Warning: Your Marketing Probably Sucks
By Reid M. Neubert

Just published in July [2003] is a book entitled, Your Marketing Sucks. In it, author Mark Stevens contends that companies are doing a lousy job of marketing. He asserts that big ad agencies don't know how to create ads that actually sell products. Instead, they produce ads to win awards. Ninety-five percent of Web sites should be shut down, he says, because they are useless – even the big, flashy, expensive ones. They don't generate any business.

Sound familiar, dear readers?

Coincidentally, an article in USA Today (September 30) gives the results of a new survey on the recognition of advertising slogans. The survey found that among twenty-two of the nation's largest advertisers, only six of their slogans were recognized by more than 9% of the one-thousand-plus people surveyed. Only six. That sucks, all right!

What is even more shocking is that major companies including Ford, Chrysler, Microsoft, and Sears had 4% recognition or less, and Kmart, Staples and Circuit City all scored ZERO. Not one of over one-thousand people recognized their slogans!

Only one slogan was recognized by more the half of the respondents. That slogan is "Always low prices. Always." Do you know who that belongs to? I didn't, but sixty-four percent of respondents knew it was Wal-Mart. Volkswagen's "Drivers wanted" was second with 42%.

Whassup with all this?
Here American advertisers spend $250 billion a year to promote their products and their brands, and we see pitiful results like these. I think Mark Stevens must be right: There is shamefully little original thinking on Madison Avenue.

C.J. Fraleigh, head of marketing at General Motors, also seems to agree. In an address to major advertising agency executives last summer, he lambasted them as having become soft and flabby. He said that they seem to no longer be able to "figure out how to sell product by coming up with the big idea that emotionally connects with consumers in a creative way." Here is a company that spent $3.5 billion on advertising last year.

By the way, do you know what GM's slogan is (recognized by only 1% in the survey)? "The road to redemption." That's GM? Sounds like the title of a sermon.

Who needs a slogan, anyway?
Why would companies spend any time or money on slogans like these?

"Your potential. Our passion."
"The stuff of life."
"No boundaries."
"We're with you."*

These are other major companies' slogans from the same survey,

A slogan is only beneficial if it helps to build a visceral connection with the brand. There are few slogans that actually accomplish that. Those that do are not only known by large segments of the population, but are often remembered long after the company has stopped using them.

How long has it been since FedEx stopped using "Absolutely, positively overnight"? Yet that is what we still associate with company. That was a beautiful brand-building campaign, and the slogan lives on because it communicated in three words exactly how we thought of the company. That absolutely didn't suck.

FedEx had to leave that slogan behind when they went into the international shipping business, because there are many parts of the world where they cannot deliver overnight. Do you know what their slogan is now? Probably not. They've been using "The World On Time," for several years, which is no grabber, but have now introduced "Relax, it's FedEx." That is much better.

Most company slogans should be trashed immediately. Unless a slogan reinforces the essence of a brand and helps connect us to it, it isn't adding anything to a company's marketing. If it isn't adding anything, it is taking something away, because it is just more noise. And there is WAY too much noise out there already.

Speaking of "M'm, M'm," we all know Campbell soup's catchy slogan, "M'm! M'm! Good!" In fact, it's so good, we tend to start humming the jingle that we learned as children when we hear the words.

Compare that to "Soup that eats like a meal" or "It fills you up right!" two slogans that Campbell's uses for their Chunky soup. Or the slogan for Campbell's Select soup: "Experience the simple pleasure of a great-tasting soup." M'm, isn't that upscale? That may be a good headline for an ad – MAY be – but as a slogan, sorry, but it sucks. Campbell's went astray also, but claims to have reintroduced "M'm! M'm! Good!" into their advertising in 2001.

I'll bet you recognize, "When you care enough to send the very best," Hallmark's long-standing slogan. It is wordier than most, but it has helped build the Hallmark name for quality greeting cards since 1944. And, they have been smart enough to stick with it, realizing that it continues to be as relevant today.

Marketing is more than a slogan
There is no reason to try to distill a brand down to a slogan. Not at all. A slogan is only useful when it communicates the essence of a brand, like "M'm! M'm! Good!" did.

Consider Volkswagen's slogan, "Drivers wanted." Whoop-de-do. Of course they want drivers, so few people have been buying their cars. Forty-two percent of the people surveyed may have recognized the slogan, but it isn't moving them to buy Volkswagens.

Mazda did much better when it introduced the zoom, zoom campaign, but then they have been taking it in the wrong direction. The campaign had a catchy, drummy tune that the line was sung to: "Ya zoom zoom zoom, ya zoom zoom zoom…" It was unique, highly memorable, and moving, literally. You'd recognize it in two notes. What a great vehicle (no pun intended) to help build up a weak car brand. It started to get people to relate to the car brand on an emotional level, and that's what is needed.

They also have that geeky looking boy whispering "Zoom, zoom." The kid is too young to drive, and he's not cute, so what is he for? We never understood. Yet, they've dropped the catchy music and kept the kid. Why? Probably someone in senior management at Mazda thought the music sounded too ethnic or something. Or they held a focus group, and someone in the group didn't like it.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. They need to lose the kid and keep the music. It is a tune that people would be humming with bouncing shoulders, like the old, "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is" ditty for Alka Seltzer.

Here they came up with a campaign that has a slogan with five times the recognition of Ford's or Chrysler's, and there is not a "zoom, zoom" to be found on their Web site! Plus, the advertising for their new RX-8 sports car doesn't relate to the zoom, zoom concept at all. The TV commercial has a totally different look, sound, and feeling to it. It uses romantic classical music, for pity sake! There is a begrudging concession to the "zoom, zoom" campaign with the whisper tacked on at the end, but that's it. Yipes! Have any contacts at Mazda you can introduce me to? They need our help!

We should thank author Mark Stevens for bringing this problem further into the limelight. He is a harsher critic than I, but readers may recognize that I've been saying largely the same things in these articles. You can't look at what the big boys are doing as examples of how to brand and market your business. I, for one, am glad to know I'm not alone in slapping my forehead in amazement at the stupid and highly forgettable advertising that is inflicted on us today.

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*The taglines for Microsoft, Kmart, Ford, and Circuit City.

 
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Copyright 2003 by Reid M. Neubert. All rights reserved.