Advertising, ye ‘old engine of capitalism, sure has been taking a pounding lately. Is it a victim of the “wild west” internet and the lovely chaos we’re all involved with? In the world of Web 2.0 marketing, value-add content (i.e. useful information) is king, and when everybody starts chatting, re-tweeting, and blogging about this valuable information, it builds the brand. “No need for your filthy, self-centered ADVERTISING,” so the reasoning goes.
A lively conversation about Brand Bank Accounts went on last week within David Meerman Scott’s WebInkNow blog. I found myself defending advertising. I used to write a lot of B-to-B product and service ads before I gravitated to other forms of marketing communications.
It’s true that AdSpeak, brag and boast, and me-me-me ad copy are definitely ineffective and passé. Good riddance. But advertising can focus on delivering the kind of valuable content that Web 2.0-focused marketing folk are talking about.
For instance, Case Study copy allows potential customers to visualize themselves benefiting from a new technology, and “how-to” themes provide helpful tips and application ideas.
Ads accelerate awareness, and should provide a way for the marketplace to comment. On-line ads certainly could be formatted to let people chime in – rather than just expecting the reader to click-through to a static website for more information (or unfortunately in many cases, a hard-sell pitch).
Take a look at IBM’s new “Decade of Smart” campaign. Two-page spreads running this month in Business Week, Forbes and other magazines provide a fact-rich narrative on the ways that various industries are using smarter information systems. This is thought-provoking stuff. No hype for IBM products. It ends with an invitation to “join us” in building a smarter planet at ibm.com/smarterplanet.
This is advertising that doesn’t “subtract” from brand equity, as suggested (categorically) by Huib Van Bockel (a marketing director for Red Bull) as reported in David’s blog: “Brands withdraw from their accounts through the attention that they demand from consumers in the form of television commercials, print ads and the like.” Mr. Van Bockel’s important theme, however, is that brands add to their “accounts” by creating things of value, and that a brand needs to give more than it receives. So true.
Unfortunately, too high a percentage of advertising doesn’t offer valuable information, and much of it is blatantly self-serving; in the B-to-B world we have an opportunity to do better than this. Let us know what you think.
Strategic Outreach 
I agree that advertising is still an important part of the marketing mix. We typically use space advertising (both print and Web) for brand building — a way to deliver high-level messaging that sets the stage for the much more targeted marketing we do via other vehicles.
To put a different twist on this conversation, there’s another reason we advertise: publications (whether print or print+Web) are under significant pressure in this economy. Ad pages are shrinking; trade pubs are on the brink. In many cases, we want to support publications that cover our market. These publications often publish reviews of products in our category, and those reviews are key purchase factors for many of our customers. The symbiotic relationship between market and trade pubs must be evaluated and acknowledged.
Well done, Dave. A good distinction between corporate chest-thumping and the delivery of relevant brand value. Far too many organizations (BtoB and otherwise) don’t understand a simple axiom: a brand is NOT the property of the company. It belongs to their audience: their prospects and customers. It must cleave to the ideals and desires of that audience, it must adapt to follow the evolution of that audience, and it must be continuously energized by discourse with, and meaningful response to, that audience. My bedrock advice to companies interested in building marketshare, to wit: shut up about yourselves. Talk about your audience, and your intimate knowledge of their desires. Let them decide where your abilities agree with their needs. Then they’ll come a-runnin’.
Thanks for your insights, Tina and Adrian. Glad the issue of supporting the publications came up. I had almost ended my post by mentioning it, then thought that it sounded like an excuse. It’s absolutely relevant. Publication channels are important – we want messages directly from the the marketplace (via ads) and journalism to flow through them, and somebody has to pay the costs of the channel.
And to Adrian: eloquently said…the evolution of the message and interaction from the receiver. And to the point about letting the audience decide where offering meets needs: you know full well from your work that the best advertising messaging lets the audience complete the thought with their own components; the “Seduction” part of Matthew May’s argument for simplicity, elegant solutions.
Hey Dave, Good to see you in action here on this blog and thanks for linking to my stuff. I really like Huib’s ideas and glad to see the conversation continuing.
Take care, David