In the long term this figure rose, but only to 45%, suggesting that most TV advertising is little more than a fun way for a company to waste its money.Īnd it is from the debris of this crisis that marketing has emerged into its next revolution. In fact, a 2004 study by Deutsche Bank found that, in the short term, just 18% of television campaigns in the US actually generated a positive return on investment. It was, in short, a brilliant ad that either caused, or did little to prevent, a commercial disaster. During this campaign, Budweiser's US market share fell by between 1.5 and 2.5 percentage points, and its sales in barrels dropped 8.3%. It was, in short, the epitome of successful, creative advertising. Remember Budweiser's classic "Whassup!" campaign from 2000? It was funny, likeable (at least at first), and caught on so widely that for six months or so it seemed as if every twentysomething in the western world was saying "Whassup!" about twice a day. A study conducted in 2004 by Yankelovich Partners, a marketing consultancy, found that 65% of American consumers felt "constantly bombarded" by advertising, and 60% had a much more negative opinion of advertising than they had a few years before.īut far more destructive to the health of traditional advertising has been the accumulation of evidence that it no longer works. Anyone less than 20 years old may find it hard to believe that Heineken, Tango and British Telecom once embodied personalities so strong and likeable that they felt almost like members of the family.Īnd no matter how affable the ad, with the average Briton or American now facing around 3,000 marketing messages a day, it has become extremely difficult for each individual message-maker to get noticed. After enjoying a long golden age of witty, imaginative commercials from the late 1960s until the turn of the century, British consumers have become too cynical - or "marketing literate" as it is also known - to accept the blandishments of traditional advertising with an open heart. These days, of course, it is quite normal to regard all forms of marketing with loathing. Welcome to stealth marketing, one of the new frontiers in 21st-century selling. But when you consider that none of the fans ever discovered that there had been anything to complain about, this is not surprising. "That one, I would say, is quite clever and quite sneaky, but no more sneaky than lots of other forms of marketing that go on every day." Certainly there were no complaints. Does Goodkind? "'Ethical' is a funny word," he says. Many people might not consider it ethical to promote things to people in this way (although I have checked and it does not seem to constitute fraud). That was the talkability, because obviously if you get that service you tell your mates about it. "Then you saw that after that it was 125, and the next week was 75, and the next week was 60. "The week after we had done the activity it went up to 120 sign-ups," says Goodkind, who is also boss of the Frank PR agency. The petition went in the bin, of course, but subscriptions to the club's texting service soared. We did it at two home games and reckon we got about 4,000 people on the petition in total." Two people could spend maybe 20 minutes or half an hour in each pub, working the whole pub. And they could have these conversations with lots of people - that was the beauty of it. They'd have a mobile phone in their pocket, and they'd show them how it worked. "And then the actors would pull out of their pocket some crumpled-up leaflet, which was for the text subscription service. So they were going round with this petition trying to get his job back - kind of a vaguely plausible story. "And they went round bars and clubs around the ground, in groups of two, saying that one of their mates had been sacked from work because he kept on getting these text messages and talking to everyone about it, and his boss had had enough and given him the boot. "We got a group of 14 or 16 actors, who were all football fans, but pretended to be fans ," explains Graham Goodkind, Sneeze's founder and chairman. So it hired a small marketing agency called Sneeze. For 25p a message (working out at around £100 a year), fans would get a text whenever something interesting happened at the club - team selections, injury updates, half-time scores, that sort of thing.ĭespite promoting the service in club literature, on its website, and with armies of attractive girls handing out leaflets on match days, the club could not get the rate of new subscriptions to rise above a disappointing 20 a week. Two or three years ago, a Premiership football club (I'm not allowed to tell you which one) was trying to sign up fans to its text bulletin service.
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