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Laryngitis Lessons

rex.briggs | 02 November, 2006 06:22
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This week I have laryngitis. I’m following Doctors orders to not speak and have taken this week off from public presentations. And, the experience of not speaking, yet still trying to communicate, has given me some much needed reinforcement of communication concepts learned at University years ago. I think you might find them useful to advertising as well. Here are three nuggets – call them lessons of laryngitis.

First lesson of laryngitis: The first challenge is getting someone’s attention.

For all that has been written about marketing and dialogue, let’s never forget that the first challenge is getting someone’s attention. In two basic modes:

1. Someone seeking my point of view (easy to get their attention)
2. Me trying to get a response from someone else (much harder to get attention and dialogue started)

In the first mode, It is relatively easy for me to communicate (even without a voice) when someone comes into my office to get my point of view on a topic. Just like a consumer coming to your home page, or into your store for your perspective, a dialogue simply requires listening and responding to what the person wants. Figuring out what the person wants is actually easier with laryngitis because I’m all ears. As I heard many years ago, “God gave you two holes in your head to listen with and only one to speak with for a reason.” If marketers practiced listening better, I suspect that research on what consumers come to a website to learn (or explore) would boost the value of the website substantially.

The second mode, trying to get a response from someone else, is much harder and somewhat frustrating. This was particularly true at home. It was quite easy for my wife to ignore me, or at least be oblivious to my attempts to get her attention. Having seen reems of data from advertising, I think that most marketers find themselves in this boat where they are trying to engage a consumer, but only with marginal success. The situation can be summed up like this: The consumer isn’t looking for a dialogue, but the marketer feel they have something important to communicate and therefore tries valiantly to get the consumers attention.

My own attempts to get my wife’s attention included smiling (I don’t think she even looked at my face to notice), waving my hands, and, when that didn’t work, whistling. None of which were very successful. Now I know how a marketer must feel. They smile nicely – nothing. They wave their hands – nothing. They whistle – and the only reaction from the consumer is annoyance.

Did you know that when Marketing Evolution analyzed dozens of studies we found that if marketers advertised to 100 consumers, the typical response in terms of attitude shift was about 4. That means only 4 people out of 100 were engaged such that they got the message and their opinions improved in favorable manner. For all the smiling, hand waving and whistling marketers do, getting the consumers attention turns out to be a pretty difficult task.

Is there a better way? Stay tuned.


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You Stuck Your Advertisement in My Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!

rex.briggs | 03 October, 2006 05:16
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Remember those ads from years ago with funny collisions of a person with chocolate bar and a person with jar of peanut butter. In the TV commercial, you’d see someone carrying a jar of peanut butter, and out of their line of sight, wielding a chocolate bar with reckless abandon, was some other snacker. And wouldn’t you know it, the two simply couldn’t avoid colliding. You’d hear exclaimed “You stuck your chocolate in my peanut butter!” Then the counter accusations began flying. While at first the two seemed annoyed at one another, arguing about who stuck what where, for the sake of world peace, they’d move quickly to resolve the conflict by trying the new flavor combination. And, all this drama was packed into a 30 second ad.

Today I found that Hershey’s has stuck their ad in my Peanut Butter Cup. Yes, it seems that Reese’s has combined their tasty Peanut Butter Cups with advertising saying “Try Hershey’s Kissables” –candy coated mini kisses (as the subtitle clarifies). I guess I should yell out “You stuck your Kissebale ad in my peanut butter cup package.” But not only does that lack the poetic flare of the chocolate and peanut butter arguments of yesteryear, I am on a flight on the way to New York, and I just don’t think the flight attendants would get the joke – even though airlines have loaded up their ticket sleeves, food trays, napkins and even the sides of airplanes with marketing messages.

Much of this marketing goes unmeasured. In fact, because there are no ratings for it, some in the agency business group this media as “unmeasured media” in their plans. Or, leave these marketing messages off their media plans all together. But this is smart marketing and should be valued. It is an interesting issue of valuing messages like this and highlights the increasing complexity of marketing ROI measurement. It underscores the increasing complexity of ensuring the effectiveness of marketing across all the touch points.

I will muse about how such marketing elements can be measured. For now, I have some Peanut Butter Cups to eat.


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