You'd think that the proposition of giving consumers things they want, and communicating with them in ways they prefer, wouldn't be problematic in this thing of ours, this marketing circus we all work in. It's so straightforward as to be unarguable. Talk to a small business owner who's been around more than a couple of years, or a juggler busking on the street or, hell, even a fisherman, and you'll get general agreement on the principle that if you're trying to get something, you need to go where that thing is in order to get it.
Except...
In our business, it seems to happen. Marketers will do completely illogical things in order to lure consumers to them, like look for them in the wrong place, or bait their hooks with socks instead of worms.
I'm not sure why.
One marketer I pitched for did a whole bunch of focus groups about his target consumer, which happened to be 13-year-old kids. Needless to say, the focus groups all indicated that this audience was very into social media; it was their primary source of information and communication and entertainment. Other stuff on the web was fine, too, as long as it offered content that they enjoyed and used. One thing that they did not do is watch TV.
Okay, we thought. Let's run with that. We presented some really strategic digital campaigns – they used Facebook as their core, but also branched out into other social media sites, as well as guerilla outdoor. Everything we did was tightly tied into the target audience, what they wanted and how they lived. It was one of the better presentations we've ever done, and the initial reaction was extremely positive – we talked about all the possibilities of the work for another half hour past the scheduled end of the meeting.
This was followed by weeks of unnerving silence.
Turns out another agency went in with a 30 second TV spot.
Guess who won?
Now, their TV campaign didn't fail, exactly. Sales didn't drop; they actually grew some. But to me it was a huge wasted opportunity, and basically inexplicable.
Or there's the marketer I know of who insisted on doing a mobile campaign, even though his target audience was over 50, and was quite likely to have no idea what texting or SMS was. Mobile was so cool, so topical, that to him it was still worth doing.
(If we'd been living in Europe, Japan or Korea, it would've made sense. But for mobile, we're still years behind Europe, and even farther behind Japan and Korea.)
Maybe all this new technology has people screwed up. They can't trust logic, they can't trust what's worked in the past, and everything that's new seems cool – but it's scary as hell. There are no formulas any more, and no one has any answers. But based purely on looking at the respective target audiences, I definitely know two things.
To the first marketer I say, just because it's scary and cool, doesn't mean it's wrong.
To the second marketer I say, just because it's scary and cool, doesn't mean it's right.