Media Shift Meets Resistance: Television writers push back

The Writer’s Guild of America (east and west) released an interesting position paper calling for a Code of Conduct on the integration of commercial messages into television content. The Guild, rightly in my opinion, is concerned about the creep of product placements and near-subliminal advertising into television content. The group holds that this increasing practice compromises their art and places pressure on them to become advertising copywriters rather than entertainment story writers.

According to their paper, a survey indicates that 73% of their members think the line between advertising and content needs to be clearly drawn. The group is calling for this Code of Conduct that they propose include, among other things, full and clear disclosure of product integration deals at the beginning of programs and strict product integration limits on children’s programming.

The stakes are enormous because millions of dollars worth of advertising revenue per show are on the line.

Advertisers and producers who sign advertising deals are now at odds with writers and actors who are often told at the last minute to work commercial messages or endorsements into the content of the program.

As the mass advertising model of commercial television continues to fall apart before our eyes, advertisers continue to seek ways to get their messages seen and heard by seeking new ways to invade the media that we consume. Consumers, however, are savvier than ever about these attempts and now the writers enter the fray by actively resisting. The days of mass audiences who can quickly and easily be reached merely by purchasing a 30- or 60-second advertising spot are slowly fading.

I am waiting to report on the first marketer who stands up and makes a bold statement by sponsoring an entire show, proudly proclaiming that fact, and works tirelessly with producers and writers to ensure the show is so compelling and desirable that consumers will thank them for it and reward their brand.

Bold prediction: Advertisers, producers and writers will soon be forced into becoming equal partners in the development of television (and digital) entertainment content.

And guess what?

When that happens, consumers will also become equal partners because knowledge of consumers’ preferences will have to be precisely known before the process even begins. No advertiser in their right mind would produce television content that their consumers will not embrace.

Television will be driven from the grassroots, consumer level rather than from the traditional, studio top-down approach and audiences will be smaller. You can bet that Hollywood will try to be an equal and opposite force against the shift. Loss of control is a scary thing.

The bottom line to marketers is that knowledge of your customers is king and untargeted messages will no longer be tolerated. Embrace it. Get used to it. Behave accordingly.

Book review: All Marketers Are Liars

Over this past weekend I went back and re-read portions of Seth Godin’s book, “All Marketers Are Liars”, because its memory started itching some back recess of my brain here a few months after initially reading it and I wasn’t quite sure why. I had to go back and skim it to find the answer.

Let’s start with the title of the book, “All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World”. Hmmm. Something is already wrong here.

When I lookup the word “authentic”, I get the definition, “conforming to fact and therefore worthy of belief”. Doesn’t it follow that if we tell “authentic” stories in our marketing we are by definition telling the truth and not lying? Alas, Godin admits he was lying to us from the start because right on the back dust jacket of the book he states, “I was lying to you when I named this book. Marketers aren’t liars. They are just storytellers. It’s the consumers who are liars.” He then goes on to state that marketers tell stories and because consumers choose to believe those stories that best fit into their own world view that they are, in essence, lying to themselves.

OK, I still have a problem with the whole premise of the book.

Not to be redundant, but if marketers are out there telling authentic stories, why would somebody who believes those stories that “conform to the facts” be lying to themselves? I’ll forgive the inconsistency because Mr. Godin is trying to make a larger point, but I won’t forgive the use of a bold, deceptive title in an attempt to sell books.

I’ll grant that we humans all gravitate to brands that tell stories that are consistent with our own world views, but to take self-selective brand filtering and twist it to give the impression that something is wrong in the marketing profession is just plain usurious.

Godin uses some great supporting case studies in this book about how some very good marketers tell vivid stories about their brands and how those stories self-select their audiences. In my opinion, this is exactly what any good marketer and any powerful brand is supposed to do.

Godin goes one step further, however, and implies that often the story that gets told is the only differentiator between brands and that the story alone can be used to build a great brand.

He misses the point.

If the stories are authentic, then it is the whole brand behind the story that is different. The stories are not lies. The stories are describing why one brand is different and unique from others. The marketing “stories” are indeed brand promises or brand stories and it is our duty to tell our brands' unique stories as compellingly and as convincingly as we can.

Even if we accept for the moment that consumers turn off all logic and purely make emotional decisions based upon which story they choose to believe in the absence of real data (more on this in a few moments), we cannot believe that people will turn off their logic indefinitely so that any significant brand preference built in this way is sustainable over the long-term. Sooner or later the brand is going to have to live up to the story.

While Godin’s theories are well presented with good examples, I couldn’t help but read the book and feel that it was a good short article or opinion piece that got compromised when it was stretched into a book and given a provocative title.

His assertion that marketers should tell vivid stories that consumers want to believe is indeed solid advice. His underlying, unstated implication that marketers should tell the “right lies”, however, does a disservice to the entire marketing profession.

Sure, he purposefully named the book in a misdirecting manner to get a reaction that would spur debate, generate buzz, and sell more books…and here I am responding. OK Seth, one for you.

However, not all buzz is good buzz and not all discussion will help build a strong brand. Not all stories are worth repeating.

In the case of “All Marketers Are Liars”, I’d have to say the book did not live up to my expectations of the Seth Godin brand. I’ve read Godin’s previous works and expected more from this effort. Godin’s previous works were much stronger and did not have to resort to tricks or gimmicks to sell the books. Nor did they contain as much filler material as this one seems to have. The problem is, he does not give a single example in the entire book where a marketer is shown to be genuinely lying and consumers are rewarding that brand. Now I find that I must approach any of his future works with some skepticism and ask myself, “Is he just trying to be provocative to sell books or is there real--and enough--meat here?”

Back to suspended logic.

One passage in the book (pages 93-94) reveals that Mr. Godin shops for certain products, in this case organic foods, not because he believes the marketing claims but because he lies to himself about the brands because he believes they make him feel better. This is a fair enough claim and a valid point for marketers and branders to remember. As I stated in my e-book, “How to Build and Maintain A Powerhouse Brand”, an important part of building a strong brand is tapping emotion and building more than just product features and benefits into the brand’s story. Brands must make logical and emotional appeals.

In this particular passage of the book, Godin explains that he shops for organic foods not because they taste or perform any better (he claims that he believes the data is not clear), not because they are less expensive (he claims that he believes the prices are inflated), not because they are any better for him (he claims that many items found at organic grocery stores are loaded with saturated fats and sugar-loaded juices) and not because they are a good way to support family farmers (he claims that most of the money goes to marketers and processors), but because it is a way for many (we can only assume he includes himself in this category) to assuage guilt about being Americans because Americans are the “world’s least efficient consumers of just about everything”.

That’s why my brain started to itch all these months after initially reading the book.

Mr. Godin puts all logic aside and admits that he makes purchases emotionally and, at least at times, suspends all logic. He is willing to accept the fact that he believes self-lies just to feel less guilty.

Therein is an indication of what the real title of this book should be: “Consumers Are Not Always Rational” or maybe, "I Lie to Myself".

Those would be great potential book titles. The book could be geared toward all the bottom line, ROI, analytical types out there who want all branding decisions to be based on numbers and hard facts. The book could then go on to describe why building emotion into brands is so important and that it cannot be underestimated because humans do not respond to logic alone. Often they make decisions based on emotion and rationalize those decisions later using logic. Sometimes they are just going for a certain feeling—even if their actions are self-proclaimed to be irrational.

You genuinely lying marketers out there, take note. Seth Godin has told us that he believes what he thinks are lies as long as they conform to his world view. Read this book to learn more about his purchasing habits and then set him up in your databases accordingly so you can sell him your wares.

For the rest of you marketers, this book is interesting and useful but not worth the purchase price unless you want more books with titles such as, “All Marketers Are Thieves”, “All Marketers Are Sleazy”, and “All Marketers Are Pond Scum”. If the guy makes a lot of money at it this time I’m sure he’ll keep going back to the same well. (If you recall, I covered his comments at the DMA conference back in October when he declared all marketers are spammers. Perhaps he was giving us a preview of his new writing strategy.)

I’ll tell you what. Save your money and borrow my copy of the book. Just send it back when you’re done reading it.

Fair enough?

"Revenge of the Consumer"

Brandweek has an interesting lead story in its Outlook 2006 roundup that addresses the continuing media shift that I've been discussing.

They state that "one theory" about the continuing digitization of media content and the power that consumers have as a result of technological advances (i.e. delivery /distribution options) will cause advertising to lose its power and make word-of-mouth more important.

Mass advertising will not disappear altogether because with enough time, money and impressions it will continue to influence people to change their behavior, but indeed mass advertising will continue to lose power and become less effective at influencing mass audiences.

Why?

Mostly because "mass" audiences who are willing to expose themselves to advertising simply will not exist as such anymore.

This will lead us in a direction that is fundamentally better. Brands will have to be built on true benefits and our communications will have to genuinely appeal to audiences that we know a great deal about because only then will they even listen to our messages. Knowledge about consumers will be king and brands will have to be built from the top down.

Let's just hope that the folks at the top realize that the real power is knowledge at the grass-roots.

Intel rebrands itself

In the latest report of branders throwing the baby out with the bath water, Intel announces a rebranding effort that will have them abandon their highly-successful tagline, "Intel Inside" in favor of "Leap Ahead" and usher in a new logo at the expense of the classic logo with the "dropped-e" that they have used for some 37 years.

Listen to this comment from the company, "This represents a significant milestone in the company's history and further signifies the company's evolution to a market-driving platform solutions company". Eric Kim, Sr. Vice President & GM of Intel's sales and marketing group was further quoted as stating, "This evolution will allow Intel to be better recognized for our contributions, establish a stronger emotional connection with our audiences, and strengthen our overall position in the marketplace."

Now, if you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know of my disdain for Business Speak (B.S.), so let me run the above statements from Intel through my magical Marketing Decoder and translate. Translation: "Blah, blah blah blah, blah".

The company, despite acknowledging that they have one of the most valuable brands in the world, is entirely revamping its brand identity.

Why?

Well, let's take a pop quiz:

If you own "one of the most valuable brands in the world" and you want to expand into areas beyond PC's to also provide the processing power in mobile device, home digital device, enterprise and technology market segments, do you:

a) Leverage the power of your brand to reinforce and explain why now it is more important than ever to make sure you have "Intel Inside" your devices

b) Acknowledge the need for a new sub-branding strategy that still capitalizes on and builds your well-established and highly successful umbrella brand

or

c) Explore ways to launch brand extensions to include market segments beyond personal computer processing chips?

This, of course, is a trick question to Intel.

If you are Intel, you go off-the-board with choice "d" and ditch your brand, squander the lead you enjoy as a market leader, and start from scratch building new brands keeping little other than your name…except now you try to make it mean something different than it already does.

As I write about in my paper describing my Top End Alignment process, it is nearly impossible to change the essence of what a brand stands for once it has been established in the minds of customers. Further, if your brand is already is one of the strongest in the world, you should do everything in your power to protect and build upon that brand equity.

So what do we call a branding strategy that walks away from its well-established equity and strategic awareness…a rebranding strategy that almost assures a start-from-scratch approach in a commodity market? Bold? Absurd? Misguided?

I call it insidious.

Two great sports brands

This evening we pause to honor two great brands, Joe Paterno and The Penn State Nittany Lions.

Gentlemen, good luck in the Orange Bowl tonight!