Wednesday
Feb072007
Marketing Interview
Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 10:10AM 
Carl Spies says this xkcd toon reminded him of Mike Stopforth and I. lol.
The advertising and marketing industry has been criticized for not eating the food that they cook. In other words: When was the last time you saw an ad campaign for an advertising agency?
Alot of marketing and advertising today is smoke and mirrors. Or, perhaps more fairly: it's running on the momentum of what was phenomenally effective 20 or 30 years ago - TV ads, Radio ads, fliers and so on - but which doesn't really work anymore. Today, I wouldn't spend a cent on marketing that I couldn't measure in terms of direct response.
Reader Comments (7)
"measure in terms of direct response"
I'd be interested in a posting on how you do this?
I'll elaborate briefly now, and perhaps a post on this soon...
Marketing is often regarded as an Art, rather than a Science... which has led to alot of people going ahead with running campaigns that aren't measured against specific, measurable objectives set forth at the start of the campaign.
I believe that each promotional touchpoint should affect the stakeholders in some measurable way - it's a fair exchange of value: in exchange for a customer's valuable attention, the marketer should offer something in return (entertainment, significance, product, useful information, opportunity etc).
Direct response, then, means that the campaign affects a response in the consumer in a way that justifies the expense of gaining that response. Whether the action is a click to a website, a phonecall, a registration or a purchase, the effect of marketing and advertising should be viewed in real-time and evaluated in terms of the action that a consumer takes in response to seeing it even just once.
well put.
Davey;
On the question of when last did an ad agency advertise:
1) When last did you see your car mechanic fixing his own car - his wife always complains about their car having problems...
2) When last did your IT guru mate not have a problem with his home computer that he had time to fix.
Not eating the food you cook is pretty much what we do...because we are doing that stuff for others for bucks that feed our families and when you get home...
:'-D lol Carl's a card .. you okes rock!
Shane, those examples do exist but I'd suggest that people who are passionate about what they do live their message.
One of the reasons that I think Cerebra is doing so well is that we apply our products and services quite successfully in our own.
If my doctor is healthy, I tend to trust his advice a bit more.
[...] Dave also touches on what I call manipulation marketing. Forcing sales through mass distribution solely for the revenue generation. [...]