Positively Disrupting Thoughts for Ad Agencies
Go Ahead and Take Your Eye Off the Ball
Tom Martin |
So here are a few thoughts of my own. You can decide if they are helpful or not. And do me the favor of adding a few more of your own in the comments section below. If we all practice a little Intellectual Darwinism, we'll be better for it -- don't you agree?
- Customers are clueless.
Thinking about launching a new product or maybe an ad campaign? Thinking about convening focus groups to figure out what you should do? Save your money. The consumer doesn't know what he wants. If he did, he'd be working in your client's R&D department or maybe for your ad agency. The consumer is paying you to solve his problems before he even realizes he has them. Seriously. Did you ever think you needed the ability to carry your entire music library in your pocket before Steve Jobs created the iPod? Like Henry Ford was purported to say, "If I had asked them what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." You're smarter than your customer. Act like it.
- Ask the new guy.
There are no new ideas, only people that can combine old ideas in new ways or connect dots in new and interesting configurations. Usually these "crazy" ideas come from folks who have no real experience in a category. Again, look at Apple and music. Lack of experience can be good because a newbie is often too dumb to know he isn't supposed to think that way. So invite smart new guys and girls into the conversation and then listen. You might just find your next big idea, product or strategy.
- They're ambassadors, not customers.
Customers are transactional. Ambassadors are for life. Just ask yourself how your business would act differently if the goal was to create ambassadors vs. customers. What would your product look like? What would your service look like? What about your pricing and your marketing? How would you respond to customer-services issues? Ambassadors have a lifetime value to your company and it isn't strictly about how much money they'll spend with you. It's about how much total value they can create directly and indirectly. Quit worrying about how you're going to sell to them and start thinking about how you're going to service them today and in the future.
- Take your eye off the ball.
Back in the mid-'90s, 3-D "Magic Eye" pictures were all the rage. I can remember standing in front of those framed pictures trying desperately to see the picture. But that was the trick. The harder you tried, the less likely you were to see it. The answer, as I soon learned, was to look not at the picture but instead at your reflection in the glass in front of the picture. As soon as you did that, presto! Picture popped into focus. Too many companies think the answer to more success lies in looking harder at the same picture. Instead, lift your eyes and take in the sites and sounds around you. Sometimes you need the help of an outside lens to bring the picture into focus. I promise you, it will be these moments when you take your eye off the ball that will fill you with insight and inspiration. So go to a ballgame, play with your kids, go for a run or throw a few back at the bar ... let your mind process the problem for you. And when it has the answer, it will let you know ... just make sure you have a pen and paper handy.
~ ~ ~
Tom Martin is president of Zehnder Communications, with offices in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. He can be reached at Tom.Martin@z-comm.com. Or follow him at @TomMartin.
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The concept of customer evangelists has been around for how long, now? Twenty years? Do we really need to keep parroting it?
Finally, I really hope that the use of "sites" instead of "sights", by the president of a communications firm no less, was intended as a pun.
As for the typo, they happen. Great catch and thanks, but truly a shame that was all you had to contribute to the conversation.
@TomMartin
Your choice of phrases - calling customers clueless, referring to newbies as being too dumb (and then talking about hiring smart people... wow) - is what sent me, one individual reader, immediately into the negative. Perhaps we could add a fifth point to the article titled, "Positive communication is strong communication, and if you can't communicate strongly, just shut up."
When it comes to product development and new campaigns, many customers tell you want they want to see and that's great if you want to meet expectations. If you want to blow them away you have to show them something they never imagined or expected. It's important to listen to the customer but I think it's important to limit what you take from it.
With all due respect, spare us the sensitivity to "offensive" phrases and flip-flopped homonyms.
RE: clueless customers
The point is that agencies shouldn't be order takers.
RE: newbies are dumb
If we're so sensitive that "dumb" is offensive, then we're in the wrong industry. Henry Ford said, "I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done." Certainly, you know that veterans can often (naturally) learn what can't be done.
RE: customers are evangelists
A 20-year problem is still a problem. Agencies still haven't figured out how to treat customers.
Cheers.
"Did you ever think you needed the ability to carry your entire music library in your pocket before Steve Jobs created the iPod?". You bet!. Again, Did Steve Jobs every ask customers what they want?. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. Who knows. I'm not saying every customer is savvy enough to spell out unmet needs... but there are definitely some out there with ideas to kill for. If you don't ask, you'll never know.
Using history where there is no precedent of asking customers for what they'd want, to advise action in a future where there are platforms to involve customers, isn't exactly sound!.
Lighten up. It's advertising, not nuclear science.
Customers are not clueless. It's usually the agency or brand that is clueless in the fact that they can't determine how to build meaningful relationships with them. A guy using the wrong "pickup" line can't call the chick stupid if she doesn't respond the way he wants. We're in the age of the "sellsumer" where consumers are creating products and selling them. We're in the age of co-creation uniting brands and consumers to create the best products. People should stop peddling the "customers is stupid" line. Don't forget, you're a customer too.
There are always "new" ideas. Ever hear of the car? The computer? The television? Radio? The issue is that some agencies and brands fail to consistently think of new ideas and therefore decide nothing is new for the majority.
You can't create ambassadors out of people you deem stupid. Enough said.
I do agree with the last comment. It's when we relax, take a breather and just let things happen when some of the greatest idea moments can occur.
Cheers!
However I disagree with the dismissal of the consumer as a valuable source of inspiration. Surely "The Long Tail" gives the answer to the Wisdom of Crowds!
Today consumers don't like ad infested terrestrial TV what they do like is the opportunity to express an opinion, they like, in other words, voice.
Due to a lack of understanding of the communication process we have created a media society during the past 40 or 50 years, where the whole process has been de-humanised.
There has been an extraordinary reduction in interaction because conventional advertising and marketing have become a one-way practice whereby information is disseminated in a passive form. Thankfully that is changing.
We must always remember that people still have this desire to be taken account of. To affect change, to learn and personalise their relationship with their environment. There are a phenomenal number of reasons that cause people to interact, going far beyond just giving them things.
When people agree to participate in truly interactive marketing programmes they are told that their efforts and feedback are of positive help to the advertisers.
Consequently, because they are being involved in the process of developing the product or service, it starts to re- personalise their relationship with the advertiser and their products.
This takes the consumer through the barrier of not wanting to address change and takes that compromise, the anxiety and worry that perhaps the decision was not the best or the right one, out of the equation. In other words, there is no reason why they should not change from their usual brand in favour of this alternative that they have now learned, fulfils their needs better.
All of this is discussed in my book "Television Killed Advertising" which also includes the results of $10m of independent research on the effectiveness of just one exposure to Social Advertising Media (SAM). Want to discuss this further please contact me on paul.ashby@yahoo.com
I'd also like to add one more point: You are the consumer.
I'm more than annoyed that the ice cream manufacturers all got together one day (or so it seems) and decided to sell 1.75 quarts of ice cream instead of 1/2 gallons and then topped off their unilateral decision with a price increase - or was the price increase strictly a retailer thing? In any case, less value for higher prices is not a good thing in any market.
If you really want to know what consumers are thinking, stop thinking like the marketer who's trying to figure out what they're thinking and "be the ball".
To the objections of 'clueless customers' or 'dumb' new guys, let's read between the lines a bit. Going back a year ago to being a newbie at my agency, I had valuable ideas to contribute but wasn't utilized. Being new to an industry or a category and embracing the "I don't know what I don't know" attitude can lead to those big ideas that Tom mentioned. The focus ends with "...invite smart new guys and girls into the conversation and then listen." I'd say that's the true intent of "Ask the new guy."
@erikrwagner
We were all quite content before cell phones came along; now it's difficult to imagine life without them.
The thought that "The consumer is paying you to solve his problems before he even realizes he has them" is bang on in this respect.
As for the Jobs-love -- I had at least two different MP3 players long before the iPod came out.
Apple's real contribution has been to bring style to technology.
Isn't that kind of what he gave them anyway?
The "Customers are clueless" is exactly the type arrogance that has caused consumers to stop listening to (lots of) agencies. Marketers who continue to ignore customer insight do so at their own peril. Or as I said in a blog post earlier this week: They're the proverbial frog on the stove.
Hundreds of times a day, clueless customers are creating user generated content that outpaces and out performs "professionally-created" content in many industries world wide.
As for other points such as "Ask the new [gal]", I'd agree in theory, with your point. Agencies like Chris Clarke's Nitro Group don't care if their employees have advertising experience or not. Why? They don't compete in the advertising space. They look more broadly at business problems; a skill many an agency could learn from and emulate.
Harvesting talent from consulting firms like McKinsey and Price Waterhouse, Nitro looks for marketing solutions outside a strict marketing discipline. Non-marketers solving marketing problems!? That's sacrilege in many offices along Madison Avenue. Very different than the closed fraternity and pedigree that advertising has typically enjoyed.
Nitro has figured out that talent from a different discipline is not dumb—it's a new world view—and that's smart. Otherwise we apply so many filters that we only see our narrow field of vision. Nicolas Kristof, of the NY Times calls it "The Daily Me".
David Wiggs http://marketinghitch.com
Patrick: yes I use sucks. As in it sucks when someone's only addition to the conversation doesn't make me or the other readers any smarter, challenge our POV or invite us to see through a different lens. Ad Age gives you a voice. Why would you waste it? Hmmmm.
CraigCooper: very, very interesting and salient point. I too owned MP3 players prior to iPod and biggest challenge was having to reload them to change the music. Basically was a digital version of a CD player. BUT -- where I think Jobs and crew went from merely incremental to order of magnitude improvement was the creation and linkage with iTunes. Jobs realized that Napster users weren't just motivated by "free" there were many that would gladly pay 99 cents for a song but would balk at paying $15 for an entire CD, most of which they didn't want. To me, that was the silver iPod bullet. And now he's repeated with the App store and iPhones. The phone is great but the apps, that is what makes the phone more valuable every day.
And Pashby - "thought provoking" is what I strive for. Nice to know I hit pay dirt with this one. Appreciate the hat tip.
@Tom Martin
2. Lighten up, people. Between Tom's today and Welch's yesterday people are in bad form. Don't take it out on the columnist, it's their job to be provocative. You know, provoke an actual thought and, if lucky, a response.
3. I really enjoy the collection of 'Small Agency' here. It's good to have someone else's smart thoughts bouncing around my noggin once in a while.
So everyone remember - Don't believe everything you read.
Just because it's written doesn't make it true. That was true 100 years ago and will be 100 years from now.
Best and success,
Jeff @ SwiftMedia.net
I think your quote about "a newbie is too dumb to know he isnt supposed to think that way" is a perfect example of the corporate brainwashing that forces new/existing employees to "fall in line" behind executive leadership thinking and strategy - a trend that should soon be forceable broken in light of this economy; only a certain few companies will be able to adapt and break the corporate thinking mold (a strangle effect on employee's ability to consistently think outside of the box and be rewarded for doing so)
Ask the new guy
My company, ADstruc, is a "crazy" idea that comes from myself and my partners and is a turnkey solution for the outdoor advertising industry - none of us are in fields even close to advertising (finance, tech, etc.) The feedback we have received from people "in the field" has been extraordinary - granted, we LISTENED, adapted their knowledge, and filled gaps. ADstruc is essentially a gap filler that paves the road for a smoother planning and buying process for outdoor media space.
Thanks,
John
www.adstruc.com
I don't agree with all of the ideas, but I think that's largely because I think cluelessness and fear are two emotions that are crippling us unilaterally; consumers and creators alike. I've had the pleasure of working with immensely creative people on marketing and promotional plans; and the only time it gets scary is when they get scared and stop taking risks.
I'm not saying the climate we find ourselves in isn't unsettling, but if you're set on making an impression, whatever it is, don't stop throwing things against the wall knowing that most of them likely won't stick.
Hopefully the agro guy doesn't hate on this!
www.myggo.net mentions hints about bringing about the social and business aspect of the internet together for its members. Such is the power of the consumer itself, that as companies, it might be more appropriate to get the corporation of them rather than thinking that they are ignorant.