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We’ve become too clever and too complicated.
We’re trying to say too many things and make every piece of communication do too much. We’re not thinking hard enough about what we’re actually asking of our audience – and it’s showing where it matters most: the bottom line of the brands agencies represent.
Today's consumer encounters advertising across virtually every touchpoint in their day – from the phone screen they scroll over their morning coffee, to the billboard on their commute, to the television they sit down in front of after dinner.
Cutting through that clutter takes enormous effort, yet we still use our limited opportunity to try to land multiple, often complicated, messages at once. And if everything is important, nothing is important.
While we may have been creeping towards this proliferation for years, digital undoubtedly accelerated it.
Suddenly, brands could reach millions of eyeballs relatively cheaply. We could produce and distribute advertising faster, target more precisely, optimise constantly and communicate more frequently. We could do and say a whole lot more – and so we did.
Yet in doing so, we entered into something of a Faustian bargain. The trade-off was the attention of our audience.
As consumers became increasingly inundated, they adapted by tuning us out. Somewhere along the way, we lost both our audience and our sense of what advertising was there to achieve in the first place.
At the same time, parts of our industry began pursuing creativity as an end in itself. Con Frantzeskos, chief executive of Penso, called this out in an op-ed several years ago, arguing that awards are not the purpose of advertising, and that good advertising should grow businesses, increase shareholder returns, and build 100-year-old brands.
Creativity absolutely matters. Memorable, impactful work is undoubtedly the most powerful tool we have.
But creativity is the means, not the end, because eventually there is an inconvenient commercial reality we need to confront: we still have to move product or sell services.
And while creative work might win awards, if our clients’ products and services aren’t selling, those marketing budgets will disappear quicker than you can say return on ad spend.
So the industry thought it found an answer.
We began separating advertising into two distinct roles: Brand and Performance.
Here’s the big brand campaign where we get to stretch our creative muscles and have fun!
And over there is the performance bucket – the less glamorous daily slog required to move the needle on sales and, conveniently, ensure there’s a marketing budget for next year’s big brand campaign.
I believe this is a fundamental mistake, because – like media and creative (an entirely different story for another day) – the two should never have been parted.
This is something the most successful retailers have understood for decades.
Building a strong brand that becomes part of the fabric of everyday South African life and selling product are not mutually exclusive ambitions.
The best advertising does both.
In fact, if you're successful at one while neglecting the other – regardless of which way around – you will reach the same end point: disappointment.
And the industry is now recognising this, hence the growing conversation around combining brand and performance marketing – or “brandformance”, as some have dubbed it (we are, as an industry, quite partial to a buzzword).
I prefer Bretail.
After almost two decades of working with some of South Africa’s biggest brands and retailers, we’ve learnt that what the ad industry has often diminished as “retail advertising” is perhaps advertising in its purest form.
This experience has taught us that every piece of communication that leaves our agency needs to provide the customer both a reason to believe in the brand and a reason to buy.
But while “Bretail” might be a nod to what these brands have been doing successfully for years, this thinking is not confined to retail.
Whether you’re selling groceries, a bank account, a mobile contract or an insurance product, the principle is the same: be absolutely clear about what you’re offering, why it matters to the customer and why choosing the alternative would leave them worse off.
And do it in a way that builds something distinctive around the brand at the same time. That, to me, is the essence of Bretail.
There is another principle at play that we tend to think about only in financial terms: compound interest.
The strongest brands aren’t built by pouring all their love, attention and budget into one beautiful brand campaign a year; they’re built through the accumulated effect of every interaction a customer has with them.
Every interaction or piece of communication either makes a small deposit into that brand account, or makes a withdrawal.
And this goes far beyond using the right font or visual identity – it’s what you say, how you say it, what you choose not to say – and then being consistent about it.
When each piece feels connected to what came before it, those small deposits begin to compound into trust, preference, and ultimately positive results.
But beyond buzzwords, advertising needs to remember that it has a job to do. Get noticed. Say something worth remembering. Give people a compelling reason to choose you.
Sell the product while building the brand – and build the brand every time you sell the product.
