Reinventing Marketing: Alan Mitchell uses 'mad sheep rage' to unravel the mysteries behind marketing effectiveness
Mad Sheep Rage. There - what a satisfying way to introduce a new column. No, I'm not nuts. Mad Sheep Rage is an acronym you might find useful. But first, let's get some perspective from another world where an important debate is raging.
Once upon a time, doctors thought they knew that leukaemia was a single disease identified by these symptoms and tackled with those treatments. Over the years, however, we have discovered that leukaemia is actually 51 different types of cancer, all of which happen to present themselves via the same symptoms. To treat 'leukaemia' effectively, then, you first have to find out which cancer it is. Then you know what you are up against.
Doctors' old approach to treating leukaemia is now being dubbed 'symptomatic' medicine. The patient presents themself to the doctor, who asks questions, looks for symptoms and makes a diagnosis. It is a qualitative approach driven by the skill, experience and judgement of the doctor.
This creates a cult of authority and mystery: doctors are a bit like clairvoyants, able to divine what mere mortals cannot, and they can reach this exalted state only after years of hard training and experience.
The alternative of 'evidence-based' medicine takes a different approach. It is driven by scientific knowledge of cause and effect, which results in highly specific diagnostic tests. Confronted with the symptoms, the doctor conducts tests that identify which type of leukaemia it is and, therefore, which actions to take.
OK. Let's return to Mad Sheep Rage.
Marketing (especially advertising) is still practised largely as a symptomatic art. That is why so many companies want better measurement and accountability. The trouble is, the campaign for measurability and accountability has led us into a dead end. Why? Surely better measurement is always good? Are we not in the process of finding the evidence we need to make marketing a truly scientific profession with strong, predictable returns?
This might be true if we were measuring the right things, but are we? Say we do a campaign that drives a 5% uplift in sales and profits. What does that tell us about what we did right and what we did wrong? Looking at our analysis, do we know what to do more of and what to do less of? In other words, does it teach us enough to help us enter a virtuous spiral of learning and continuous improvement?
Enter Mad Sheep Rage. It is based on the leukaemia insight: beneath the same surface appearance, there may be multiple causes and effects; each one its own mini-mystery. The acronym Mad Sheep Rage lists these mini-mysteries - the many different ways in which marketing and advertising can affect target audiences.
Bearing in mind there is no logic to the order of the M, A, D etc (except its role in creating a memorable acronym) let us look at some of its components.
M stands for manipulation, where marketers play with consumers' emotions under the radar of conscious thought. One modern variant is the theory of 'somatic markers' - which focuses on how emotions guide decision-making - and low-attention processing.
A stands for awareness. Human brains are 'always on' and perception is an irreversible process - you cannot decide to become unaware of something that you have been made aware of. Equally, of course, you cannot consider buying a product or service you are not aware of, so simply making somebody aware of a product or offer can generate dramatic results.
However, awareness is not the same as persuasion. Making somebody aware of something does not guarantee that they will go out and buy it. And once they are aware of it, more awareness may generate diminishing returns.
D stands for deception. This is when marketers are economical with the truth, exaggerating some facts, omitting to inform consumers of others, deliberately creating confusion, and so on. Manipulation and deception are different: manipulation is about unconscious decision-making processes, while deception is about creating and profiting from information asymmetries.
S stands for stimulation. This is where consumers seek out the advertising because it presents new ideas and possibilities. People buy Vogue as much for the fashion tips in the ads as for the editorial, for example.
H stands for heuristics. These are rules of thumb that many consumers adopt when going to market. They vary greatly, including: buy the cheapest (money-saving), buy at the biggest discount (bargain-hunting, perceived value), buy the most expensive (status, quality), buy what my friends recommend or have bought (risk-reduction, fashion), buy what I did last time (risk-reduction, save time thinking about it), buy what is easiest to buy (convenience) and so on.
A lot of marketing has evolved in response to these go-to-market heuristics, which creates a moot point when it comes to measurement. When the consumer is heuristically driven and responds to a marketing initiative, has the marketing initiative been 'effective' in 'changing' the consumer's behaviour, or was it consumers' heuristic behaviours channelling the marketer into that marketing activity?
Price promotions can generate massive sales spikes - the numbers apparently demonstrate incontrovert-ible proof of effectiveness. Yet, if the consumer is acting on the heuristic 'always buy the cheapest', then, from the consumer's point of view, they haven't changed their behaviour one iota. It just so happens that this time this brand (as opposed to that brand) is most aligned with this behaviour. Tomorrow will probably be different.
Underlying influences
By now you are probably getting the picture, so let us do just one more.
E stands for education. This is particularly important when it comes to new technologies, where the benefits of the product need to be explained to consumers; where misunderstandings need to be corrected; or where perhaps there is a compelling argument for a change in behaviour (such as public and social advertising).
Half-way through our journey into Mad Sheep Rage, we can already see that all manner of things may be going on behind that 5% sales uplift. In some cases, the effects of marketing are palpable (awareness). In others, they are questionable and perhaps even illusory (heuristics). Each 'component' has its own limits and sphere of applicability (compare the jump from non-awareness to awareness with shifting incrementally from 'aware' to 'even more aware'). Each component probably has its own natural life span. The danger with deception, for example, is that it can work wonderfully for a time, before generating a backlash.
Perhaps more important, each component speaks volumes about the relationship between marketer and consumer. Manipulation and deception are basically adversarial. Heuristics and awareness could be regarded as neutral. Stimulation and education are win-win.
Lastly, every marketing and advertising campaign is likely to generate many different effects at the same time. Do they come together to create genuine synergy? Awareness and stimulation could fit perfectly, for example. Or are they at war with each other, creating a sum that is less than its parts - education with elements of deception, for example?
With just 12 components in Mad Sheep Rage, if each has its own weight from one to 12, you have nearly 5m permutations and combinations, so it is important to be clear which components you are trying to deploy.
Lessons to learn
So what's the take-out? First, any attempt to measure marketing 'effectiveness' without first disentangling its multiple, qualitatively different consumer impacts is a recipe for confusion from which we can never learn. Was your 5% uplift driven by devious manipulation and outrageous deception? Was it generated by creative stimulation and clear, compelling education? Was it simple awareness-creation? Or was it actually illusory, a mere artefact of consumers following their own heuristics regardless of what you do? Perhaps it was a combination of all of them. If so, which component contributed how much?
Collecting ever-more data on what happened without knowing why is not scientific - it is just pretending. Measuring 'change' as evidence of 'effectiveness' is meaningless without knowing why that change happened (or, indeed, if it is a change at all).
Second, having identified and under-stood the different possible impacts (a significant exercise in its own right), organisations need to conduct Mad Sheep audits of their marketing activities, to understand better how their marketing is actually working.
Third, they need to experiment with different mixes. My hunch (yet to be proved) is that success comes from creating internal consistency between elements (awareness plus stimulation, for example), which includes replacing adversarial practices with win-win ones. This is how coherent, stable marketing strategies build brand momentum, in contrast to campaigns that simply come and go.
Symptomatic marketing is better than nothing. People smelted metal and achieved fantastic results before they understood metallurgy. Nevertheless, it can take us only so far. To build a real body of evidence, we need to know what evidence we are looking for. Mad Sheep Rage is just beginning.
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