Single Minded Proposition? or Juvenile Twaddle? 
Saatchi & Saatchi described the role of advertising as being “to make a single minded proposition come alive in a compelling way”. It is a powerful insight into how we, as human beings, receive, process and respond to information, something with which we are assaulted in increasing volumes, as each week goes by.
Someone else has articulated the AIDA Model of communications “cut through” – Attention. Interest. Desire. Action.
Wikipedia explains it thus:
A - Attention (Awareness): attract the attention of the customer.
I - Interest: raise customer interest by demonstrating features, advantages, and benefits.
D - Desire: convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs.
A - Action: lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing.
Nowadays some have added another letter to form AIDA(S): S - Satisfaction - satisfy the customer so they become a repeat customer and give referrals to a product.
These are two powerful concepts that, together, should provide, if not a template, then at least a series of signposts to assist in the creation of marketing communications messages and materials that have the greatest chance of achieving their objective.
OK. Now go spend a little time watching some television commercials, reading print advertisements, listening to radio spots and surfing some websites.
Can you discern these concepts in action?
No. Of course you can’t.
What, overwhelmingly, you will be subjected to is mindless twaddle. The majority of the advertising and other forms of marcoms to which we are exposed (and with which we are daily assaulted) lacks any hint of having emerged from a sound brief, a passionate, insightful and inspirational creative process or the guiding hand of a single minded, results driven, client just oozing marketing “smarts”. Which is why most of it doesn’t work.
Rather, it grates, irritates and, often, alienates customers and prospects alike.
Message to advertisers – Your advertising is increasingly having the opposite effect from that which you want it to – it is driving your customers and prospects potty. It is shouting at them – often literally. It is cluttering their minds with breathtaking amounts of mindless crap. It is failing to cut through the rest of the twaddle. Rather, it is contributing to the twaddle gene pool.
It is failing to differentiate either your brand, or your products & services, on any meaningful or sustainable dimension. It is assaulting them with price propositions – “Buy me and get 10 cents off” It is lacking in even the merest whiff of a single minded proposition, yet alone making it come alive in a compelling way.
It is being driven by short term objectives and is suffering from short term decision making.
It is completely lacking in any depth of understanding of a target market’s wants, needs, preferences, buying behaviours and the rest. It does not grab their attention (unless it does so by dint of its unadulterated awfulness) Having failed to grab their attention, it doesn’t have a hope in hell of peaking their interest. In the complete absence of interest, the stimulation of desire is a lost cause.
And the only action that results from that little bunch of marcoms accomplishments is No Action.
Questions for advertisers (answer dishonestly and the only person you’ll be kidding is yourself):
What are you selling?
Who are you selling it to?
Why the heck should they want to buy it anyway?
If you don’t have a crystal clear set of answers to these three questions, you simply are not ready to waste your time, energy and dollars on trying to communicate anything to anyone.
By contrast, get the answers right and you’ll be off to a flying start as you brief your marketing team and they, in turn, brief your ad agency and all those other talented young things whose role should be to produce marcoms that sell. Right now, however, they are falling short of the mark (and its largely your fault – you’ll always get the advertising you deserve) and the rest of us are paying the price as we are increasingly forced to try and hide from your appalling and ineffective marcoms assaults.
Brian H Meredith
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