A blog about marketing, causes and a variety of topics in the “goodsphere”

Category Archives: Advertising

A culture defined by brands?

Posted on February 20, 2010 in Advertising, Brands and Culture

How much money is spent Globally on marketing promotion?

eMarketer recently reported (via PWC) that worldwide roughly 420 Billion was spent on advertising in 2009…by 2013, this # is expected to rise to $470 Billion.  This number does not include trade spending and other forms of marketing spend, however.

Interestingly, Forrester reports that today 70% of all marketing spending is locked into trade funds and other non-traditional areas.  If you factor in this estimate and consider that the PWC study only looked at 48 countries in their ad spend survey, then annual marketing spend on driving/influencing consumer behavior across all touchpoints could easily be in the neighborhood of 1Trillion USD.

Let’s just put 1 Trillion USD into perspective:

  • 1 Trillion USD would fund the military might of all NATO countries combined or all US military activity since 9/11
  • 1 Trillion USD is greater than the entire GDP of Australia
  • 1 Trillion USD would cover everyone’s rent in the US for 3 years
  • 1 Trillion USD would buy you every stock on the Toronto stock exchange

See this video from Mint.com for details on 1 Trillion USD.

All this spending happens annually in order to stimulate Global consumer demand, influence purchase intent and grow brand equities. Consumers are footing the bill in a big way today for marketing today…

Additionally, the annual 1 Trillion $ marketing spend is bound to embed brands deeper & deeper into the culture.  J. Twitchell notes that 10% of a 2 year old’s nouns are brand names. More people recognize the Golden Arches vs the Red Cross.

Many young marketers enter the business fray and are excited about the prospect of leading projects and working on big brands with loads of marketing budget. For the most part, I don’t think many even really consider how their promotional programs intersect with culture. I know from my own experience that the fast paced nature of today’s global marketplace combined with intense business pressure does not allow for much reflection. Every so often, however, between the business reports, meetings and discussions, moments arise where marketers almost do a double take–like when you stumble upon people making parity videos of your ads on youtube, etc.

Some would argue that we live in a post-marketing age.  I would argue that we clearly live in the golden age of marketing and brands. In this marketing age, much of our shared experiences come through brands and the advertising/storytelling that brand teams & agencies create.

Like it or not, the marketing orientation is here to stay & will even increase as even the slow to adopt commodity sectors join the marketing revolution.  Even Google, long a poster child for a brand that has been built without much consumer marketing spend, started advertising in the Super Bowl…

There is a lot of power in $1.0 Trillion. There is a lot of responsibility tied up in the $$ as well.  Where will this all go in the future? How ubiquitous and embedded does marketing promo become & how will that impact our culture going forward?

Thoughts?

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Humility is dead…long live humility

Posted on January 5, 2010 in Advertising, Brands and Culture

It’s Hard to be Humble, When your Perfect in Every Way…Country singer Mac Davis

Humility is Dead…

Like some of you out there, I enjoy watching the Apprentice.  It’s interesting to watch cut-throat competition and “The Donald” say “you’re fired” to smart people every week.  Watching “The Donald” push people past their limits is sadistically fun…humility was certainly never rewarded on the show, however.

Humility is a virtue that is rarely discussed today in popular culture.  You hardly ever hear anyone talk about it on the left, or on the right.  Even conservative former drug czar Bill Bennett somehow forgot to mention humility in his Book of Virtues a few years ago.

Why don’t we hear many cultural commentators or business leaders talk about humility?  Probably because it just doesn’t fit into our self-affirming, “you can be anything you want to be when you grow up” culture…or does it?

Long Live Humility…

Jim Collins uncovered a somewhat counter intuitive finding (from our culture’s perspective) around humility in his landmark book Good to Great a few years ago.  Collins discovered that the most effective leaders were characterized as humble and strong-willed instead of brash and full of Trump-like hubris.

In his most recent book How the Mighty Fall Collins delves into the reasons why promising organizations and countries fall.  Stage 1 is, fittingly, Hubris Born of Success.

So, humility seems to be a virtue that business folks and even marketers (like me) might want to pay a little more attention to.

Humility is a little tough to pin down, however…and today, we see loads of false humility (which is really just pride).  Wikipedia notes that “True humility” is distinctly different from “false humility,” which consists of deprecating one’s own sanctity, gifts, talents, and accomplishments for the sake of receiving praise or adulation from other.  How many times have we heard PR consultants say that in order to “fix” an egregious error with the public, a celebrity needs to go onto Oprah and confess his/her “transgressions” only to see that same celebrity up to the old tricks the next week….clearly they did not mean it.

Kant sees humility as “that meta-attitude that constitutes the moral agent’s proper perspective on himself as a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified rational agent.”  Aquinas defines humility as consisting in keeping oneself within one’s own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one’s superior (tks to Wikipedia for the philosophical help here).

As humility is so counter to the prevailing culture today, adopting a more humble stance with regards to advertising/marketing promotion might be somewhat radical or breakthrough.  People long for hints of humility & authenticity today and flock in big numbers to brands that try to “keep it real.”  When Dove made a radical departure from traditional beauty advertising with a campaign like Real Beauty a few years ago, the brand shook the entire beauty industry (click here to check out Real Beauty if you have somehow missed if over the past few years).  Some might accuse Dove of pursuing false humility while others would say that Dove has stuck with its purpose led campaign for years (instead of using it as a “one shot deal” for publicity & buzz).

Don’t get me wrong…of course I believe a healthy dose of self-confidence is good.  And, we should all stretch our capabilities and use our talents.  Additionally, we all have to apply for jobs and write those dreaded resumes with loads of puffed up language about ourselves.  But, when the smiling self-help guru legions continually try to sell us on “being proud,” maybe we should listen to see if they ever mention anything about humility (at least once).  If they don’t, we should get suspicious…humility is a virtue for the ages and it deserves to be rediscovered.

So what do you think about humility?

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A New Marketing Thought Leader for Gen X / Gen Y

Posted on November 21, 2009 in Advertising, Marketing

“I have a confession to make, I lead a double life.”

Bob Gilbreath in the Marketing with Meaning introduction

If you are looking for a fresh voice from a new generation of marketers…then I highly recommend you pick up Bob Gilbreath’s new book:  Marketing with Meaning.

Yep, there are reasons why marketing heavyweights like Sir Martin Sorrell and Seth Godin rave about Bob Gilbreath’s new book.  It simply delivers.

Too often marketing books are long on hot air (how to use “shiny new objects” that are often just tactics) and short on strategic frameworks, methodologies/cases.  Bob’s book balances strategic frameworks & cases and ties them together under the mantra of marketing with meaning.

Many people have written very eloquent reviews on the book.  Here is a link to a good one by Pete Blackshaw

While cracking open the book cover on my living room couch, I grinned when Bob confessed that he’s a walking contradiction (see intro quote).  Like many of the 17 Million marketing professionals in the US, Bob is a marketer by day…and an avid marketing “avoider” by night (via Tivo, mentally blocking billboards, etc.)

After reading this great intro, I was almost hoping Bob would focus the book’s content around the Epilouge entitled, Adding Meaning to your Life (which you might want to read first) and lead us through an in-depth discussion on the perilous state of the marketing/advertising profession (is it a profession?) Side Note:  Bob also provides a fantastic cause marketing example from Luxottica in the Epilouge.

Though he touched on it briefly, I would love to read Bob’s take on the darker side of creating closer, deeper brand connections with consumers…and his thoughts on the potential negative impacts of marketers funneling cultural, political and community activities through brands (as Rob Walker puts it).  What will a world look like when we are all word of mouth agents touting products to friends, pitching in to spread the gospel virally? But, I’m digressing into shoegazing now…

Go out & buy this book if you want to understand where the future of marketing is going!  Great work Bob.

Full disclosure: Bob & I have traded thoughts/ideas, etc. over the past couple of years in the blogosphere and he was kind enough to send over a signed copy over to Geneva recently.  And, I’m probably biased because Bob has spent several years living life in the brand trenches as a Brand Manager at P&G (like me).

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Experiencing advertising exhaustion? Take 2 & call a friend in the morning

Posted on May 9, 2009 in Advertising

Image from Wikipedia

It seems that the American public is experiencing an acute case of advertising exhaustion.

A recent Harris interactive poll highlighted that Two-thirds of Americans (66%) believe advertising agencies have at least some responsibility for the current economic crisis because they caused people to buy things they couldn’t afford.  One-third (33%) believe they have complete or a great deal of responsibility.

I can understand this–especially as advertising agencies are more visible to the public through shows like Mad Men.  As this post points out, one could assume that much of the anger is directed at the financial services industry and the banks that created loan products which made it look as if we could actually afford over-priced homes (click here for a Great rant on the topic).

What I also found interesting about this survey was the group found least to blame were friends and family.  Note:  I’m not sure if Harris placed companies into the survey though obviously they are responsible for designing the products, paying for ad agency creative & funding the marketing campaigns.

But Back to Friends and Family

So friends a family didn’t get as much blame as everyone else in the Harris survey?  That’s pretty obvious I think…no one wants to blame those they love for a crisis or for influencing them to buy stuff they don’t need.  This is an obvious opportunity social media…people continue to be more cynical about push messaging.  Advice on purchasing decisions from friends & family is, however, more than welcome.

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