Page 3 of 3
As if all this turmoil weren't enough, there has been a growing mistrust of the effectiveness of advertising itself - at least from clients using mainstream television advertising. Proctor & Gamble President John Pepper found the fear that advertising had lost its punch so disquieting, he spoke out against the idea at a recent meeting of the American Association of Advertising Agencies- he later barred distribution of that speech.
But if Pepper hoped to sway the attitudes of fellow executives, he was too late. A seminal report from SRI International Values and Lifestyles- the unfortunately titled "Lifestyle Marketing," by Charles Hampden-Turner and Franklin Carlile- had already showed that business executives mistrust advertising. The study, which quoted a 1985 survey of product managers in 28 countries, found that American business executives, in particular, extolled the energy that U.S. companies put behind their sales efforts. Only the Japanese perceived themselves to be more assiduous marketers.
But for all the money and effort that we invest, American business executives said, U.S. companies still haven't been able to convince consumers that we produce quality products. Business executives from Brazil, Austria, Saudi Arabia and New Zealand all had more faith in the reputations of the products they make that Americans had in American goods. The disenchantment with advertising emerged, logically enough, from the spluttering growth in many consumer-product industries over the last few years. From fast food to fashion to electronics to toys, nearly every consumer business has been affected. In part, the cause has less to do with advertising that with changing demographics. "On one hand, we have increasing numbers of marketers," says Tom Mandel, an SRI International management consultant, "and those marketers are becoming more competitive. On the other hand, consumer spending is growing at 2% per year. And there won't be much more growth in that."
In its heyday, advertising did double duty. While it built brands and market share for the companies that used it, advertising also expanded the overall market by convincing nonconsumers of a product or service to become consumers. The double-barreled firepower of advertising made it a deadly marketing weapon. Now one of those barrels is plugged. "For the past three years, for the first time in the history of our business we noticed a flattening of the growth of the quick-service industry," says Peter Nelson, senior vice president of marketing at McDonald's Corp. "In order to retain our growth, we looked to become a lot more aggressive than in prior years. Now, to grow, you've got to take business away from the other guy."
Diminishing confidence in advertising also has much to do with the clutter of television, advertising's handmaiden. It has become commonplace to say that television is vastly less effective than it once was in reaching large audiences, and several times more expensive per customer. But most large agencies are so experienced with mass marketing through television that they find it difficult to wean themselves away from it.
But the most telling change is a sense that consumers themselves mistrust advertising much more than they ever have before. "You can't pull wool over consumers' eyes any more," says a marketing consultant, Jay Levinson, the author of the book Guerrilla Marketing. "It used to easier, but people now have built-in b.s. detectors thanks to all the advertising they've seen."
Some marketers, of course, dispute that idea. Depending on whom you talk to, customers are perceived as vastly more skeptical than they used to be, hardly skeptical at all or so busy they don't have time to care, especially about something like a brand of soap.
Instead of prompting a call for more creative campaigns, the new age seems to be producing an unprecedented introspection in marketers- not through any love of introspection, but because all else seems to fail.
Thanks to the repercussions of the Age of Mistrust, statements that would have seemed heretical five years ago now seem like conventional wisdom. This, for instance, from the SRI report: "What are the costs to businesses of thousands of hours of commercials featuring mostly simple ad standardized products, which are being noisily differentiated because they are actually so similar? If the battle of the scouring pads makes business look simple when in fact it is complex, trivial when in fact it is serious, and low in information because there is nothing important to say about many highly advertised products, then the price of this misunderstanding must be paid by the overall economic system, which desperately needs consumers' trust, intelligence, participation, commitment and respect."
The results are new types of relationships being forged by marketers in this Age of Mistrust. It's too soon to say what those relationships will be, but already it is clear that a new code of behavior is evolving. This code will govern the personal relationships between people from different firms who come together to work on the same projects for brief periods of time. While interviewing people for this article, I detected considerable suspicion- often half-whispered- among advertisers, agency people and retailers.
But I have also begun to hear a sense, if not of trust, then at least of grudging respect- it won't be easy to snow anyone anymore. The rules of the game have changed, and the winners are negotiating with the currency of their reputations. In an age of mistrust, that's the only way to have a relationship.
back