Dubai: ‘The sole purpose of advertising is to increase sales,’ said a new management trainee. He is not alone.
That is what most marketing managers angling for their next promotion also argue. Are they right? I agree that advertising that does not produce sales is worthless.
But is a short-term sale all there is to advertising? Let’s dig a little deeper. Let’s say that a public sector department has 10 jeeps. It releases a tender notice ad. It receives tenders for 40 jeeps. Is the tender notice ad therefore as good as any other ad?
Many things pass in the name of advertising. From tender notice ads to extensions of existing campaigns as well as campaigns that build new brands. Which advertising creates the most long-term value for the clients?
Did advertising that sold the jeeps build a unique or long-term equity for the department in the public’s mind?
Advertising for Marlboro did. In the late 90s, the Wall Street whizz-kids actually put a number to it — $32 billion — based on the difference between the value of company’s physical assets and its market capitalisation.
Some smart clients would understate the pivotal role of great advertising in creating the precious brand equities that help in supporting price premiums, and tiding through difficult competitive or recessionary times. In a leading ad guru’s words, great advertising ‘produces sales in the short-run as it builds quality reputation for the long-haul’.
And it does so by offering unique identifiable personalities, and icons establishing unique relationships with the consumers. Again nobody has said it better than the ad guru — ‘Advertising so interrupting, so daring, so fresh, so engaging, so human, so believable and so well-focused as to themes and ideas that, at one and the same time, it builds a quality reputation for the long haul as it produces sales for immediate present’.
Can one measure the value being added on a day-to-day basis through each ad or campaign? That may be as impractical as conducting market research to answer all questions about a brand. However, as practitioners we need tools that help ad agencies make day-to-day judgements — about the briefs client and agencies generate and the creative ads agencies produce.
There are two truly elegant tools for this purpose. The first is the ‘brief scale’ and the second is the ‘creative scale’
Clearly, ‘Breaks through the category’ is uncommon and belongs somewhere about ‘8’ on the scale. Judgments below that are a little more subjective.
That is what senior account management, the client and creative people are paid to make calls on. But everybody is paid to help push the value we are adding to our client’s business via the quality and uniqueness of advertising we are planning and producing.
The writer is Account Director at Venture Communications.
