How does advertising work?
Such a fascinating question…
You can start to unpack it in different ways, and the unpacking is never really done. What does ‘advertising’ mean? Where do you draw the line on what to consider?
A review of media channels, platforms, times and places, paid-for/not-paid for communications? Does it always involve creativity? Is there a workable definition of the border between advertising and marketing? Do we need to be purist about our conceptualisation of ‘advertising’?
And then, what does ‘work’ mean? Who is asking the question and for what reason? To establish or to prove what hypothesis, or to defend against what belief or pressure? What will do you with the answer?
You could try to show that advertising (once agreed on) has had an effect on a person, a customer, a consumer. But then, effect on someone does not mean necessarily effect upon the business. I can like an ad, remember the brand and product, talk about these things – and never go on to buy from the brand. Indeed, I may well buy from a competitor the next time it is relevant.
Effectiveness is an apparently simple term and concept, but not straightforward if you start to think through what effect you want to see, on which people or on which brand, and to what end. Indeed, ‘effects’ can be broken down into consumer responses and business results, as Colin McDonald did; or a long list of measurable metrics and a short list of KPIs; and so on. In general, I think we need to be clear what we mean by 'responses', 'results', 'outcomes', 'impacts', 'effects', or what have you. Precise terminology helps in being precise in practice and meaning.
Next, let’s say that you prove that XYZ, and that it aligns with your hypothesis, and that it is profitable for the brand – and that your case stands up to scrutiny. Then comes another consideration: is that success repeatable? Should you aim for bigger or better, or different the next time?
A lovely thought, I think, is that advertising success that fails a second time is not necessarily evidence of a failed approach. It may be instead that the audience – real people in the real world – have moved on.
Empirical proof is not the gold standard it is often held up to be, I would contend, but proof to illustrate repetition (or repeatability, perhaps.) And that’s fine of course – as far as it goes. The ‘how does advertising work’ question isn’t so much the potential title of a keynote speech, but rather of a roundtable. You exchange views, argue that XYZ, come with instances when you’ve seen something work better or worse than expected. Others say other things, more or less persuasively. And throughout it all, principles and rules come and go; evidence-based arguments attract, then fade; people leave the discussion because they have got what they wanted, or get sidetracked.
In specific terms, in particular contexts, showing that advertising works can be addressed in satisfactory ways (tools and sufficient data provided), because the question is usually defined in advance by the professional paid to look at it. But there is often more nuance and context than the final proof shows (based on my past experience.)
Yes to this; No to that; Maybe to the other... is often already too much. Mostly, Yes stands alone, imperfectly.
Stephen King once said something along the lines of, We will never solve the ‘how does advertising work’ question, and that this called for strategic judgement.
You could think, then: there are no pure contexts, no sealed environments. What works once may fail tomorrow; what falters here, may thrive elsewhere. We need to stay alert to what our judgement tells us, and what the contexts signal to us.
In the end, we would appear to have open-ended questions that resist being closed once and for all; and that can be answered successfully (to be sure), but only in part, without an assurance of repeatability.
I think this means that the the job of creating and then measuring successful advertising remains forever to be done – and to be done well. Strategy, creative, media and measurement haven't reached their ideal states just yet, and that's probably just as well.
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