Advertising works... subliminally

Does advertising work at face value or does it perhaps work once the consumer has been exposed to it, has had time to digest it, and unconsciously has saved it in their long term memory to be used as secondary information once the purchase decision or search for information is required?

I read an article the other day which was titled; "Report: 70 percent of consumers trust brand recommendations from friends". Being a marketer and all, or rather having studied marketing for over five years post matric to a point where I can say I have some sort of understanding of the principles of marketing, this article caught my eye because from marketing 101 we all know that the most effective form of marketing has always been "word of mouth". This is the one form of advertising, or rather marketing, which all marketers want to, but are powerless to control.

Just another article

With that said, I started reading the article on the mashable.com website and after one or two lines, I realised this is just another article telling us about what we already know, that some study done somewhere revealed that of so many respondents, 70% preferred referral from those close to them whereas only 10% said they trust advertising, be it in any form or shape. What struck my interest though was not the article itself, but rather the principle of all relationships and/or general communication, which is: who likes being told they are being fed BS?

If you come to me with two scenarios, one: an advert, paid for and sponsored by a money-greedy blue-chip company that couldn't give a hoot about me but is just after my money; or two: a personal testament from a close friend, based on their experiences, views or perceptions of a company or brand, which do you think I'd prefer? Simple human nature, we hate being told we're being fed BS, but we prefer it if its unconscious. Why else would we run to advertising whenever we are looking to buy a high risk product which poses great threats, do we believe our peers less then?

Personal view to this conundrum

My personal view to this conundrum is that advertising works, but not at face value. Hence John Wanamaker's infamous quote, "half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half".

People, according to what I've seen and experienced in my very short life, need to be told something, then left to digest it and then they will unconsciously use that information at later stage as a base when purchasing or considering to purchase a product or service.

As a case study I'll ask this, why does Coca Cola still advertise? (If you consider yourself a marketer then this should be a relatively simple question to answer). In order for someone to be able to recommend one product/brand over another, then sometime in their past, they must have had some sort of interaction with the brand/product, be it through usage, someone else's recommendations or a company's marketing efforts, but somewhere somehow, advertising was ultimately involved. Which brings me to this point: Though we may not be able to measure our advertising efforts and though consumers may like to think that they prefer peer recommendations to our marketing efforts as marketers, advertising does work.

We may not be able to tell you how many people bought or subscribed to what due to the marketing campaigns that we endeavoured on, but we can tell you how many people we reached on our TV ads, how many times the consumer heard on our radio ads, predict how long our ads in magazines and newspapers will last for, as well as tell you how many new users viewed our ads online.

With a fully integrated marketing communications plan, we are able to tell you that during the period when our special or discount was on, sales for a product that had been constantly declining, increased by so many percent. We can tell you that after our marketing campaign, so many people subscribed to our services.

It does work

From a marketer to the accountants, and fellow marketers, yes advertising, or rather marketing is immeasurable, and yes we cannot tell you what your ROI will be for investing R5 million into our planned marketing campaigns, but we can tell you that it works.

The effects of the campaigns are only seen after the actual campaign had run; the effects happen unconsciously when the consumer is in a store looking to buy a product for the first time ever and is looking for a familiar brand rather than an unknown one because in their minds, the known brand is "safer" than the generic, unknown one.

Due to the fact that consumers will tell you that they hate advertising and do not believe in it, but will choose a certain brand because their favourite celebrity is using or endorsing it, that they will choose Coca Cola over other cooldrinks because "they grew up with it". Due to the fact that we can't prove when or how it works, but we can show you the effects of it, advertising does work, subliminally.