In this edition:

• Top 3: The Best of Marketing Chronicles in 2023

• Inspiration: Howard Luck Gossage

• PSA: Holidays Break

Top 3: The Best of Marketing Chronicles in 2023

🥇 How Irrational Decisions Can Propel Your Business Forward

For far too long creativity has been seen as “some magic fairy dust” sprinkled on after the serious thinking has taken place, effectively pushing marketers to the fringes of business strategy.

In this Marketing Chronicles column, inspired by several of Rory Sutherland's talks, I unpack the idea that irrationality is not necessarily a bad thing - as a matter of fact, it's how humans are known to make most day-to-day decisions.

"In his talk, Sutherland gives another hilarious example on how to circumvent rationality in problem-solving:

'I achieved a kind of undeserved weird fame because of my suggestion back a few years ago when the UK spent 6 billion pounds building high-speed rail tracks from St Pancras station to the coast of Kent [to complete the high-speed line from Paris to London] I simply said: what's the creative opportunity cost here? You're trying to improve a journey by making it shorter, in other words by the objective use of engineering. But what if we tried to make it ten times more enjoyable? And by the way, most of those trains still do not have Wi-Fi on them. So, I said if you spent 1% of that money putting really good Wi-Fi on the trains my contention is that it would make more difference than reducing the journey time by 40 minutes.'”

🥈 The Power Of Distinctive Brand Assets

Many of us grew up seeing brand mascots on TV. While nowadays we often associate this type of distinctive asset with sports teams, this is only ONE of the many levers a brand can pull to drive clarity.

In this Marketing Chronicles' column I dive into the world of brand clarity and how iconic brands have managed to lean into distinctive assets - such as patterns, sounds, colours, fonts, and mascots - to entrench themselves into consumers' minds.

"Getting to own a distinctive asset is incredibly difficult and takes decades of consistent and persistent brand building efforts. These involve running ads that not only have large reach, but also high frequency. It involves incorporating such assets in every piece of communication that goes out. And far more important than that, it requires associating said assets with a fundamental truth — a human, category, or brand truth — , one that consumers can not only relate to, but also get behind.

When you build an audience that perceives your brand as a badge for something that everyone in their community “just gets it”… well folks, you have yourself a fandom."

🥉 The Brand Destruction Of Black Friday

Oh, Black Friday, when brand equities get flushed down the drain.

In this Marketing Chronicles column I rant about the negative effects that discounting has on brands.

"When I witness companies leaning into Black Friday with such gusto, it pains me to see it.

I understand that most businesses — particularly publicly traded ones — are trapped inside a short-termist paradox. They must deliver results before the next quarter comes, or else…

And oftentimes, particularly in the consumer goods world, the easiest and most surefire way to deliver on those objectives is through discounting.

When brands get into the habit of regularly discounting their products, consumers begin to expect it. If it’s not on sale, they’ll buy the brand that it is. Unfortunately, brand loyalty still is a dream for many, therefore they end up getting sucked into the abominable race to the bottom."

Inspiration: Howard Luck Gossage

How did we get to the point where people's attention spans are shorter than a goldfish's?

Has this been driven by:

(a) An overwhelming amount of ads people are constantly getting hit with on a daily basis (which has DOUBLED since 2007 - pre Facebook)?

OR

(b) Because ads have gotten duller and shallower with time, warranting less of someone's interest?

While the former is likely a major driver of it, we simply cannot ignore the latter.

Below is a classic ad from the "Socrates of San Francisco" (Howard Gossage). While most people would not take the time to read it nowadays due to the reasons I listed above, there are a few insights to learn from this type of work:

1. Don't underestimate your audience's intellect;

2. Lousy advertising that is measured exclusively on the basis of sales will lead to work worth ignoring;

3. Bigger isn't always better - become more concerned with Cost Per Thought than Cost Per Thousand;

4. Stupid advertising is bad for the entire industry and bad for business;

5. However much we'd like advertising to be a formula, it simply is not. What's effective one day will not be effective the next, because it has lost its maximum impact of originality.

Gossage was a maestro of culture. What a gorgeous way to get one's business without succumbing to cheap gimmicks.

PSA: Holidays Break

Marketing Chronicles will be taking a 2-week break to recharge over the Holidays and come back with refreshing ideas for 2024.

I wish you all a fantastic Holiday Season 🥂

More of PPA:

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• 🍻 Come by the WJ office for a brew

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