My myth of positioning and the demise of advertising

Advertising is like an adolescent. It is misunderstood, mistrusted and abused. Of all the modern scientific marketing management disciplines, it is probably the least trusted by those it is supposed to help: consumers. Now, advertising is going to go extinct and superman David Ogilvy is not here to save it. The severe economic recession of 2007-2009 had cataclysmic effects on business; advertising was not spared. Revenues plummeted and earnings shrank. One of the first places corporate bean counters look when threatened by a cash drought is the marketing department. They begin to think that all the efforts to attract consumers is not really improving the so-called bottom-line. This may not be so smart. It is only logical that when consumers have to scrimp down to every Cedis, you have to advertise more to attract them, right? Wrong. There is a better way to attract and keep customers.

In 2008, Vodafone, the British telecommunications’ giant, had just completed the acquisition of Ghana Telecom, operators of the One Touch mobile network from the Government of Ghana (Bra Laryea). The move was the only way out to salvage a company that had sunk into a perpetual trough despite the huge investments made into it. At the time of the acquisition, Ghana Telecom was Ghana’s third largest network, having slipped from first position.

The management of Vodafone was anxious. They knew they had to think smart and act fast, so they hunted locally for a marketing talent and found it in UK trained Carmen Bruce-Annan. Mrs. Bruce-Annan proved she was worth the buzz being made about her. She proposed a marketing programme underpinned by Public Relations (PR), not advertising. Vodafone became glad they bought into her plan. They reaped impressive and unmatched results in an industry that is known for consumers who are fickle.

By the time she left Vodafone, they had vaulted to second place on the subscriber base ladder with more than six million active users, garnered more than thirty international and local awards and almost doubled their number of clients. Her achievements are now corporate folklore in Ghana.

When Jack Trout and Al Ries wrote the business best-seller, ‘Positioning and the Battle for the Mind,’ they put forward a few propositions:  use more advertising, hedge against excessive use of PR, focus on marketing and linguistic aesthetics like a name which is short, memorable and pleasant sounding (someone suggested to Lee Lacocca to change Chrysler’s abbreviation to CHRYSCO) and the first entrants to a market would always be the leaders. Armed with these propositions, advertisers forced companies to go on an advertising binge. Advertising became the panacea to all our marketing challenges. The bubble is going burst.

The marketing theory of positioning is proving to be a myth. Toyota (Japan) showed General Motors and Ford in America that consumers “won’t buy if they don’t like.” Then came the red dragon, China; they dispelled the notion that consumers were rational and would always pay for what was quality. Positioning may have served well in the past but the new business space is rendering it obsolete. Global trade, the information deluge, technology, spread of technical ability and consumer knowledge have re-shaped the marketplace.

This is the new reality: you cannot create space for your product and business in a client’s mind; it is the client that decides to create space for you. This is aptly called reverse positioning. Do not spend thousands of Cedis advertising to clients all the time. It would be like pumping air through a funnel full of holes.

In his new book, The New Positioning, Jack Trout describes how the marketplace has changed. What he does not do however is admit that the new market conditions have made his earlier theory null.

In my next paper in this series, I will explain why PR is a better long-term marketing strategy, using the Volta Aluminum Company (VALCO) and Unilever Brilliant Soap as case studies. I will     also introduce you to the construct of Emotional Connect Quotient (ECQ) and how it helped companies like Apple and Vodafone Ghana achieve amazing and lasting success with consumers.