This is an abridged version and is courtesy of MSI, Marketing Science Institute.
1. Brand equity is hard to build and hard to shift—except in a negative direction.
Brand equity is a deep repository of consumer thoughts and feelings, built up in very slow accretions. This is a laborious process, accomplished through communication and advertising and, most importantly, by delivering on your product promise.
2. For the most part, people are not paying attention to us, to our advertising messages, and to our brands.
Marketers often live inside their own brand bubble, imagining that consumers are paying much closer attention than, in fact, they are. At best, people are paying partial attention. Rarely do we have their full attention. Particularly now, when there are so many commercial messages and people are multitasking and distracted.
3. We tend to exaggerate how predictable people are.
As marketers, we have a bias toward believing that people behave in rational ways. We analyze the return on investment for each component of a marketing plan, we try to estimate what drives sales, and we use sophisticated algorithms, but the reality of how people behave is often random and even accidental.
4. Our love of targeting technologies should not become “blind love.”
We’ve tended to treat the customer in a hostile way. We use militarized language to talk about what we do: ad campaigns and targets, ambushes and screen takeovers. Digital tracking simply allows this military metaphor to extend to a newer and deeper level. It is becoming hard to distinguish this type of marketing from surveillance, and it’s provoking a considerable amount of pushback from some consumers and governments.
5. Cross-platform advertising should have a unified look, feel, and theme, but the creative units should be adapted to the platform.
Every time you try to bring a marketing message in, you really should put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. You need to understand the creative dynamics and the context in which the message will be received.
Scott McDonald. 5 Things I Know About Marketing. MSI, Marketing Science Institute.