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One of the most dangerous phrases in marketing is, “people won’t understand.” It is based on the assumption that as mass marketers, we should always speak to the lowest common denominator of intelligence. This way of thinking has three fundamental flaws:

It breaks the “one on one” law. (Okay, it’s not a law, but we live by it at 3.)
The irony of mass communication is that a message can’t feel like it was created for a mass of people. You are speaking, in each and every message you create, to a single person. Even though millions of people may see your message, only one person at a time is interacting with the message. There is no collective watching, only many people having individual experiences. If you lose sight of this, every message you create could become meaningless on a personal level.

When people are engaged, they are damn smart.
You’ve done your homework and know your target. You’ve created a message that not only speaks to your target on an individual level, it will also speak to them based on their knowledge and understanding. This person is going to be engaged because you are solving a problem and/or offering them a benefit that speaks to their current situation. And once you are speaking to someone on their terms, whether they have a doctorate from Harvard or dropped out of eighth grade, you can bet that they are more likely to tune in and be receptive to your message.

Nobody likes being talked down to.
We’ve all seen the surveys that indicate most people believe themselves to be above average intelligence. Only 49% of them are right. If you want to turn someone off in a hurry, speak down to them and pretend you know more. Watch how quickly they dismiss you (and your product).

Respect people in your communications, and they will respect your brand. While it is true that the person you are speaking to is bombarded with advertising and messaging, it is equally true that they will be engaged by intelligent, thoughtful communications.

 

As a whole, marketers love determining how people are different. And ad researchers are often pushing to find how people are different. Some clients want us to tell them how their prospective customers are different. And the media outlets work diligently to explain how their audience is different than all the rest. It’s possible to get lost in finding differences and segmenting people to better communicate with them.

But beware that you don’t complexify yourself into a meaningless campaign.

It happens like this: We have 14 target audiences we need to reach. Men over 35 with a shoe size smaller than 9 tend to like our product because it makes them feel younger, teenagers with more than two siblings purchase our product because it makes them feel older, and millenials taller than 5’ 6” tend to choose us because they like the way it makes them look in the morning, and on and on. So, you put together a great media plan, create semi-custom campaigns for each of your audiences and a year later you sit back and wonder, “How come the men over 35 numbers went down? And teenagers just stopped using our product all together? Well, thankfully, sales held firm for our millenials.”

What went wrong? You have a binder that is 5” thick that proves you did your homework. Unfortunately, what you don’t have is a well-defined brand. (A quick refresher: A brand lives in people’s heads, not in your binder. If it is not well-defined, it simply means there is no common positioning and emotional feeling about you among your audience.) Why? Because you tried to give your brand unique meaning across many diverse people, based on their diversity. What you need to do is give your brand unique meaning across many diverse people, based on their sameness.

People do not make purchase decisions based on their demographics. They make decisions on a much more personal level. So, when you get into your planning, sometimes it helps to cut across your demographic segments and figure out, “how are these people the same?” “What values do they share?”
“Is there a common factor that is driving a decision to be made?”

You might be surprised at how the sameness of your segments may be the key to your campaign’s success.

 

Here’s a thought that’s so obvious, it’s easy to overlook: Before you focus on making your advertising effective, make your product or service effective. Don’t think for a minute that the success of Apple, Nike, Target or any other famous brand is based exclusively on their marketing savvy. They have great lemons. So their lemonade – the advertising and marketing efforts – seems so much sweeter.

How many times has a friend who has recently seen a movie told you, “All the good parts were in the trailer.” Inevitably they are referring to an over-hyped movie with a large promotions budget that ultimately fails at the box office. So why does it fail? It has great marketing. Maybe even a big opening weekend. But it fails because the experience leaves the promise unfulfilled.

If you want any kind of long-term success, make your “movie” great. Great marketing and advertising works only when the experience or product lives up to the marketing. And the advertising is merely an extension – a caption – of what the ultimate experience will be. That is why you rarely see infomercials, with their ridiculous overpromises, work for more than a short period.

Your first and most important priority right now (and “right now” means at any moment, in any economy) is making your product, service or offering so beneficial that your advertising simply needs to capture that in the most efficient way. And then communicate it to the right people.

Advertising will provide you no long-term solution without your benefits living up to the promise.

Lemons first. Lemonade second.

 

© 2010 3 Advertising LLC, a full-service advertising agency in Albuquerque, New Mexico.