in 1976 (after a series of articles in Advertising Age way back in 1972).
So I was a little surprised the other day when I saw a ad on the side of a bus for the Alfa Romeo Giulietta proudly trumpeting a recent award.
Now, when you think of an Alfa Romeo, the words “Italian”, “Stylish”, “Sporty”, “Hot”, “Sexy” might come to mind.
Depending on your age, less desirable ideas like “rust-bucket” and “unreliable” might also come to mind.
However, I’d be pretty confident that “Safety” wouldn’t be the first idea that pops up.
And if you were thinking of buying an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, the fact that it is…
“The safest compact car ever tested by Euro NCAP”
…wouldn’t necessarily be helpful.
That’s because “safety” and “compact” (let alone the combination) equals “boring” and ordinary in the minds of most people.
So in this particular case, this award doesn’t support the main positioning idea. So why emphasise it? It must have been very prominent in the ad I saw for me to notice it…remember the ad was on the side of a bus and I probably saw it for a couple of seconds at most!
Will this lose sales for Alfa? Hard to tell, but in difficult economic times why take the risk by making sloppy mistakes?
It’s as if many mainstream marketing professionals and their agencies know the right buzzwords and things to say…
…but they have no idea about why an ad works and why a sale is made.
Final words on this point from Drayton Bird talking about a friend getting ripped off…
“The client and his media agency clearly don’t know what makes ads work otherwise their ads would have been doing OK before. So eventually one of two things (maybe both) will happen.
1. The client and/or the agency will start getting bored with the ad and try to “improve” it. Almost invariably in doing so they will miss out something essential or add something unwise
2. The winning ad will run out of steam eventually and they won’t know how to create another.
However, I think this kind of thing will be on the increase in the next year or five, which is all the more reason to know what works, what doesn’t and why – whether you’re the client or the agency. Otherwise when things go wrong you have no idea what to do.”
Full story at “Will this kind of short-sighted behaviour grow in the recession?”