THE HIGHLIGHTS
‘Ad Contrarian’ Bob Hoffman tells CMO Club marketers to focus on fame
At a Festival of Marketing roundtable with The CMO Club, the industry’s favourite sceptic emphasised why brands need to make themselves famous and demand their agencies double down on creativity.
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He is renowned for being the Ad Contrarian behind books such as Advertising for Skeptics. So, when Bob Hoffman took part in a Festival of Marketing virtual roundtable supported by The CMO Club, it was no surprise the conversation started out with why he is a self-styled “rock thrower”.
The exchange of ideas started with the need to question everything with a beginner’s mind, before moving on to the client-agency relationship, the need to double down on creativity and what is the best way to build a brand.
Roundtable host Jon Suarez-Davis, senior vice-president of marketing strategy and innovation at Salesforce, set the scene by asking if Hoffman had always been an advertising cynic. He replied that having entered advertising from his first career as a science teacher, he suddenly found himself in an industry where people were faking it. Unlike the world of science, where theories are questioned, confident advertising executives have their assumptions go unchallenged.
“My first day in the business, it occurred to me that I was listening to people that didn't know what they were talking about,” he said. “It was mainly the opinions of aristocrats and big shots, who influenced everyone else into believing that they knew things that they didn't really know. And that has never changed. I think we are just as confused about how consumers react to what we do as we've ever been.
“During my whole time in the agency I was faking it all the way. I didn't know anything. I don't know why people - I don't know why I - buy stuff. But we do precision guessing. We're fumbling around in the dark pretending we know.”
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A ‘dollop’ of realism
Jerry Daykin, media director of GSK Healthcare, certainly agreed with the need to challenge accepted theories. He pointed out that the evangelism around social media and consumers having direct relationships with brands is not helpful. If you walk into a supermarket and can only buy the products you have a marketing relationship with, we would all starve, he joked.
Jo Blundell, vice-president for international marketing at Papa John’s, agreed it is always good to have a “healthy dollop of realism”, because it is very easy for marketers to get “saturated by the enthusiasm” they have for their brands. Hence, she cautioned, if someone orders a pizza on a Friday it’s not just because of her work but rather that they like pizza, they’ve had that type before and it’s convenient. While brands can really stand for something, such as Patagonia in outdoor clothing, a healthy dose of pragmatism and realism are always good things for marketers to have, she suggested.
This struck a chord with Deb Caldow, head of global brand and sustainability at Costa. She talked about the business drawing up international expansion plans, but she has to be realistic. As she pointed out, consumers don’t wake up each morning wondering when a new coffee brand will launch, so there is a real question mark over how Costa goes about repeating its UK success in new markets.
While Hoffman did not have any specific advice on how Costa can enter new regions, he did offer Caldow, and all marketers, some sage advice. Focus on creativity, always. “The only advice I could give to people working with agencies is find the most creative agency: the most value you're going to get out of agencies is on the creative side, on the imagination side,” he said.
“Fame is the biggest business advantage you can ever have.”
Jo Royce, global director of marketing learning and capabilities at Unilever, agreed on the importance of creativity but pointed out in her personal capacity as a former agency owner that it is not always the agency’s fault when it is not instantly forthcoming. Endless pitching for briefs, which then get altered as they are shared by multiple stakeholders, can suck out much of the creativity from an agency’s output.
Hoffman agreed but argued agencies still lack focus on creativity because they have tried to be all things to all people. “The agencies have lost their way and they're trying to play the other guy’s game,” he said.
“Consultants are much better at pretending they’re ad agencies than ad agencies are at pretending they're consultants. Advertising is only a third of the typical company's marketing budget and, as the agency business consolidated and got bigger and bigger, the big conglomerated agencies - the holding companies - wanted more than that third of the marketing budget.
“So the agency started pretending they were other things - we're consultants, we’re strategy, we’re technology experts, we’re data analysts. All these things that the agencies are mediocre at, and that you can find just as good outside of an agency. But the one thing that they're really good at, or that they used to be really good at, is imaginative ideas. And they have not invested in that.”
Bob Hoffman, ‘Ad Contrarian’
Fame is the name of the game
One principle the virtual roundtable could most certainly “lock arms on”, as Suarez-Davis put it, is that advertising and marketing works. The trouble is, Hoffman said, you never know what is going to work and what is not, hence he used to have clients who openly questioned if they should carry on advertising. They always did, though, because if you turn advertising off, you dial down sales. Everybody is on board with that, and nobody ever wanted to try it.
Hoffman pointed out that all the brands we know well are, by definition, famous, and advertising is key to achieving that. “If you have a very niche product, you don't have to do mass media but if you're a major brand and you're trying to become an even more major brand, the key to that is fame,” he concluded.
“Fame is the biggest business advantage you can ever have and fame is achieved by wide targeting, wide marketing, not by one-to-one personal targeting. So, if you're thinking like a brand person, rather than as a direct-response person, you think about ‘how can I grow my brand over time in the best way?’ Think about fame. If you become famous, you have an advantage over your competition that is immense.”
While Hoffman was clear advertising is not the only way to become a well-known brand, it is highly effective in ensuring one brand stands out in the memory against another. Even so, as he was at pains to point out, nobody knows for sure what will work and what will “bomb”. Throughout his career he has reached a point where he now accepts marketing and advertising are “50% science, 50% religion”.■
THE HIGHLIGHTS