General Advertisers Need Less Branding, More Selling

Emotion vs. information; feeling vs. knowledge; right brain vs. left brain. Direct Marketers out there know good marketing includes all the channels. Branding for deferred, loyalty sales; direct response is for immediate response.

Response Magazine: April 2004
By Timothy R. Hawthorne

General Advertisers Need Less Branding, More Selling

New marketing "definitions" have been making the email circuit recently, intended to put a smile on the mugs of weary marketing veterans. The example E-mail statements below can be replaced with a male point of view, too, I'm sure.

You see a guy at a party, you straighten your dress. You walk up to him and pour him a drink. You say, "May I," and reach up to straighten his tie, brushing your arm lightly against his, and then say, "By the way, I'm fantastic in bed." That's Public Relations.

You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a handsome guy. One of your friends goes up to him and pointing at you says, "She's fantastic in bed." That's Advertising.

You're at a party and see a handsome guy. He walks up to you and says, "I hear you're fantastic in bed." That's Brand Recognition.

You're a woman and you see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and say, "I'm fantastic in bed." That's Direct Marketing.

These sometimes difficult-to-differentiate terms somehow come alive when put into a social interaction context. And, when it comes to competent marketing strategies, surely all these channels need to be engaged.

But Direct Marketing still agitates the majority of advertising professionals on Madison Avenue and their Corporate advertising clients - too direct; too confronting; too "salesy." The direct selling person, ad or commercial continues to be disparaged. It must be a cultural thing.

On the other hand, the subtlety of "brand advertising" is intoxicating. It involves artistry, imagery, emotion and entertainment. It's the challenge of coming up with the "Big Idea" that can create an unbreakable association between a product, it's logo, music, imagery and a pleasant, uplifting, "feel good" emotion.

A brand advertising guru once said: "People buy because of emotion; they need to feel good about the product. The last 'one foot' is that that moment and space in the shopping aisle when the hand has a choice as to what product they will select. Good feelings will win out."

You might believe that, too. That is, until you talk to my Uncle Mort - an auto dealership owner in a mid-sized Midwestern city. He hates the brand advertising his company puts out - beautiful men and women on sunset drives and urban nights out, rain-slicked pavements and happy families.

The simple reason he sneers: pretty pictures and good feeling don't move cars off his lot! When he gets together for co-op advertising with his tri-state dealership brethren, you know what kind of commercial they're going to run. It's all about horsepower, free options and low lease payments, with prominent display of his dealership's location and phone number. That's how he sells cars. It's not emotion for him; it's information.

Emotion vs. information; feeling vs. knowledge; right brain vs. left brain. Direct Marketers out there know good marketing includes all the channels. Branding for deferred, loyalty sales; direct response is for immediate response.

Procter & Gamble has recently used DRTV to great success. It may even become part of this giant's marketing arsenal. And if more general ad agencies listened to the immortal words of Bill Bernbach - "Our job is to sell our clients' merchandise... not ourselves. Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product. Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message." - then they would recognize DRTV is a necessary tactic that deserves a significant share of corporate advertisers' marketing mix dollars.