As part of the IPA Excellence Diploma, I wrote a fairly lengthy piece entitled: "I believe that the future of brands requires heresy: It's time for a new system of leading beliefs". Even the title is lengthy. So I've turned it into a presentation and chunked it up into three parts. This is the first, which establishes what I think the problem with the modern marketing industry is, and why we need heretical behaviour to solve it.

1. Part 1: Common Sense
@rossfarquhar

2. , in nit?
ugh
, tho
nsense
mo
com
It’s just It’s understandable that those in other
functions often wonder whether all we
do is earn money for exercising common
sense.
After all, it seems like the industry is
governed by a number of simple and
intuitive ‘rules’ that anyone could come
up with…

3. Advertising exists to increase sales.
Advertising works by communicating messages.
To be effective, people have to notice it.
Differentiation at a product level is crucial.

4. Well, there are some who’d disagree…
Les Binet’s IPA databank analysis suggests Byron Sharp has shown that while
advertising is most effective at justifying a distinctiveness of brand assets is crucial,
price premium, not growing volume. physical differentiation is not
Paul Feldwick has demonstrated that TV
Stephen King, I suspect, would just despair of
advertising is often effective without
all of these common sense notions…
consciously recognising it.

5. The Problem with Common Sense

6. A Rule-Based Comfort Blanket
Rather than learning from the past
and consequently improving our
practice, we rely on a set of
intuitive rules as a crutch to drive
our decision-making.

7. These common sense rules
drive objective setting, which
then drive measurement, which
then drive the thing that gets
produced.
Then when it doesn’t work, the
cycle repeats itself.
Self-reinforcing

8. Dogma
These rules become entirely ingrained,
despite having no figurehead or
institution, such that they’re almost
impossible to dislodge.
Doing so is like punching in the dark.

9. Maybe now is the time for change…

10. …because we’re ineffective.

11. “Half my advertising works, I just don’t know
which half. Actually, it’s closer to 1% of your
advertising that works, at the most. Your
billboard reaches 100,000 people and if
you’re lucky, it gets you a hundred
customers...”
Seth Godin

12. 56% of CMOs feel unprepared for a
drive towards ROI accountability.

13. The leaders of our industry are worried that
if asked to justify all the money they spend,
they couldn’t.
(Reassuring)
So they spend more money on research to
mitigate the risk…

14. Pre-testing is “not an objective, predictive
measure of the effectiveness of the
advertising.”
Wendy Gordon
Acacia Avenue

15. Oh.

16. So all that money spent on testing
stuff actually makes it worse?
Ref: IPA Effectiveness Awards at 30 –
Post-tested ads maximise profitability compared to pre-tested ones.

17. In order to articulate what we do to those holding the purse strings,
we reduce the discipline down to common sense rules,
and then pre-test, execute and measure against them.
Then it doesn’t work.
And it becomes even harder to secure funding.
And so it continues.

18. …because there’s a destabilising public contract

19. “Advertising, [this report] suggests, harms
society and the planet by increasing
consumerism, manipulating cultural values
and intruding into all aspects of our lives.”
Caroline Lucas
Green Party Leader (England & Wales)
In ‘Think of Me As Evil’

20. Nothing new…
…and some familiar themes…

21. PERVASIVENESS
(marketing harms liberty)

22. MATERIALISM
(marketing makes us consume more, work harder, save less, borrow more)

23. IMPACTS CULTURE
(marketing normalises undesirable behaviour)

24. “Today’s best and brightest graduates in psychology
and cognitive science are snapped up by the
advertising industry because they want to know how
best to manipulate us… This report should serve as a
kind of prophylactic to help stop the advertisers
planting desires in our heads.”
Clive Hamilton
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Canberra

25. But I’m not sure who’s actually running the show…
http://youtu.be/YQXe1CokWqQ

26. Common sense dominates like dogma, without
figurehead or institution.
But now might be the time for change…
…to improve the effectiveness of what we do.
…to be the foundation of a new, transparent
contract with the public.

27. What’s stopped us fixing it?

28. We’ve behaved like proper
scientists, employing deductive
reasoning to disprove the rules
that common sense marketing
sees us all live by.
The tricky thing is, nowhere is
atheism in the ma jority.
Belief isn’t fuelled by reason.
Atheism: A Negative Approach

29. Crises without Paradigm Shift:
A Piecemeal Approach
We’ve divided the common sense
doctrine into individual strands and
attempted to challenge them one by
one (e.g. high vs. low involvement
processing).
Paradigms can survive minor crises,
they’re only ever dislodged by a
better alternative.
We haven’t painted the picture of a
better, total alternative.

30. The enlightened aren’t without
powerful voices.
Individuals and bodies like the
IPA, ISBA, the AA etc have all
been calling for change for
some time.
But they’ve lacked one clear
voice. Instead, appearing as
disparate troublemakers.
Rebellion without Revolution:
A Fragmented Approach

31. The Time for Heresy

32. “Beliefs are most clearly and systematically
articulated when they are formed via negative.”
Lester Kurz

33. The difference between an infidel and a
heretic is that the latter has the best interests
of the institution at heart.
It’s time for heretics to rise up for the good of
the discipline.

34. It’s time for a new system of leading beliefs.

35. Next:
Part 2: The Ten Touchstones of a New Belief System
Part 3: An Idea for an Industry
@rossfarquhar

36. References and Further Reading
Binet, L. (2009, Quarter 3). The Dangers of Common Sense. Market Leader , pp. 55-57.
Sharp, B. (2010). How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Godin, S. (2006, 10 24). Five common cliches (done wrong). Retrieved May 30, 2012 from Seth Godin's Blog:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/10/five_common_cli.html
IBM. (2011). From Stretched to Strengthened: Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study. Portsmouth: IBM Institute for Business
Value.
Parsons, R. (2010, December 17). UK ad spend up 6.6% in 2010. Marketing Week.
The Market Research Society. (2011). 2010 Industry League Tables. Retrieved May 30, 2012 from The Market Research Society:
http://www.mrs.org.uk/intelligence/industry_statistics
Gordon, W. (1995, March). Advertising pre-testing works - or does it? Admap .
Field, P. (2010). The IPA Effectiveness Awards at 30. Measuring Advertising Performance 2010. London: World Advertising Research Centre.
Alexander, J., Crompton, T., & Shrubsole, G. (2011). Think of me as evil? Opening the Ethical Debates in Advertising. October: Public Interest
Research Centre (PIRC) & WWF-UK.
Packard, V. (1957). The Hidden Persuaders. London: Longmans, Green.
Klein, N. (1999). No Logo. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Knopf Canada & Picador.
King, S. (1975). Practical Progress from a Theory of Advertisements. In S. King, A Master Class in Brand Planning: The Timeless Works of
Stephen King. Admap.
European Commission. (2005). Special Eurobarometer: Social values, Science and Technology. Brussels: Directorate General Press and
Communication.
Heath, R., & Feldwick, P. (2007). 50 Years of the Wrong Model of TV Advertising. Working Paper Series. 3. Bath: University of Bath School of
Management.
Field, P., & Binet, L. (2007). Marketing in the Era of Accountability. Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. London: World Advertising Research
Centre.
Bartley, G. (2006, July/August). The Truth about Heresy? Philosophy Now (56).
Kurtz, L. R. (1983). The Politics of Heresy. American Journal of Sociology , 88 (6), 1085-1115.
Feldwick, P. (2002). What is brand equity anyway? London: World Advertising Research Centre.
Franzen, G., & Bouwman, M. (2001). The Mental World of Brands. Amsterdam, Netherlands: NTC Publications.

37. Download the full source essay, along with some
much better ones, as part of the IPA Excellence
Diploma’s 2012 ‘Campaign’ supplement.
http://www.ipa.co.uk/document/excellence-
diploma-campaign-supplement-2012
@rossfarquhar