Commercials Don't Sell Shoes. Nor Should They.

As an advocate of interesting, I don’t hate performance marketing. In fact, some of my best friends are performance marketers. But most of them agree (particularly those from agencies) that the reflexive emphasis on (very) short-term objectives and (over) reliance on buying eyeballs at the bottom of the purchase funnel with minimal concern for the role of content is not a sustainable strategy for businesses that want to survive and grow for more than a few financial quarters. Furthermore, it has crimped and distorted the view of what marketing is for and how it is different from sales.

Of course, the idea of paying only for marketing performance has bounced around for years. And while it sounds great for agencies and clients to have the same financial incentives, I think it tends to induce more short-term, risk-averse groupthink than its supposed advantages in transparency can counterbalance. But that’s another topic. My point here is that the pervasive culture of ‘performance marketing’ has led to a suffocating, expensive, and mind-numbingly boring traffic jam of marketers at the narrow end of the purchase funnel. And while the purchase funnel itself is a questionable metaphor for actual human behaviour, it is the roadmap that leads so many to continue barrelling into the back of the traffic jam.

Avinash Kaushik, who created the See-Think-Do-Care funnel that Google uses to attract advertisers, actually went back to bemoan the overwhelming focus on the Do level:

“The Do audience intent cluster is, think of how crazy this is, the one on which 97.296% of the current marketing activity is focused: an audience with strong commercial intent, close to making a purchase. (Since there is such little understanding, or accommodation, of intent by marketers, at a company, or agencies huge and small, all those ads on TV and display ads on websites – BUY NOW, BUY NOW PLEASE! – are simply trying to maximize the chance they'll bump into Do intent. In the process, annoying everyone in the See and Think intent clusters!)” (https://lnkd.in/eRPw2nJ8)

Besides the primary motive of risk-aversion (Spoiler Alert: Marketing is Risk. Don’t run from it! Use it!), there is a bit of ‘looking for your keys where the light is’ as well:

Providers like Google (via GA) and Facebook have advertising analytics infrastructure that is geared towards measurement at the ‘Do’ stage of the model because that is really the only place where their solutions are able to measure effectively. And this, by definition, drives up demand for ad inventory here. Which in turn drives up prices. So, the challenge is to look for solutions that enable you to target and influence users further up the funnel in the ‘See’ phase, where they are researching brands and different offerings. And advertising costs are lower. (https://lnkd.in/eA7V2utH)

In short, there is light at the top of the funnel. But to thrive there, you have to be interesting.

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https://www.ft.com/content/ab4be8eb-6dc7-46b6-9604-4bea5795e8b7

Adding to this:

“Advertising has grown more complicated,” Miller told me. “There is more data and research than ever before. But just because you know what your customer had for lunch and who they follow on TikTok, doesn’t mean you know how to inspire them or make them remember you. That can only come from somewhere human and instinctual. Trusting the gut of a singular voice like Riswold is hard to translate into [return on investment] and language that accountants can understand.”

"What will be lost when the last carnival barker is succeeded by programmatic advertising that speaks not to us but to the digital shadows we cast?"

Jim Riswold in this profile in FT.