1. OF CABBAGES AND SUPERKINGS.
Preface: This 600 word article was originally written in response to a job advert asking for
a basic summary of the difference between, and similarities of, marketing and advertising.
Which ten years on, no longer embraces cigarettes as it used to. Cabbages never
enjoyed high status with teen and pre-teen customers – or their parents. Vaping is now
popular with both demographics, and definitively proves there can be smoke without
fire…..
Markets create advertising. Advertising creates markets. So which comes first - Kentucky
Fried Chicken or Cadbury’s Creme Egg?
Commerce is a two-way process in which market researchers and advertisers are
intermediaries: placed between the seller and the buyer, they must anticipate traffic in both
directions. Failure to look both ways means an ad campaign will be run down and left for
dead..
We like to consider ourselves unique, but to market researchers and advertisers, we are
merely just another person in a group of identical individuals. Nevertheless, market
researchers and advertisers recognise that we don’t want to keep up with the Joneses, but
want to overtake them - in bigger, better, faster cars. Here’s how they create the illusion
that we do:
Using the motor industry as an example, Market Researchers examine two sample buyer
client groups:
• Buyer 1 - a couple, three children and a dog
• Buyer 2 - no partner, no children, no pets
And establish each one’s needs and aspirations:
• Buyer 1 requires: spacious interior, safety features, sensible speed limit, low
maintenance, trans-generational image;
• Buyer 2 requires. tiny interior, element-of-danger-factor, high maintenance,
individual lifestyle-reflecting image.

2. Advertisers then make a virtue out of necessity:
Buyer 1: “All the family can get out in it – and even dad can get into it” and then lists
the design and performance features that will grab the attention of any fathers who classify
themselves as Buyer 2 alongside those required for trouble-free family travel. Which is- as
all parents know - no children!
Which brings us onto Buyer 2, whose strapline is: “Get into it. Get out of it”. Nothing
other than very high mph and very low maintenance information needs to be conveyed by
any additional copy.
Both straplines exploit recognisable buyer characteristics to direct the two buyer groups
along different routes to get what they want (Buyer 1:People carrier; Buyer 2 - sports car),
while ensuring neither wants what the other has got. Two for the price of one, and
everyone’s happy. So what about the seller?
Sellers need to shift units, which range from armoires to zoological supplies with (even)
less sought-after items between – like cabbage. Few people enjoy cabbage, but it still
exists. And anything that exists will have a market. Even cabbage. It may be difficult to
offload the stuff, but market research will find the type of person who will take truckloads.
Advertising will then know whom to target and how to do it. As a result of this symbiosis,
you’re unlikely to see a web banner inviting you to enjoy the ‘Strains of Green Leaves’ to
the tune of Tudor England’s only official chart No.1 - but a carefully crafted direct mail
campaign themed on this contrived pun will probably reach the right people - provided they
are health-conscious technophobes with a penchant for historical cliché. Market research
will identify them. And market research knows where they live.
For consumers outside the target group, such leaflets - like cabbage - would go straight in
the bin. ‘Time and Effort Wasters’ are rooted out by market research at a very early stage
in a fingerprinting exercise that builds up a consumer profile database that points
advertisers in the right direction for future campaigns for similar products.
Without market research, advertising would be as sloppy and directionless as boiled
cabbage is. Without market research, you wouldn’t see cabbage advertised at all. So
maybe there is no place for it…..

3. Market research allows people to say what they want.
Advertising then tells people what it is and how to get it.
The first is about how people’s minds work, the second about how to work people’s minds.
Like the chicken and the egg, one could not exist without the other.