Editor’s note: Early this year, David L. Stashower retired from
his post atop Cleveland’s Liggett-Stashower Advertising Inc. After 43
years building a reputation as one of the region’s best marketing minds,
that retirement, predictably, is something less than total. He still
puts in office hours as a consultant and adviser and still spends a lot
of time thinking about the business.
Just ask him, and he will offer a learned opinion.
Like the time in the early ’80s, when a young reporter asked him about
the second-largest hamburger chain’s embarrassing tear through one ad
campaign after another as it tried to gain on McDonald’s. “Burger King,”
he said flatly, “doesn’t have an advertising problem. It’s a real-estate
problem.”
More recently, we asked him about this new era of interactive,
one-on-one, “so close you can smell their breath” marketing. He
responded with the following menu of mistaken assumptions that companies
are making every day.
1. ‘Marketing database’ is just a $10 name for a customer list.
The names and addresses of customers are invaluable, but they are not
the same as a marketing database. Your customer information was probably
collected for other reasons-little things like sales, delivery,
warranty, service and so on-and doesn’t include the right data for
marketing.
Professional database management includes getting what you need to build
lifetime customer value and to time the use of appropriate marketing
tools.
Database and list management have probably grown faster and benefited
more from technology in recent years than any other aspect of
marketing.
2. I don’t need marketing; I know my customers and prospects by name
and call on them personally.
Business-to-business and commercial sales executives often eschew
marketing programs, viewing them only as preliminaries to sales
calls-and therefore unnecessary when there’s routine calling in
place.
In truth, you might get in the face of whoever places the order, but you
may never meet all the other people who influence the decision-and whose
good opinion is essential to the continued employment of your
contact.
Odds are, your contact list-even if it’s a good one-doesn’t deal with
those who influence the purchase, those who replace the present contact,
and those who are new entries (companies and people alike).
3. PR is like free advertising.
Unhappily, the Constitutional guarantee of a “free press” refers only
to editorial liberty. The media won’t give away anything it can sell any
more than you would.
Journalists fiercely defend their independence from advertising. They
are, however, willing to give credit where credit is due and identify
products by name if they perceive there is news value and, therefore,
audience interest. They are the sole, albeit sometimes perfidious,
judges of what constitutes news.
Public relations professionals make a business of maintaining media
relationships to ascertain what interests individual newspeople at any
given time, and are often able to influence the judgment. What they
can’t do is control how journalists translate your message to the
public. Nor can they leverage the advertising budget in the editorial
department. Neither can you.
4. Mass media are dead.
Consider it so if you’re suicidal. Direct marketing at its best is
not the prescription of choice for creating awareness.
Achieving a one-on-one relationship with customers and prospects depends
on those customers and prospects knowing that you exist and believing
there will be sufficient benefit to invest their time in you.
Mass media are still the most effective and efficient means to generate
and define awareness.
With the advent of specialized content that targets discrete audiences,
“mass” no longer means indiscriminate bulk. Enlightened advertisers are
changing the messages their mass media deliver, making them of a piece
with all the other elements in an integrated strategy.
Have you noticed how many ads include prominent references to toll-free
numbers and Web sites?
5. The way to a man’s heart is through his telephone.
Except when you get his stomach by calling at dinner time. Many
consider telemarketing tantamount to the 1918 flu epidemic.
Take the advice of experts. If you don’t use a professional
telemarketing bureau, get a qualified consultant to script your pitch,
train your staff, analyze the results and make adjustments.
Telemarketing has become a very sophisticated tool. Used for all its
worth, it can be a keystone of lifetime customer value.
On the other hand, 99 percent of members of the American public have at
least one telephone, so telemarketing amateur night has the potential
for alienating prospects much faster than the current birthrate
replacing them.
6. Nobody is in a better position to write direct-mail copy than
me
You aced English and your business correspondence gets results.
Nobody knows more about the product than you do. Obviously, that will
produce the most informative and sincere direct-mail piece possible.
But it won’t include the words of art nor the devices that a century (no
kidding) of experience has taught the specialists. The reason the
direct-mail envelopes you receive in such abundance usually contain
multiple pieces/parts is that each element has a track record. In
combination, they all serve to do one thing: work.
Direct-mail experts are always testing – letters, offers, lists and so
on – and comparing the returns from cells.
Drives you nuts. Nevertheless, these professionals are dedicated to
getting the most sales for the least cost. You have to love them.
7. Once they try our product, they’ll come back for more
Why, then, do people who respond ecstatically to the Big Three
customer satisfaction surveys buy a different make of car the next time
they trade?
No matter how evident you believe the product’s attributes to be, the
consumer, perhaps subconsciously, asks “compared to what?”-and sets
about finding an answer.
There is something in the human condition that abhors contentment.
Maintaining a relationship with customers provides opportunities to
reinforce acknowledged benefits and, if that communication is truly
interactive, detect incipient problems and head them off at the pass.
But never underestimate boredom: It’s the reason cook-book sales rank
second only to the Bible.
8. Co-op is the most efficient way to make advertising pay.
Co-op – meaning payments to retailers for including your product in
their price/item advertising – is an essential sales promotion tool. It
often includes preferential treatment at the point-of-sale, and it puts
your product before the consumer when he or she is seriously considering
a purchase.
But it will ruin you if it’s merely your excuse to avoid advertising the
brand on your own.
Brand advertising – your own message completely under your control – is
an investment in your ability to demand respectable margins and maintain
the consumer recognition that retailers demand if they’re going to carry
your products at all.
Despite your generous co-op support for a store’s advertising program,
the buyer at chain headquarters will ask to see your brand’s media
advertising schedule nine times out of 10. Who said life is fair?
9. A Web site is like mailing my brochure to the world.
As the novelty wears off, people won’t read anything put up on the
Web any more than they still invite friends over to watch the test
pattern on TV.
Interactive media has an insatiable appetite for freshness. Web content
needs to be interactive to be effective.
Most folks don’t realize that the battle is not for people’s minds but
for their names. Whoever uses a Web site to harvest names and marketing
data from visitors will have a priceless asset and beco
me the gatekeeper
for countless transactions.
You want to be the linker, not the linkee. The information adroit
marketers gain from their Web sites will give them real power and may
very well upset some historic vendor-retailer relationships.
10. I advertise in trade journals to send competitors a
message.
Write them a letter. Don’t use trade papers that have no other
purpose, such as reaching your distribution channels. Using advertising
to impress your peers is not only a waste of money, it can dilute the
effectiveness of your message or audience.
11. I sent the new ads back because they just weren’t me.
So what? Subjective preferences – graphics, writing style, media
selection, etc. – have little place in the creative and approval
processes.
If it’s off-strategy (make sure that’s a reason and not an excuse),
flirts with legal or regulatory problems, or is in questionable taste,
you’re right to send it back to the drawing board.
Otherwise, you’re better off to trust the good people you’ve hired.
Objective opinion is one of the least recognized or valued contributions
professional counselors make.
12. If I build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to my
door.
It can be the rule if you assume A), they know you’ve done it, and
B), they think they have mice.
But if the whole thing was as simple as being the first guy with a new
idea, we’d still be buying Dumont television sets.
Better to use PR to make and keep people aware of the rodent problem;
mass media to generate awareness of your product’s superiority; sales
promotion (including co-op) to induce trial; directory advertising to
help people find where to buy it; and direct marketing to build the
relationship and increase the incidence of repurchase, even before the
Mark II model is introduced.
Remember: A mousetrap for every room, and don’t forget the vacation
home. Plus, they make wonderful gifts.