April 03, 2013

The Data Delusion


Systems in extremis often delude themselves into believing they are something they are not.

Our educational system has convinced itself that it's not really in the education business. It's in the "self-discovery" business or the business of "celebrating diversity" or other such nonsense. The result is that it is very successful at not educating our kids.

Pepsi decided a few years ago that it was no longer in the business of selling soda. It was in the social responsibility business. The result was years of disastrous sales.

The advertising business is currently going through such a cycle. We are no longer about making advertising. In fact, making ads is looked down upon as a quaint, out-of-date notion.

Unfortunately, we can't quite decide what business we are in.

For a few years we were in the "branding" business. The "branding" business posited that consumers had deep connections to brands, and that sales results were in direct proportion to brand "meanings." The result was the marketing equivalent of empty suits -- mundane products with silly, high-minded philosophies and vacuous advertising.

Then we were in the "conversation" business. This meant that instead of making ads, our primary purpose was to generate "conversations" between buyers and sellers. The rationale behind this fantasy took the aforementioned belief that consumers care deeply about brands to a new level. Now they wanted to interact and have relationships with us.

Our newest delusion is that we're in the data business. "Big data" is the big thing. The theory behind this latest dead end is the hypothesis that the key to marketing success is precision targeting. In fact, precision targeting has thus far proven to be a dispiriting bust. The poster child for precision targeting is Facebook, which has more data and knows more about us than we know about ourselves.

And yet advertising on Facebook has been uniquely ineffective. An astounding experiment done several months ago showed that ads with no content and no targeting performed 60% better than "precision targeted" Facebook ads. Major brands have stayed away in droves.

So what is all this confusion and misdirection in the advertising business about?

The answer is quite simple. About 15 years ago our industry decided that traditional advertising had run its course. We had run out of steam and were searching for new ideas. The web was the perfect solution. It was a brand new medium in which anything was possible.

It represented everything we were searching for -- new technologies, new creative possibilities, and a youthful new "branding" opportunity for the tired old ad business.

There's only one little problem: it ain't workin' very well.

No one pays any attention to the ads. No one wants to have conversations with us or read our self-serving content. But we are ideologically committed to the web. It is still our precious baby -- regardless of the discouraging facts.

Our latest web pipe dream is data. But data is a solution looking for a problem. The fact is, we now have more data about consumers than we ever dreamed possible. We know where everyone is every minute of the day. We have no trouble reaching people efficiently. Our problem is not lack of information. If anything, we are overloaded with information.

Our problem is finding something interesting to say to people that will get their attention.

As John Hegarty, founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, said recently,
"I've spent my life dealing with people who've got all the data in the world and yet they can't invent anything."
We will continue to imagine new varieties of web magic until such time as our clients'  need for results catches up to our industry's ideological commitment to chasing rainbows. Big data is just the latest rainbow.

As usual, the ad industry is focused on everything but the problem.



8 comments:

Felix Velarde said...

In essence: if you're advertising folk, stick to the knitting.

I do agree, advertising is advertising. Data is nowt to do with it - it's for something else.

Same with the web. That's not about advertising either. The people who tried to stick banners all over it were nothing more than space jockeys looking for quick commission.

The web is a business platform, not an advertising platform. Business has been transformed by it. Advertising just gets hopelessly confused by it. Stick to what you know.

Guernican said...

Goodness. Ad industry figure in admission that industry cannot use the web: suggests answer is "let's do what we've always done". One can worship at the altar of creativity, which really means originality: the most dangerous word in the lexicon of advertising.

I seem to remember someone terribly clever saying that about 30 years ago.

Tim Orr said...

"About 15 years ago our industry decided that traditional advertising had run its course." Actually, I think, about 15 years ago our industry realized that advertisers and the public had discovered our snake oil didn't cure anything.



Rather than actually make advertisements that sell – which we felt was too much work – we decided we needed some new snake oil that no one had heard of. So, we decided we could create brands, force people to engage and converse and now can find golden needles in giant haystacks.


Anything to avoid learning and plying our craft!

Kate Richardson said...

I've been waiting for this post (I just didn't know it)

Thanks Bob, hope you're enjoying the rest of your life

tim dunn said...

Alongside data, it's the 'we're a platforms and services business' that I hear the most!!

marketing that sells said...

As a marketing manager, I am in the business of helping my company sell its products. The problem is that lot of colleagues and most of my agency fellows think they are in the business of filmmaking and writing scripts. They confuse the art of selling with the art of movies. They want to be famous, receiving awards and enter red carpets. Hollywood took over Madison Avenue.

I love your idea of putting both the agency and client'a marketing teams in the field for a few days to face costumers and understanding that if we do not sell, we do not get paid. The problem is that most of them think that the selling is a sole responsibility of the sales department. They are up to more "glamorous" tasks...

Thanks Bob for all of your posts and books (bought them all!!!!). I have found lot of inspiration in them. Hope that now that you have more free time you perhaps could help us -we "working" poor little things"- to not forget basics of this business.


marketing that sells said...

As a marketing manager, I am in the business of helping my company sell its products. The problem is that lot of colleagues and most of my agency fellows think they are in the business of filmmaking and writing scripts. They confuse the art of selling with the art of movies. They want to be famous, receiving awards and enter red carpets. Hollywood took over Madison Avenue.

I love your idea of putting both the agency and client'a marketing teams in the field for a few days to face costumers and understanding that if we do not sell, we do not get paid. The problem is that most of them think that the selling is a sole responsibility of the sales department. They are up to more "glamorous" tasks...

Thanks Bob for all of your posts and books (bought them all!!!!). I have found lot of inspiration in them. Hope that now that you have more free time you perhaps could help us -we "working" poor little things"- to not forget basics of this business.


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