John Wanamaker, the famous merchant who opened Wanamaker’s, the first department store in Philadelphia, and who is now considered the father of modern marketing, once said “I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted … I just don’t know which half.”
It’s a dilemma marketers still have today. How can they know if the advertising and promotions they are spending money on are actually making them money? And how can they cut spending on those that are wasted?
How does advertising really work? Let me ask you this – if you watched TV last night, do you remember any of the commercials? Or maybe you read the newspaper this morning – do you remember any of the ads?
Chances are, you don’t remember most of them. Why? Because those ads weren’t relevant to you. Most ads do an extremely poor job of communicating the benefits of their product or service. And because they aren’t relevant to you, you ignore them.
We filter out things all the time because if we didn’t, we’d be completely overwhelmed with information all the time. There’s no possible way we could remember everything that every marketer wanted us to know, especially when we can barely remember the stuff on our daily to-do list.
The mass advertising that does work beats you over the head with a particular message again and again – always trying different ways to explain that particular message in a new way.
The Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign
Take, for instance, the Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign. You might not think of a political campaign in terms of marketing; political campaigns are all about convincing as many eligible voters to 1) register to vote and then 2) to actually go to their local polling stations and cast their vote on election day. Obama won the 2008 election because of his extremely focused marketing campaign. What did he do?
- He spent millions of dollars on TV advertising.
- He held in-person events like speeches, rallies, dinners and fundraisers.
- He created a word-of-mouth army of thousands of volunteers in field offices around the country. People held political discussions with their families, friends, co-workers and other associates throughout the campaign.
- He used online marketing channels such as the campaign website and social media outlets like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube.
- He got free publicity from the media and from bloggers.
- He had the support of special-interest groups who ran ads for their candidate of choice.
Obama and McCain did a good job of getting voters to the polls. Roughly 127 million people voted, about 4 million more than in 2004. Obama won – due in part to an incredibly streamlined and effective marketing strategy. But he didn’t win by that much when you look at overall vote counts. He only won 53% of the votes – enough to win, but he didn’t convince 47% of voters that he was the right choice.
That is a prime example of how no matter how much you spend, no matter how many people you reach, no matter how focused your campaign message, you won’t appeal to everyone. But if you can reach enough of the right people with a message that’s relevant to them, you can still do very well.
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