Martin Weigel is a the Head of Planning ad Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam, and his blog, Canalside View, is one of our favourites. His latest post has as neat a summary of what advertising (and all marketing) should aim for as I’ve seen:
“So perhaps all we should be asking…“What can we do to make this brand easy to think of, and easy to buy?” While the answer(s) might not be simple, could the question really be that simple?”
And we would agree – yes, it could. It’s why we keep going on about making decisions “fun, fast and easy”, and how market research fits into that. It’s the thinking, for instance, that went into our most recent product launch – the System 1 Pack Test – which is all about creating packaging which makes a decision easy at shelf. And as Weigel says of advertising, that ISN’T by freighting it with extra information or messages.
But Weigel’s simple question hides a great deal of subtlety, and not just because the answers are difficult. “Easy to think of” sounds pretty straightforward – but does that mean conscious recall? Can the thought be implicit? Does it imply some kind of positive emotional content? Should only the brand be easy to think of, or its core promises and messages too? Your answers to each of these will determine – for instance – the kind of creative work you commission and the kind of research you do on it.
(Our answers are roughly: “No; yes; yes; just the brand is fine”, incidentally)
As for “easy to buy”, there’s a sly ambiguity there too. It can mean “easy to buy” in a physical, logistic sense – it’s there in front of you when you shop or search a category, for instance. But also in a competitive sense – it’s easier to make the choice to buy one brand than another. Both types of ease need to be addressed in separate, but complimentary ways.
But these hidden complexities don’t detract from the post. In fact I think this is the really powerful thing about Weigel’s question – it unifies advertising, distribution, and point of sale marketing, making them all parts of the same problem. Which of course they are.
(EDIT: Martin has kindly pointed out that full credit for his thinking goes to Byron Sharp, William Moran and especially Andrew Ehrenberg, so we’ll pass that credit on. Here’s a PDF on the “Ehrenberg Legacy” that was going round Twitter this morning.)
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