The Blind Leading The Blind - Adult B2B Marketing Tip

THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND


Miller Brewing Company found itself looking for a better way to advertise its product recently. “It’s a tough admission…but the company [Miller] has realized that the humor-and-babes model has failed to differentiate it from Anheuser-Busch.”

“We had forgotten why people drink our beer. We need to remind ourselves that consumers need a compelling reason to try and use your product…it sounds very basic, but we had forgotten that.”

“Being grounded with the consumer is maybe one of the biggest clichés in the world, but it’s one of the toughest things to make happen.”

I have in the past fielded the following question from clients, “If this is so easy, why don’t other ad agencies do it?” Or “What happens if our client’s competitors get and read the advertising? Won’t they go and copy it?”
The answer is, “They won’t – or don’t – understand it.” How does that jibe with you?

Most ad execs cling to a perception they were raised with and added to at famous universities. The research and information currently surrounding them about market awareness, branding, and focus group research is centered on a fundamentally different way of seeing things. Even though they say things like, “We need to remind ourselves that consumers need a compelling reason to try and use your product…it sounds very basic, but we had forgotten that.” The ad execs cannot see past what they hold as a truth:

Creativity to gather interest and repetition to keep it.


For them there is no other way. They are blind; they are trying to break out of the mold of their own creation, but they cannot see. The advertising world is waking up and it appears that most ad execs are feeling something. From the quotes I gave you – and these are not unique to Miller Brewing – there is a lot of worrying and hand-wringing going on.

But they will not see it. Again, remember their focus, they see the process as one of creativity. They will always focus on the spurts of genius even with all the research; there is still the fact they will be faced with creating the ad out of the research. They will inevitably fall back onto the creative shops to churn out a 30 second TV commercial from all the research. There will be concept drawings, storyboards, and artistic renderings. After all, the research has to go somewhere.

More tomorrow.

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