Now I write, but for more than two decades I was the one responsible for the message, and the people who wrote and designed worked for me. Over the course of those years, I learned just how difficult it is to convey a need in such a way that everyone on the team could wrap both the mind and the emotions around it. In most cases, what passes for brand or message direction is insufficient, and the people who pay the price are the ones who are trying to write the copy, develop the graphics, and buy the media.
In time, I became good at conveying messages effectively. Once that happened, I was able to experience the greatness of talented copywriters and designers. Most people who enter the field of business media have a passion for it, and they thrive in an environment that offers great direction and welcomes not only their talent but also their input.
One type of business media personality, however, has bemused and confused me for my entire career. Sometimes it’s an art director, sometimes an account executive – at any rate, someone possessing authority. They produce a product that is superficially sexy, glossy, purports to be edgy, and is resolutely mundane. No amount of information regarding the intended customer’s needs, wants, or perspectives influences this person’s design direction. Customer awareness is not their concern.
I have theorized many times over the years about what would cause an otherwise talented individual to so completely ignore the customer perspective. I ultimately concluded that the individuals in question were working in a customer segment that bored them. Maybe they were serving jewelry store owners, or video store owners, or moms with small kids, when what they really wanted to be selling was haute couture or Hollywood.
Today I realized that my conclusion was wrong. I spent the day doing fashion trend analysis, and I encountered more mindless, customer unaware, superficially sexy, glossy, and mundane advertising in four hours than I could stomach. If the people actually selling haute couture and Hollywood are behaving in the same way as the people who I thought were behaving that way because they wanted to be selling haute couture or Hollywood, there must be a deeper reason.
I had to take a break from the fashion, so I picked up a business book and stumbled immediately upon a different theory as to why so many marketing communications make sense only to their creators. The book is Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes, and the author is Mark Penn. Penn suggests that many marketing communications don’t make sense because they are based on the faulty premise that consumers are irrational, “misguided scatterbrains” who don’t know what they want or whether or not the promotion they are experiencing is good or bad.
According to this premise the egotistical marketer designs for his or her own pleasure, and any communication that is done solely for the self is just another form of self-abuse (to use a polite – if somewhat Catholic – euphemism). If nobody else is actually involved, then it stands to reason that nobody else actually feels anything.
Unfortunately, the public plays a role in this ongoing farce. It’s a modern-day Emperor’s New Clothes. If you will recall, the Emperor in the Hans Christian Anderson story goes to a pair of con artists for new clothing. The con artists tell the Emperor that the fabric from which they will make his new clothes is so fine and rare that only people of exceptional refinement and intelligence can see it. The Emperor sends his valet to evaluate the clothes before the final fitting. The valet, unable to see the clothes himself, will not admit that he is not refined or intelligent enough to see them. So he proclaims their beauty in his report to his boss. The Emperor is also unable to see the clothing and unable to disclose (pardon the pun) his lack of vision. So he walks naked through the streets, with everyone in the kingdom unwilling to acknowledge their Emperor’s nakedness for fear of exposing their own frailty. Only a child has the courage to shout out the obvious fact that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all.
I don’t watch much television, but a few weeks ago I was watching a movie with my teenage and young adult kids. After watching a few completely incomprehensible advertisements (quick disclaimer – I also saw a lot of great advertising that night), I finally asked my kids to explain what the ads meant. Their response was that they had no idea. My kids are hardly sheltered, and mom-ish pride aside, they seem to be pretty hip.
“Do you think anyone understands these ads?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” replied my son. “They’re just stupid.” Sentiments with which my daughter agreed.
A 30-second ad during American Idol costs $620,000. To run the same ad during Desperate Housewives costs $324,000. Survivor is a bargain at $296,000. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I have a hard time understanding the wholesale waste of those dollars on advertising that discounts the intelligence of the viewers and invites us all to participate in pretending that the Emperor is wearing clothes.
There’s really nothing to be done about it, because for every bright, intelligent, customer-focused advertising director there will be a self-centered, superficial Hollywood wanna-be with vapid ideas. The only value in this observation is for each one of us. When we are tempted to believe that we are smarter than our customers, when we find ourselves thinking that our customers are boring, or irritating, or simply pedestrian, there is a very good chance that we are about to waste a lot of money. Our own.
As Mark Penn points out in his book, the average Joe is actually pretty smart, making intelligent decisions about how to spend their money and regarding who deserves their loyalty. We discount our customers at our own peril.
(c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill