Even in these days of deep cost cutting, the in-house ad agency is exceedingly rare among large companies. You will find that most successful companies hire outside agencies to create and implement their advertising. The in-house ad agency is more common with very small businesses, but often proves to be a disaster for larger companies. Why? Because in-house agencies can lack objectivity. Though they may try to distance themselves from the internal office politics of their co-workers down the hall, many will fail, and with very expensive consequences. Most smart companies maintain a healthy boundary between product and advertising.
Great advertising requires startlingly frank honesty about the true appeal and viability of the product. You need a very brave, very honest person to tell you if your baby is ugly before you invest a few million in advertising it. That is the beauty of the external ad agency. They are paid to evaluate the sales viability of the product, not the company, or the staff. They are far less invested in the fact that you broke your back trying to get this product to market, or that this product is the CEO’s pet project…and that is exactly how you want it.
The first job of any agency is to be a customer reality check. They are the ever-vigilant advocates for the customer, not the company. Their job is to do their best to minimize the company’s internal agenda and boldly evaluate the best options for the consumer. The agency’s job is to use their resources and experience to anticipate the customer’s response, then craft an image that truly differentiates the product. That may include sending the product back to the drawing board for modifications, or scrapping it totally. The agency is the audience expert and every business desperately needs its objectivity.
The problem is that most products really aren’t that much different from competitive products. One bar of soap is not that much different than the next. One car rental company rents the same amorphous American sedans as the next company. Because they are audience experts, ad agency people understand this and are trained to come up with marketing options even when the products are identical to competitive products.
Unfortunately, the people involved in the product management and manufacturing process often don’t appreciate this. They have worked so hard and so long on getting their product to market, they have usually fallen in love with it. Because they understand everything about how that soap is made, they believe it is demonstratively better, and the marketing is fairly simple – just tell potential customers how great the soap is. These proud product parents who live their lives on the front lines of soap manufacturing are smitten with the emulsifying qualities of the glycerin in their soap. They tend to believe that the whole world will plainly see their biochemical brilliance and love their soap as much as they do.
Many of these left-brained people believe that emotional attachment can be quantitatively inspired. This means their marketing agenda often relies heavily on proving excellence by listing superior product attributes. “My product has feature A, feature B, and feature C. I have successfully proven my product is clearly superior to competitive products. Therefore, you should love my product – now.” When you wooed your wife, you didn’t win her love by presenting a powerpoint of your superior husbandly features. You showed her that the two of you were kindred spirits and won her heart through subtle persuasion, not quantitative proof.
The people who create the product are sometimes the last people you want involved in the decisions to market that product. They tend to fall in love with their own product baby – even when that baby might be ugly.
If I were to ask the frontline product manufacturing team at Nike to sit down and write a four-page document on Nike’s brand, they would probably start by describing the intricacies of the shoe manufacturing process. The document might begin with “we will use the most advanced polymers for insole manufacturing to achieve maximum durability and consistent cushioning.”
But Nike was smart enough to hire Weiden & Kennedy, an ad agency that does not care about shoes. And because of this, their branding document is completely customer obsessed. It contains numerous statements that talk about how athletes and everyday people strive for excellence, and seek to push themselves to new heights through tenacious determination and hard work. The branding document speaks of the innate pride that lives in the hearts of competitors. It speaks about dreams of being a champion, even if those dreams are just pipe dreams.
Making this marketing leap from a feature-obsessed internal agenda to a completely customer-obsessed brand persuasion mindset is one of the biggest and most common branding mistakes made by companies. Unfortunately, internal ad agencies are far more vulnerable to making this egregious error.
Internal agency staffers usually work down the hall from the people on the product teams. They know them well and are usually quite invested in pleasing them. Their in-house client is not just their sole reason for existing, the manufacturing staffers are coworkers and friends. That copywriter has gone to lunch with the product manager. The marketing director has gotten a little drunk with the quality control manager at the annual Christmas party. The designer has seen the adorable pictures of the controller’s kids on his desk.
In-house agency staffers often see their internal client and internal product with rose-colored glasses. They see it as more special, more different, more sexy. This means that when it comes time to speak up and say “your product still stinks and needs a unique selling proposition,” the in-house agency staffer can sometimes be less objective. After all, they aren’t just criticizing a product, they are belittling the life’s work of the people they work with every day. It is often times the same people who sign their paychecks. Just like their manufacturing brethren, the in-house agency can be too close to the product to dispassionately campaign on the customer’s behalf. It has drunk the company-line Kool-Aid and lost its edge.
So take a hard look at how your company creates marketing. Are there enough outside voices? Is everyone on the team an insider? Are there enough people in the decision chain who don’t know and don’t care about your internal company agenda? If everyone who builds the marketing for your product is an employee, you may not be getting the dispassionate feedback you need to drive customer-obsessed excellence.
If you use an internal ad agency model, then it is important that you recruit those honest voices from consultants, research companies, or outside ad agencies. If you can’t afford the full-service contract, consider bringing in these brutally honest voices during the planning stages. They will not be around to guide you along the way, but they can provide good honest feedback at the most critical stage of a marketing process, the planning and goal setting at the beginning.
Next Week: Specific steps to minimize the internal bias and build a brand that speaks directly to the customer’s needs.
—Graeme Newell works for 602 Communications as a broadcast and cable marketing consultant. He specializes in emotional marketing. He guarantees that his teasing seminar will immediately increase your news ratings or his workshop is free. Find out more here.
