Admen failing to engage

April 26th, 2005

Published in the media section of the Guardian yesterday

Jim Hytner’s article on how difficult it is for marketeers to reach consumers raises several interesting points (When the message doesn’t get through, April 18) but could go further. While it is undoubtedly true that the British public are being bombarded with too much marketing information, particuarly through TV, the answer is not just to project more loudly and more clearly. It is to change the relationship between company and customer.
The real problem is that all of this marketing is “interruptive” in its nature, with the marketer trying to impose their brand on the customer and coerce a sale. This is most apparent in TV advertising, which pushes out its own idea of what brand is without engaging the potential customer. No wonder that even Andrew Robertson , chief executive of of BBDO advertising, acknoledges that TV advertising is losing its potency, fast. The reason why Apple and Tesco are doing so well, as Hytner acknoledges, is that they have learn’t bbetter than most how to change this relationship. They are replacing the passive “customer base” with the active “customer community”.

Alan and Tomi

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