Don't make your customers hate you.
Just like many professionals, we like reading about our profession. We read the advertising trade publications to get the buzz of what’s going on inside our industry. And we read the popular press to see how we’re viewed from the outside.
Unfortunately, that’s not always exactly uplifting. In fact, very often such stories are about some hair-raising errors in judgment, and usually end with a variant of this sentence: “The ad was pulled from circulation, and the company apologized to all who were offended.”
When an ad goes bad there’s usually plenty of blame to go around. The client gave the creative team some rough parameters (or maybe even specific parameters), the creatives spit-balled some ideas, one was chosen and fleshed out, and the client signed off on it. Sometime thereafter an ad was unleashed upon the world.
That creative team should very much fall on its sword, though, if the ad was badly targeted, poorly communicated, or was somehow actually offensive. Even if it completely followed the client’s directives, it’s the agency’s job to make sure it does what it’s supposed to: drive awareness, position against competitive offerings, pre-qualify potential new customers and precondition targets for the selling process. It’s the agency’s job to foresee any backlash, any counterproductive scenario, and when necessary to put the brakes on.
So when a bad ad is released, it’s the agency’s fault. Period.
This is always the case, even when the ad’s relative “badness” is a matter of conjecture. Take this example from earlier this summer. McDonald’s in Singapore ran a print ad for McNuggets, declaring that “Today’s PSI (Peak Sauce Index) is deliciously high.” The problem? In Singapore, as well as throughout English-speaking East Asia, PSI is universally recognized as the Pollutant Standards Index. And the week the ad ran, Singapore’s PSI was at a record high, leading to widespread illness and misery.
The ad was pulled, and McDonald’s apologized to all who were offended.
There were no moral shocks here, no stereotyping or offensive language. Just a bit of cultural thoughtlessness. That was enough, though, to make the ad completely counterproductive.
An advertisement sent out unto the world must follow the basic tenet of marketing: Know thy customers. Know what appeals to them, and just as importantly, know what turns them off. If there’s the slimmest chance an ad might bruise their sensibilities, or cause them to think unpleasant thoughts, then that ad should never see the light of day.
Of course you know your customers. But you should be able to rely on your agency to make sure your advertising is right for those customers. The agency should value your results far more than their own creative prowess. They might create stunning ads, but if those ads create backlash, they’re hurting you — not helping you.
The C4
- When we see our industry in the popular press, it’s a little like seeing a train wreck. We know it’s gonna be bad, but we can’t seem to look away. When the popular press writes about advertising, nine out of ten times they’re writing about advertising gone awry.
- Advertising goes awry because someone, somewhere in the process, didn’t give due respect to the audience’s sensibilities.
- When that happens, it’s the agency’s fault. Always.
- Know your customers. And make sure your agency knows them, too. A good agency never stops learning about their clients’ customers, and they craft marketing material that appeals directly to those folks. They know the cultural, political, and sociological hot-buttons to avoid. They’re creatively gifted, to be sure, but they know that creativity counts for less than zero if their clients end up publicly apologizing for their work.
