BW Online | July 11, 2003 | The "Useless Marketing" Trap

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JULY 11, 2003

NEWSMAKER Q&A

The "Useless Marketing" Trap
Author Mark Stevens explains some basic strategies to help the smart business owner avoid blowing his or her promotional budget

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Spend a little time eavesdropping on ad-agency types and, as with members of any trade or profession, it won't be long before you hear the men and women of Madison Avenue talking shop -- and doing so in two very different ways. In public, their comments tend to be the sort of collegial, glad-handing blandishments that fill the air when the industry gathers every year to hand out its Clio awards, the ad game's Oscars.

In private, however, the tone is rather different. Yes, the ads and marketing campaigns that the pros regard as the cream of the latest crop are apt get a measure of grudging respect from those who didn't make them. But more often, around the water cooler and in the conference room, the put-downs of other ad outfits' efforts are cutting and caustic. That's what makes ad man and author Mark Stevens' candor so refreshing. On the record, and without any hint of apology, he asserts that the ad industry has been leading its clients on a very expensive safari down the garden path.

"If you have an advertising agency that applies for any kind of award -- Clios, whatever -- fire them immediately," urges Stevens, president of Westchester (N.Y.)-based MSCO, a full-service marketing firm. "If they talk about building 'mind share', fire them immediately as well. That's just another way of saying they'll camouflage their failure to generate sales behind an intellectual smoke screen."

RESULTS ARE THE ONLY MEASURE. They are points he makes over and over again in his new book, Your Marketing Sucks (Crown Business, $24), which taps a wealth of anecdotal evidence to argue that a Clio on the mantelpiece is no measure of a marketing campaign's success. The only indication of ad money having been well spent, says Stevens, is a boost for the bottom line (see BW Online, 7/11/03, Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit).

Stevens spoke recently with BusinessWeek Online's Roger Franklin about his book, the marketing mystique, and why he believes so many businesses are paying top dollar for ineffective -- and sometimes, counterproductive -- promotional campaigns. One of his surprising observations: When it comes to getting the maximum bang for the marketing buck, small businesses are the undisputed champs. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:

Q: Was that your goal when you decided to write the book?
A: I believe in doing things in business with a philosophy, and I realized, almost subliminally, that I had developed, and my company had developed, a philosophy that we use in helping to build companies. You see, I purposely avoid the word "marketing" because I think marketing is useless unless it builds companies. As it's understood, marketing, is often an expensive, useless toy.

So this philosophy of mine was in the back of my mind and it came out in the book, even though I didn't know that it was going to come out. But I guess the concept was driven by an incident I write about, when I told this guy that his marketing sucks. That was just a natural reaction on my part, telling a prospective client, "I don't want to talk to you because your marketing sucks." I'm sure every sales book in the world would tell you, don't ever say anything like that.

Q: Define marketing. Is it making a customer love your business?
A: Well, no. Smart marketing to me is growing your business, let's start there. Is good marketing making you customer love you? Is it cross-selling? Is it finding new customers? Is it data-mining? Is it coming up with brand awareness? No. It's building your business.

Look, here's an example of what marketing isn't, or shouldn't be: those Miller Lite ads with the girls fighting and tearing each other's clothes off, the ones that were canned after they caused all sorts of fuss. To me, what some people found offensive wasn't the real issue -- it was that they were driving men to the bedroom, not to the supermarket, where the beer is sold. The creative guys who created that campaign weren't thinking about the point of sale, but they hardly ever do.... Their minds are filled with winning a Clio [ad-industry award]. These guys don't go into supermarkets and walk around, observing and thinking about what goes into buying beer, and specifically, how they can help their clients sell more of it....

That ad was just dumb. Yes, it alienated some people, but I don't think that the politically correct crowd was what they wanted, so if the brawling babes strategy had actually sold beer to the guys, if it had been driving guys to the supermarket and not the bedroom, then I'd say, "Hey, they did a smart marketing thing. Yeah, it was politically incorrect, but it worked, so the hell with people who didn't like it."

The thing is, though, it was politically correct and marketing-and-sales incorrect, too. That's the worst one-two punch you can possibly have. You make enemies and you make no sales. That's what they did. They spent a huge amount of money to make enemies and not sell beer. All the men in America should write Miller a thank-you card for the entertainment -- while we're drinking Buds!

Here's another example of useless marketing: General Motors every year probably spends millions of dollars on brochures and then crop-dusts them across the country and in its dealerships. Now there's not a single car salesman in the history of Detroit -- I'm exaggerating to a certain extent -- who has ever used a brochure to sell a car. And yet GM keeps churning them out, spending that money without building the business.

Q: What are your thoughts on those multimillion-dollar Super Bowl spots that the dot-coms were spending so much on a few years ago?
A: This is the win-a-Clio approach, and it's so preposterous because, the day after the game, the media rates and lists the 10 best ads. My question is: How do they know which are the best ads? Those ads haven't sold anything yet. Those ads are judged for their aesthetics and entertainment value, not their selling power.... Imagine going to the managements of the companies buying those ads and saying, "Excuse me, are you willing to spend $2 million to entertain people for 30 seconds?" They'd say absolutely not and tell you to get lost. But the jokes is on them because that's exactly what they're doing -- entertaining not selling.

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