No one knows

“The human capacity for self-deception,” Chairman Jimmy tells us, “is limitless.” Nowhere is that more true than in the advertising business. In our arrogance, we have convinced ourselves that we know what we are doing.

We present ourselves to clients as experts. We create processes, analytical tools, grids and systems, all designed to move the “science” of advertising forward. We pontificate and posture, generating an endless parade of self-serving books, articles and symposia, feeding the illusion that there exists a rich body of advertising knowledge and insight. One is left with the impression that, when an ad is created, the discerning advertising professional will be able to tell if it will be a good (whatever that is), successful (whatever that is) ad, before it goes out into the world.

In the words of Gwen Dawkins, “I disagree.” I’d like to suggest that, to the extent that knowledge is predictive, no one really knows much of anything about advertising.

We all look for, or pretend to have found, the Secret, the magic formula or anti-formula. But the fact remains that, for any given ad at any time, your guess is as good as mine whether it will work or not. Whatever “working” may mean. And your opinion is as good as mine as to whether it’s a “good” or a “bad” ad. What combination of fresh, original, meaningful, entertaining, compelling, simple, single-minded, unexpected, successful, blah blah blah attributes constitutes the magic ad formula? What does each of us mean by each of those terms? And does our point of view have anything in common with the client’s, much less the target’s.

Sometimes hokey, patronizing, demeaning, moronic, unremarkable and/or misleading ads seem to boost sales. Sometimes not. The same holds true for outrageous, out-of-the-box, breakthrough, cutting edge (stop me before I cliche again) advertising.

Even if an ad doesn’t boost sales, it may enhance and reinforce the Brand. I guess. It may lubricate the ongoing dialogue between consumer and advertiser. Or so I’ve been told. How do you measure degree of lubrication? Conversely, the moronic ad may do damage to, and ultimately erode the Brand, leading to sagging sales. Unless the sagging sales are due to a flawed media plan. Or some other variable or set of variables in the marketing mix.
No matter how you define a successful ad, there is simply no way to know ahead of time whether a particular ad will be successful. Because the multiple landscapes of our culture, advertising, and every individual’s brain, each overlaid upon another, are constantly moving and shifitng at different rates and in different directions. Morphing, if you will. Advertising’s task becomes to hit several simultaneously moving targets at the same time, armed with gummie arrows.

And despite what the research guys tell you, there’s also no way to know exactly which people, and how many of them, actually process any particular ad. By “process” I don’t mean “are exposed to” or even “see” an ad. I mean become engaged by and react to the ad. Nor do we have any way of telling just what it is about an ad that gets processed, or exactly what role, if any, the ad plays in the purchase decision. I love Nike advertising, but don’t care for the shoes. I live for M&Ms, but wince at the advertising. My consuming behavior is unique to me -- constantly shifting, adapting, changing in a thousand undetectable ways. Multiply that by everybody.

Allow me to re-cite the often-cited 1600/80/12 rule. The average consumer is exposed to 1600 advertising messages each day, of which 80 are noticed and only twelve evoke a reaction. More eloquent testimony to our ignorance about advertising I’ve never seen. (You’ll notice there is no statistic about how many of the twelve reactions lead to a purchase, because there’s no way to know.) It tells us that, despite our best efforts, almost all of us are doing it wrong almost all of the time. I’m going out on a limb and suggesting that this wouldn’t be true if we knew what we were doing.

The fact is, advertising is a guessing game and a crap shoot. Sometimes advertising works, whatever that means. Sometimes it doesn’t. We don’t know exactly why or how. Most of the time we don’t even know if. Your guess may or may not be as good as mine about whether a particular ad will work. Either way, it’s still a guess, and anyway, chances are we’ll never really know who guessed right. (Still, someone has to decide. Whose judgement should hold sway, and according to what criteria, will be the topic of a subsequent column, just as soon as I figure it out.)

The good news is that all of this imprecision and ignorance leaves us plenty of room for impassioned (albeit fruitless) discussion, and affords each of us ample opportunity to play the expert. In a village full of idiots, everyone’s a genius.