Campaign

Every part of the country seems to have one of these phrases - the London version being "to get off the Eurostar at Ashford" (or perhaps now Ebbsfleet).

Marketing, of course has something similar. Those campaigns where everything about the initial brand promise is good, but where it never quite goes, er, "all the way" to purchase.

I must admit I "got off at Edge Hill" when it came to the Sony Bravia.

It began well. The Bravia advertising drove me to investigate large LCD TVs in the first place and I was even on the point of ordering one; yet somehow, both online and in-store, I failed to find that one little factual sentence, in writing or from a salesman, which justified what seemed to me a fairly outlandish price premium. I also had an unresolved fear that Sony TVs were in the habit of displaying a large green "2" on the screen which was difficult to make go away. Lacking any reassurance that this would not be the case with the Bravia, I went and bought a Toshiba instead.

 
So far, so anecdotal. What makes this all the more interesting is recent research evidence of just how many retail decisions do take place in store. This fine post references a worldwide survey conducted by my chums at OgilvyAction suggesting that in some categories the majority of purchase decisions happen in the shop. As many as 10% of customers may enter a store intending to buy a specific brand only to leave completely empty-handed, even though it is in stock.

My TV-buying experience may not be all that unrepresentative. While many marketers base their strategies on US research, this study shows key differences between shopper habits in the US and the UK. For example, men in the UK are more fickle in their shopping habits than women and more influenced by in-store activity, so less likely to stick with their original purchase plan than their colonial counterparts.

 “Dominance outside the store does not guarantee you sales instore ,” says Andrew Aylett, Planning Director at OgilvyAction. In fact, high-profile ad campaigns often drive sales for other rival brands. One campaign for a leading brand in the confectionery sector, for example, drove consumers to the corresponding aisle in the supermarket, giving smaller brands the chance to “hijack” these shoppers and capture their spend.

To prove this is not only an Ogilvy obsession, you will also find a very interesting piece on Shopper Marketing by Simon Moore and Marina Foxlee in the latest Market Leader. As with the Ogilvy piece, it is keen to dissociate the art of shopper marketing from price promotion. This seems to me a really essential distinction - especially now.

At the moment, there is, quite rightly, a spate of articles and think pieces from the advertising industry disparaging a recessionary tendency for clients' expenditure on measurable short-term activities to supplant investment in the immeasurable long-term value of brands. This is what Tess Alps calls "confusing countability with accountability."

This is, I think, a very fair criticism to make. But it needs a little qualification. Just because spending money close to the moment of sale is indeed highly measurable (search would be another example of this) does not mean it is necessarily short-termist. In fact it is only by getting elements such as shopper marketing or search marketing right that it is worth spending money on longer-term brand building at all. After all, if you are going to fall at the last fence, why bother even starting the race?

There are, of course, short-term transactional practices which damage brands. But people have a dangerous habit of conflating the transactional with the short-termist. This is simply wrong. Packaging design, search marketing, shopper marketing are all measurable and weighted towards the moment of purchase - but this does not mean they cannot help build brands. They also have another virtue; they are relatively cheap.
 

Although that's actually a disadvantage in agency world. One of the most frustrating things about working in any below the line capacity is that money is apportioned to your agency not in accordance with the value you can add, but in proportion to how much your discipline costs overall. Anything without huge media costs attached generally ends up with the ***-end of a budget. Maybe that will start to change this year. But I doubt it.