“I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I’m not sure which half.”
July 9th, 2007 by Dominic Canterbury
That profound piece of marketing wisdom is attributed to John Wanamaker, the “father of modern advertising.”
In the nearly 100 years since he first said those words, the quote has taken on a life of its own. In fact, it just might be the most repeated line in all of marketing.
Up until recently, a marketer could use that “which half” bit of sleight of hand to justify spending ridiculous amounts of a client’s money. But these days, with everything being so damn measurable, marketers are increasingly put in the uncomfortable position of having to show actual results.
In my last post I talked about how Chief Marketing Officers are having a hard time even justifying their own employment.
Then comes this doozey of a headline:
CMOs Rapped for Having Zero Impact on Sales
Evidently they did a big ol’ academic study and found that the Emperor just might have no clothes.
Then, in the same publication, on the very same day, Pontiac’s former CMO is gushingly regaled for being a “maverick” and an “innovator” who won “slews of awards.” And without any apparent sense of irony they casually mention that the car maker’s sales were down 14%! Wait a sec. Was he hired to be a maverick, or to increase sales?
So why am I telling you all of this?
I’m telling you this because as an independent business, you probably learned most of your marketing tricks by watching the big, successful companies. Very sensibly, you might have presumed that huge and expensive marketing departments headed by big-name gurus would actually know what they’re doing.
Turns out, though, the big boys really don’t know what they’re doing. No doubt some of it is working, but they don’t know how, when or why. And to make matters worse, it’s looking like the really big, flashy and expensive stuff is actually the least effective.
So, next time you see some whiz-bang marketing ploy that you really, really want to try; take a moment of silence for that highly-compensated marketing guy who’s probably going to get fired for wasting all that money.