Doing Advertising the Right Way - Part 3

Recap: Time-proven lessons of advertising legend, Rosser Reeves, on whom Jon Hamm's character in Mad Men is based.

Lesson 5: The Deceptive Differential

Ever sit in one of those ‘creative sessions’ where someone writes every single positive attribute and competitive differentiator of a product on the whiteboard?  Then this lesson is for you.

Reeves observed that marketers who trump up trivial, picayune and questionable product attributes pay the price in the long term.  Misleading and trumped up claims prove to be a road to ruin.  A research colleague saw this time and time again in the data, leading him to conclude two principles: 

1. Advertising pushes sales of good products up, and bad ones down.  Promoting unsubstantiated claims reinforces their absence in the minds of buyers.
2. Corollary: promoting minuscule differences which buyers cannot observe ends up over time killing the product.

This principle extends into all forms of marketing, and not just advertising.  Any B2B marketer who has chosen to focus on minutiae and accentuate the positive - be it in collateral, on the web, or in field briefing documents - has very likely incurred the wrath of the sales force once they get burned in the marketplace.  There are seldom second chances!

Lesson 6: Product Comparisons

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door - Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Not if they don’t know about it!

Direct competitive comparison is often the most practical way to demonstrate product superiority.  But it is the slipperiest of slopes in marketing.  For starters, it’s illegal in much of Europe, e.g. Germany.  And it can lead to litigation and counter-advertising (e.g. AT&T and Verizon) making the cost of the tactic significant.  Reeves found competitive advertising ultimately highly effective provided that two conditions are observed:

• Comparative differences must be significant (see Deceptive Differential above), important and truthful - borne out by facts, not merely opinion.

• The comparative brand must be a recognized contender - you can’t kick sand in the face of the little guy.

Lesson 7: Standalone Brand Image campaigns do not pay off as well as USP-based campaigns

Reeves is cautious regarding branding.  I wasn’t sure I agreed with his POV at first, until I finished reading everything he had to say on the matter.

He was certainly not big on fads like subliminal advertising - and the simple reason that results in one test could not be duplicated in further tests.  The notion of scientific method, research and painstaking analysis is a cornerstone of Reeves’ belief in how marketers should conduct their affairs. 

It is due to this philosophical viewpoint that Reeves seriously questioned the effectiveness of branding when it is based on psychological and motivational factors alone.  He was a strict believer in the tangibility and measurability of USPs.  He put it succinctly if not bluntly: the USP is the philosophy of a claim; brand image is the philosophy of a feeling.

Here is why he reached that conclusion.  Statistical analysis of the data for a 20-year period showed these end results in these proportions for USP campaigns:

USP Campaigns	Brand Image Campaigns
10 good campaigns	2 good campaigns
6 excellent	2 excellent
2 brilliant	2 brilliant
2 failures	14 failures

On their own, brand image campaigns seldom lead to good results; but when conducted together with value proposition-based USPs, often lead to excellent results.

Lesson 8: The power of monotonous Simplicity and unvarnished Repetition

Reeves tested out everything thoroughly before going to market with a campaign - his practices were not cheap, but they were effective.  His reasoning was simple: unless the message moved from an ad to the buyer’s head it was useless.  Occasionally, something unusual would be observed - as in the case of four variations of a cigarette ad, all with the identical USP spelled out.

Here are the message retention results for the four variants: 6%, 25%, 54% and 91%.  The message is clear as day in the last ad, and almost totally obscured in the first.  Here are some things that can make - or break - a campaign.

• Repetition (frequency): fifteen years of data show that, even among the largest U.S. campaigns, 70% of the population cannot recall seeing widely run ads.  Case study: a small manufacturer kept refining and improving its USP and, after 3 years, gained share against four competitors with combined ad spend of 40X its own.  Lesson: if it’s good, you can’t repeat an ad campaign often enough.
• Secondary claims: secondary claims can distract from, and wash out, the primary USP claim.  Tertiary and further claims, all packaged up on the same campaign, typically end up confusing buyers.  Lesson: it takes extraordinary skill to introduce more than one message and have it stick.
• Stunning graphics, video and models: glossy and overdone campaigns can make for visually stunning and memorable ads.  But not memorable messages.  Who among us does not remember a favorite ad (funny, slick, risque, stunts, stunning visuals) but cannot recall the product?  Lesson: it's the message that has to stick - not the technique.