According to research marketers are being held accountable for every dollar they spend but is that enough? All you have to do is watch an hour of TV to realize that there are still a lot of networks and brands that just don’t get it.
Sometimes I wonder if any marketer has heard of effective reach. They seem to rerun the same TV spots over to the point that more and more consumers are multitasking while watching TV or streaming video. Those insurance company spots are more than a nuisance, they have become irritating. If I ever see Flo in real life she’s going to get a bitch slap.
Don’t get me wrong, TV can be a great awareness builder, but when you run the same commercials over and over it’s easy to alienate your audience and turn them against your brand. A great example, are the Liberty Mutual spots that have been running everywhere. Just Google “Liberty Mutual sicks” and look at all the hits from customers who have been dissatisfied with their product. Yet they keep running spots, thinking the public is too dumb to do their research. Who is going to help accountable? The VP of Marketing with the corner office overlooking downtown Boston or the agency that’s making a fortune off their TV ads which have surpassed effective reach months ago.
I still see, today, marketing executives who are more interested in getting their names and pictures in trade magazines rather than doing what is best for the brand. They are usually coddled by the agencies who are always willing to spend clients money and implement programs they know are ineffective. As Ad Age has reported time and time again agencies are in trouble as over 50% of brands are putting their accounts up for review.
We desperately need new thinking and blood in the marketing arena. Consumer attention spans are too damn short to fight for attention and hope it leads to conversion. Social media marketing wasn’t the answer and the hype around mobile is again trying to convince marketers that a mobile strategy is the answer to all their marketing woes.
Great marketers are not made will an overload of data. They are people who can see their brand from outside the bubble and ask “what’s in it for me?”.
