Ouch! As a marketer I am sure this figure does sit well with you. Truth be told it is really hard to quantify what our advertising ROI is. It is a hard figure to measure and I am sure most marketers are not sure what their marketing return is.

There is the old saying that 50% of advertising work? We seem to be happy to go with this and every day we see marketers dedicating their budgets to the advertising gods.

So What’s The Real Cost Of Advertising?

As part of my research for www.makingmobilemediawork.com, I came across Graham Brown. Graham Graham Brown is director of Youth Research Partners in London who offers really keen insights into the young minds of the future.

He has a weekly webinar, in which he recently shared some really scary stats:

• an 18-year-old has received 800,000 marketing messages in their life
• they now tune out 95% of all traditional advertising
• about 70% of adverting messages are not trusted [seen stats ranging here from 30-70%]

The Advertising Gods Are Nothing More Than Your Toilet Drain

The numbers by themselves are really scary and if they don’t make you sit up and take a serious look at how you market then I don’t know what will.

But to put this into context and to try and understand the impact on this lets step back and put our marketing into context.

The Brand Equation

As marketers were taught a very simple equation for a brand strategy:

Brand = Product + Identity + Mass Media Broadcast

As an example Colgate toothpaste took fluoride toothpaste, essentially a commodity, and created the idea of Fresh Breath Confidence. This idea has been pushed out through every single different communication medium that has been available to Colgate.

It’s quite clear when we look at the brand value of Colgate toothpaste that this approach has worked very well up till now. The brand is worth It is worth billions of dollars.

But Not To 18-Year-Olds

Colgate can spend all they want to buy an 18 years attention but 95% will ignore them and there just isn’t the trust or belief in what a brands say anymore.

If we look at the big four South African banks they are in exactly the same position. Their brand equation looks like this:

• Standard Bank = Bank + Moving Forward*
• ABSA = Bank + Today, Tomorrow, Together
• Nedbank= Bank + Make Things Happen
• FNB = Bank + How Can We Help You

*This was [inspired, motivated, involved] and [simpler, better, faster] created by confused marketing gurus

There really is nothing that differentiates these four banks and nothing that is going make an 18 year old choose one over the other?

Certainly when you look at the options that are available, one will resonate more than the others. But this has nothing to do with the banks advertising or anything to do with the brand idea.

Most people don’t believe these ideas when they are broadcast through traditional media. I don’t and I’m quite sure you don’t either.

But Wait … It’s About Social Media … Dummy!

You would think so when your target market is an 18 year old. But it is not and is the mistake that most marketers are making when it comes to the new media platforms like online and mobile.

Let’s go back to the banks and look at the different media platforms that these banks are using. They are not shy and they are using every media available to them. They are ticking all the boxes:

• Above The Line
• Below The Line
• PR
• Online
• SEO
• Social Media
• Internal Communication
• Sponsorship
• Mobile

Why Broadcasting Through Social Media Will Not Work

The adverting agency is approaching these new technologies using the same traditional media approach:

Broadcast (or propaganda).

The banks communication approach is to take their big idea and push it through every single media that they can find.

Their approach to Twitter is exactly the same as their approach to TV. They believe that they can capture people’s attention, and that people’s will believe what they say. Not so anymore.

Today there is a different marketing reality where:

what your customer says about your brand is far more important than what you say about it.

So Let’s Check Your ROI?

If we take Graham Brown’s figures and apply them to the four banks, it is clear that this approach is not the way to go. Here’s the return you will get on your investment:

• 100 000 customers
• 5% hear you = 5 000
• 30% believe you = 1 500

Four banks targeting 1 500 customers? Spending how much? With the maximum potential return of 1.5%.

Sh!t  - oh excuse me – Ouch!!!!

So, what do we do?

Forget Technology. It Is How Your Customer Thinks That’s Changed

It is quite clear that marketing has changed because how our customers think has changed. And here is the major problem. Most marketers see this as change in media platforms or technology rather than a change in customer thinking.

Its why you see major brands posturing themselves and calling themselves customer centric:

• Through one Twitter account for thousands of customers
• Putting up their latest adverts on you tube for you to drool over (yes, I know, you just cannot wait for the new Standard Bank advert to published).
• Having a call centre that is disempowered to solve your problems.
• Creating business process and systems that ignore their customer’s needs.
• And so on …

When I look at this example above its really clear that marketers have a really long way to go. Maybe more importantly business has a long way to go. Change is hard and as humans we default to what is familiar. This is understandable.

But it’s time some new marketing rules.

The New Rules For Marketing

Here are my five new rules of marketing (and for running a business):

• Your Brand Is A Mindset: Your brand is worth something, because your customers believe it is worth something. This is why Colgate is worth billions – and it is not because of the fluoride toothpaste they use or about your product, features and benefits. It is about what your product does for your customers and how that allows them to express themselves and tell their own story.
• The Desire Already Exists: So stop trying create it with really expensive advertising campaigns. It’s time to channel it, leverage it. It’s time to get your customers involved.  This means you really need to understand how your customer thinks and understand the micro-niche is within your larger market segments.
• Contextual integration: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Whether you use TV, Print, Twitter, Facebook is not the point. It’s time to start talking with your customers rather than at your customers, and become part of a broader conversation that is relevant and meaningful. It is about being contextually relevant through every single touch point.
• Paid Versus Earned Media: Your customers are not listening to you anymore. And what they say about you is far more important than what you say about you. You need to get them on board by creating such a positive, mind-blowing customer experience that they keep coming back to you for more — and they bring their friends with them. (interesting post on Nielson stats by Loic Le Meur on this)
• Loyalty: The objective of your marketing campaign is to create customers who are loyal and keep coming back for more. So stop focusing on awareness, AR’s and any other relevant measurement. It’s not going to help you. Focus on customer loyalty.

It A Golden Opportunity

This shift in how your customer thinks is a golden opportunity. It is there for the taking. All you need to do is stop being a technician and start becoming a marketer. I will leave you with a quote from Graham Brown’s Website from Seth Godin that gives you a clue where to start:

“Don’t waste your energies selling to the unconverted. Find the 10% already sold on your brand and sell to them. They will take care of the rest.”

We call this Fansourcing … And thanks to Graham Brown for his unwitting contribution …