#331/Jan 12, 2025

As you know, I take great pride in being a Luddite dinosaur, out of step with contemporary marketing/advertising/branding practices. Being trained by experience rather than instructors can sometimes be an advantage. I've had to invent my own ideas for how marketing works, often in contradiction to the prevailing 'wisdom.' So far I've done ok.

Lately, I've been noticing two things in the literature of our industry. First is that we ad people seem very confused about what we're supposed to be doing: Positioning? Differentiation? Long term? Short term? Performance? Brand meaning? Brand purpose? WTF?

Second is that every article I read seems to be chock full of stats and charts and graphs. There's nothing wrong with stats and charts and graphs. I employ them often myself. But they're not the whole story.

So let's try going back to first principles and resetting our thinking about our business by looking at it from another perspective. Let's see if we can figure out what the hell we're doing without mathematics. Let's just try thinking about advertising. Dare I call it philosophy?

Is philosophy a substitute for math? No, but it is a useful counterbalance. So let’s do a little advertising 'philosophizing.' 

Marketing is not fundamentally about products, prices, media, technology, or any of the other things marketers obsess over. Marketing is about how human beings behave. I've been around marketers for almost 50 years and I've heard them ask millions of questions. But I've never once heard a marketer pose the single most important philosophical (and practical) question that every marketer needs to ask and answer...

                             Why do people buy some products and not others?

Unless you have a clear answer to this question your activities are likely to be confused and you are likely to be throwing money at ineffective and wasteful endeavors. So what’s your answer? Why do people buy some products and not others?
I’ll tell you mine.

My answer comes in three parts. And my 'philosophy' about advertising will be derived from these answers.

Part one, obviously, is the product itself. Does it do what it’s supposed to do? Is it designed with craftsmanship? Is it priced attractively? Does the company behind it take good care of its customers? Do people I know use it and like it?

The second part of my answer is marketing. I will defer to Prof. Sharp who assures us that the primary marketing keys to successful brand growth are “mental and physical availability.” I have every confidence that Prof. Sharp knows what he’s talking about. But as a writer, I am uncomfortable with his choice of words.

As all academics do, I’m sure Prof. Sharp chose his language very carefully when he coined the term “mental and physical availability.” The problem is, the term sounds frighteningly like marketing geekspeak. One of the ongoing problems that marketers face is that when actual humans are obliged to listen to us, they roll their eyes and think “here we go again.”

Consequently, instead of “mental and physical availability” I prefer the more mundane terms “fame and distribution.” I’m sure Prof Sharp has ten good reasons why “mental availability” is different from “fame” and why “physical availability” is different from “distribution,” but I’m going to assert (with absolutely no evidence) that somewhere around 93% of the time they mean exactly the same thing. At least to a dumbass blogweasel they do.

In academia, "fame and distribution" would not sit well. They are  inelegant and mundane terms, while “mental and physical availability” evoke far more gravitas. Being an inelegant and mundane person (can a person be mundane?) I’m willing to be imprecise 7% of the time if it allows me to communicate more clearly. It is my belief that when we say “mental availability”  about 99% of humans who are not marketers have absolutely no idea what the fuck we’re talking about.

So to sum up part two, marketing's two essential contributions to the buying process are fame and distribution.

This leads us to the third component of why people buy some products and not others: Advertising.

Advertising is a small part of marketing. We advertisers don’t control the product. We don’t control the pricing. We don’t control the sales force, the distribution, the customer service or the business strategy. But we do influence one of the levers of brand growth - mental availability  fame. The primary influence advertising has on brand growth is fame — the creation of fame and the maintenance of fame.

The simplest and, in my opinion, most important notion for marketers to understand is this: People are more likely to buy products that are famous than products that are not famous. If you want a big, muscular brand you've got to become famous. Fame best describes the fundamental influence of advertising. It's not the entire influence, but it's the fundamental influence.

Is this always the case? No. Is it usually the case? Yes. Nothing in marketing is absolute. All we have are likelihoods and probabilities.

For those committed to the primacy of differentiation and positioning, I will agree that these factors are useful and valuable. However I will also assert that the most powerful differentiator for any brand is to be the most famous in its category. And the most powerful position for any brand is to be the most famous in its category.

When an advertising person is asked what contribution advertising makes to the question “Why do people buy some products and not others?” we should not be coy. The correct answer is fame.

Is fame a guarantee of success? No. Famous brands die every year. Fame is strong, but stupid is stronger. 

There are a million little details that make a product successful. But if we want to have a lucid, coherent basic philosophy for why people buy some products and not others we have to create a framework from a few simple axioms. Mine are these:
   1. The manufacturer's most important job is to make a product worth buying
   2. The marketer's most important job is to make the product available and attractive
   3. The advertiser's most important job is to make the product famous

The rest is mostly footnotes.

For much more on this subject, you are cordially invited to read my newest book,  “The Three Word Brief”

According to MediaPost, in the 1990's, the big six advertising holding companies accounted for almost 50% of worldwide ad spending. Today that number is less than 25%. About 2/3 of agency media revenue now comes from online media. 'Online media' is just fancy talk for a handful of huge platforms. Google, Meta and Amazon alone account for about 60% of US online ad revenue.

As noted recently in this space, the holding companys’ media agencies have become little more than the sales department for the platforms. Small and medium size agencies, and client internal media departments, can buy from these platforms as easily as the holding companies. And since advertising on these platforms requires nothing that any sane person would describe as 'creative' advertising, the traditional power of agencies has been substantially diminished.

The most telling part of the proposed marriage of these two companies can be found in press reports. The Wall Street Journal broke the story with this headline, “Omnicom to Acquire Interpublic in Deal That Will Reshape Advertising Industry.” The word that doesn’t belong in that headline is “advertising.” Neither Omnicom nor IPG is an advertising agency. They are financial institutions that buy advertising agencies and milk them.

If you need convincing, here’s this from the joint press release issued by the two companies: "This strategic acquisition creates significant value for both sets of shareholders by combining world-class, highly complementary data and technology platforms enabling new offerings to better serve our clients and drive growth,” said John Wren, Chairman & CEO of Omnicom. Anyone see the word 'advertising' in there ?

Philippe Krakowsky, Interpublic's CEO had this to say, "Our two companies have highly complementary offerings, geographic presence and cultures. We also share a foundational belief in the power of ideas, enabled by technology and data.” Again, the missing word is advertising.

These guys love to talk about their technology and data 'offerings' but seem to have forgotten that they’re supposed to be pretending they’re in the advertising business.

Why is this deal a great big nothingburger? Who gives a flying shit which financial institution -  masquerading as an ad agency - gets to continue the relentless march to mediocrity?

This deal is just further evidence that the holding companies are being de-coupled from the actual creation of advertising, and are searching for some 'offerings' to keep from drowning.

The facts tell us that the customers have noticed. That's how you go from 50% market share to below 25%.

This is all part of advertising's semi-conscious sleepwalk into "industrialization,' i.e., the optimization of efficiency over craftsmanship. It is just one big depressing saga.

If you think this hasn't had an affect on the public I suggest you get out in the street and ask some real people (ya know, the 'consumers' we all claim we know so much about) what they think of contemporary advertising. I promise you will be appalled.

I got a call recently from someone associated with NBC. They wanted me to audition for either one of the 'genius' roles or one of the 'expert' roles. I politely declined. There are some things too tacky even for a blogweasel.

All my friends said I should have done it. All my friends are idiots.

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