Blah, blah, blah
By James Hurman,
Click to hear James Hurman talk the walk
Traditional marketing is all talk and no trousers. Your customers don’t care what you say, they want to know what you do. By James Hurman
Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.” Casting our minds back over the tribulations of our primary schooling, most of us recall shouting that in fits of pre-teen angst at the mean kid across the asphalt who had publicly branded us a retard.
We were paraphrasing a notion first brought into existence via the 1450 stage drama The Towneley Play of Noah, in which the protagonist exclaimed “Thise grete wordis shall not flay me!” under similar duress, and although the updated version was better suited to our young tongues, the sentiment remained intact—that when it comes down to it, words are of limited power.
It’s a lesson that, as marketers, we’re beginning to learn. Perhaps the most meaningful trend in marketing this century is a gradual (but definite) move away from using words to persuade consumers, and towards using actions.
This past decade the hum of the marketing media has audibly changed—today the talk’s all about something we’ve given the rather unimaginative umbrella of ‘non-traditional advertising’—those campaigns that eschew the practice of delivering a message via media vehicles like television and print, which we now describe as ‘traditional’ (a burgeoning euphemism for ‘outmoded and ineffectual’).
Conventional wisdom: an advertisement quoting Bill Bernbach for the AAA School of Advertising, 1997
But why, after so much great TV and print advertising, have we come to disparage the ‘traditional’? Why is it that we now believe marketing is more effective when it breaks from its own past?
In the advertising world, the 20th century was all about Saying Things. Shortly before World War One, the McCann agency gave itself the slogan ‘Truth well told’, a pithy entrée to the wisdom of the creative revolution’s luminary Bill Bernbach, who taught us that it’s not just what we say that counts, but how we say it. “You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen,” said Bernbach, “You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.”
It’s celebrated thinking that directed the next 50 years towards brilliant advertising like Toyota’s ‘Bugger’ campaign: a claim about a product wrapped up in an emotionally captivating execution that set the country alight.
Saying Things the right way was indisputably effective, proving the worth of creativity, making celebrities of brands and millionaires of their owners.
But Bernbach also said something else: “Today’s smartest advertising style is tomorrow’s corn.” And now, as it’s officially tomorrow, we’re discovering that Saying Things is becoming increasingly cornlike.
The last few years have seen a number of research studies dedicated to declining consumer trust in advertising messages. The latest from Yankelovich is that 76 percent of people don’t believe companies tell the truth in advertising. It’s true that people have never trusted of ads, but the research tells us a story of accelerating decline. Consumer trust in advertising fell 41 percent between 2002 and 2005. Young consumers—the group considered most lucrative by modern marketers—are the most affected. Today less than 18 percent of teenagers believe that claims made in advertising are true, down from almost twice that a decade ago.
“Today less than 18 percent of teenagers believe claims made in advertising are true, down from almost twice that a decade ago. The wisdom of ‘Truth well told’ has been reframed … without any belief in truth, the ‘well told’ bit becomes rather academic”
The wisdom of ‘Truth well told’ has been reframed as a dangerous convention. Without any consumer belief in truth, the ‘well told’ bit becomes rather academic.
However, in defence of my craft, it isn’t just advertising that people are ceasing to believe. Our trust in messages from any sort of authority has dropped more or less in line with the growth of the Internet. Richard Carstens, from Auckland- and London-based communications consultancy Townsquare, says “the democratisation of information via the web brought about the ability for consumers to know what is bullshit and what is not”. Consequently, the credibility of news media has plummeted, and the general attitude toward corporate and political rhetoric has worsened. It seems people are having trouble believing words of any kind.
The familiar saying “Actions speak louder than words” has its philosophical roots in the essays of French thinker Michel de Montaigne: “Saying is a different thing from doing; we are to consider the sermon apart and the preacher apart. A man whose morals are good may have false opinions, and a wicked man may preach truth, even though he believe it not himself.” There are few of us who’d quarrel with Montaigne’s observation that what we do is more indicative of the truth than what we say.
So in a world where our customers have ceased to be persuaded by what we say, perhaps the new marketing reality is that it isn’t what we say or how we say it, but what we do that counts most.
No claims bonus: the iPod is so darn good you don’t have to say anything about it
It’s interesting to correlate Montaigne with business success in the 21st century. Pardon my dreadful unoriginality, but Apple and Google are two examples of companies that we, as marketers and business people, look up to with suitable admiration. The amount of consumer trust—not to mention financial success and cultural influence—that they have amassed is as inspiring as it is unprecedented. What’s interesting is that when you think about these organisations, they place much more emphasis on Doing Things than they do on Saying Things. Their success rests very lightly, if at all, on ‘positioning’ style advertising. They don’t have to say anything. What they’ve done with the iPod and google.com alone says it all. Consequently, consumers automatically bestow complete legitimacy on anything they do bother to talk about in their communications.
Carat’s communications planning director, Simon Bird, says it’s because the words ring true. “Apple’s ‘Think different’ is so clearly believable because everything the company does is different, as opposed to the spurious health claims of certain foods or the efficacy of cleaning products.”
What those companies understand is that Montaigne was right. Actions do speak louder than words, and if as a company you can Do Things in a creative and differentiating way, you’ll outperform companies that merely Say Things, no matter how creative and differentiating their messages.
This year at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the world’s foremost advertising awards event, it was clear that advertising agencies have also begun to agree with Montaigne. The campaigns generating the most excitement at the festival weren’t those traditional Saying Things campaigns—the television and press work—rather they were ideas that defined the new convention, campaigns that were actions rather than words.
New Zealand shone especially bright at this year’s festival, winning two of the ten Grand Prix awards in an historic effort. One was the Promo Lions Grand Prix, won by TBWA\Whybin for its ‘Bonded by blood’ campaign for adidas.
To leverage its sponsorship of the All Blacks and to help promote the new jersey, adidas took blood from all 39 ABs and then combined that blood with the ink used to print 8,000 of last year’s 45,000 commemorative All Blacks posters. The posters were given to those who purchased a black jersey.
It’s one hell of a sales promotion, but more importantly it’s an incredibly powerful statement from an All Blacks sponsor. It speaks to consumers of proud support like a slogan never could. It leaves you with a sense that adidas is a welcome member of the All Blacks’ inner circle. It summons pride in our national team in a surprising and bewitching way. And it connects the fans with their heroes, through something as pedestrian as a poster, like never before.
Beyond the slogan: Richie McCaw, Jerry Collins and Dan Carter give blood to TBWA\Whybin & adidas
The promotion sold out with the speed you’d expect and the posters are now traded globally on online auction sites for around US$400. The campaign had the viral propulsion to wind up on all manner of TV shows, newspaper pages and blog sites, as well as being spoofed by a local beer brand and copied outright by the promoters of Saw 3. But the real victory of ‘Bonded by blood’ is how persuasively it substantiates the adidas brand platform, ‘Impossible is nothing’, and the sense you get of an organisation that truly lives its brand.
Three years ago, Cannes introduced a new award—the Titanium Lion, created to recognise campaigns that break with tradition and ideas that are ‘bigger than advertising’. This year New York agency Droga5 won the Titanium Lion for ‘Tap project’, a campaign developed for UNICEF to help provide children in Third World countries with clean drinking water.
Droga5’s idea was to brand tap water: to take a product that’s ubiquitous and virtually free in wealthier countries, commodify it for a day, and deliver the proceeds to the 20 percent of the world without access to clean drinking water.
On March 22, World Water Day, hundreds of restaurants across New York emblazoned their tap water with the NY Tap brand, sold it for a dollar, and donated 100 percent of the proceeds to UNICEF.
Droga5’s campaign for UNICEF prompted diners to pay a dollar each for a bottle of New York l’eau du robinet—better known as tap water. The proceeds of each bottle provided a Third World child with clean drinking water for 40 days, and thousands paid up
For decades we’ve seen charities appeal to us with televised messages and pictures of starving children. Some of us have even reacted to the advertising and given to the cause. But actions beget actions, and this campaign persuaded people to part with their money more easily than any traditional appeal.
By adding a dollar to their dinner bill, thousands of New Yorkers each provided a child with clean drinking water for 40 days. UNICEF declared ‘Tap project’ the most successful single initiative in the organisation’s 56-year history, and has committed to implementing it in more than 100 cities by World Water Day 2009.
Another big Cannes winner for New Zealand, Clemenger BBDO’s campaign for the World Press Photo exhibition, took one of only four prizes given in the Integrated category.
Regarded as the most prestigious press photography exhibition in the world, World Press Photo has seen declining attendance over recent years and sought a persuasive new way to draw their crowd. The photos are startling portrayals of conflict in the Middle East, famine in Africa, bombings in London and natural disaster in Pakistan, and Clemenger saw these as incisive documentation of the outcome of the policy decisions that world leaders make on a daily basis. And so they wrote to 74 world leaders, including George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, inviting them to come to the exhibition to take a closer look at the world they’d created.
The ensuing campaign saw posters telling consumers that our world leaders had been invited, followed by more posters publicly displaying the letters of decline that were received back from Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice and ten others.
A simple act of Doing: writing 74 letters and putting them in the post. But it drove results that far outshone the efforts of every preceding campaign that had said ‘Come to our exhibition, the photos are really great’. Despite the worst winter in 30 years, attendance was 30 percent higher than in any other year, with 21,479 visitors.
In the advertising business we spend a lot of time talking about the power of ideas.
We believe that it isn’t the gripping copy or beautiful photography of a commercial that attracts people to our clients’ brands and products but rather the idea behind the artistry.
The idea that because of adidas you can have the All Blacks’ DNA on your bedroom wall; the idea that you can keep a child alive simply by drinking a glass of water; the idea that you can be a better person than George Bush by attending World Press Photo.
These are powerful ideas. Powerful not only because they’re inherently persuasive, but because they were all communicated in a way that encouraged them to spread. They represent the ideal of modern advertising: not to simply have ideas or to communicate those ideas, but to facilitate and encourage the spread of those ideas. It’s that ‘word of mouth’ effect that we’re so eager to generate, simply because of the voluminous supply of research that tells us that while 100 percent of people pay attention to their friends when they’re talking, a depressingly small number pay any attention to marketing.
Clemenger’s invitation to Tony Blair and other world leaders to attend the World Press Photo exhibition received a polite reply (below). The global bigshots might have stayed away, but the public was happy to take their place
In developing the new Speight’s campaign, Publicis Mojo believed they would have more luck being talked about if they Did Something than if they Said Something.
‘The great beer delivery’ aims to create a new legend for Speight’s by taking a full-scale Speight’s Alehouse to London on a boat. A grand gesture of the beer’s commitment to its drinkers that goes to literally incredible lengths to keep Kiwi blokes in the style to which they’ve become accustomed, even when they’re on the other side of the world.
Publicis Mojo head of planning Martin Yeoman says: “One of the most powerful communication channels, and the greatest influencer of brand choice, is word of mouth. As such the aim is to create something worthy of talking about. Hence we’re doing something. In this case we’re taking a pub on a boat to London.”
It appears the era of Saying Things is being brought to an end by our need to influence an increasingly sceptical consumer. Doing Things is proving a superior method to cut through, infect and persuade.
If we want people to believe what we say and if we want our ideas to catch on—if our objective is to credibly spread a message about our brand or our product, it’ll be most powerfully accomplished in today’s world by Doing Things to convey that message.
And although it appears new wisdom in marketing, it’s time-honoured elsewhere. In 1210, the French Roman Catholic Friar St Francis of Assisi counselled his fratres on effective evangelism. “Preach the Gospel at all times,” he told them. “Use words if necessary.”
Comments
Joanna Hyde
Just wanted to add a comment to this post -following on from remarks re. the success of The Tap Project in New York. The project is now running in New Zealand - over 260 restaurants and cafes have signed up around the country to partcipate this year. It launched on 9 March and will run until 9 April (World Water Day is on 22 March this year).
Donating $1 for each glass to tap water will help UNICEF NZ raise money to provide safe drinking water for children in developing countries. I'm volunteering for UNICEF NZ at the moment helping them to get the word out there. Check it out: www.tapproject.org.nz
Anonymous comments on this post are disabled. Please sign up to post a new comment.