I just read a book called What Sticks and in the book the author relays this story. The media director for a major Detroit agency was working on the account of one of the big three automakers. This media director was surprised to learn that the level of TV spending was based on what their competitor spent across town. No complicated study of effectiveness, no analytic model – just a “me too” approach.

 

The current economic climate just cries out for a better approach to advertising and marketing.  There are now cost effective ways to track response define ROI.  Attach unique urls to billboards, to print ads, to radio commercials and see how much interest they generate. Use purls to track response from direct mail and email.  Give it enough time to work and if it isn’t move on. Try something else.

 

This same book recommended a breakdown of your marketing spend this way:  70% goes to tactics already proven to work. 20% goes to tweaking those tactics to improve response and 10% goes to totally off the wall things. What’s totally off the wall – well the person who thought of putting Snapple in Jerry Seinfeld’s refrigerator – would qualify.  (That’s the first overt product placement that I remember seeing). Or the person who realized one billion people a day would go to Office Max to “Elf Themselves.”

What’s the next way out thing?