Sunday, August 10, 2008

my problem with advertising

is I'm not consuming; "bogged" down with 40+ hours of work and trying to balance my health/fitness/social goals in around work, I haven't blocked off "time to be a consumer," which is completely necessary to be at the top of my advertising game. I am out of touch with how people are shopping these days. It's the little nuances when they're in the store or talking with a store employee that capture a brand's "experience" and to which we are drawing people's attention with advertising.

Don't forget to be a consumer yourself.
Buy stuff now.

Tom Carroll or TBWA Worldwide had this to say at the 4As Planning Conference this year "There is no substitute for being out in the marketplace. Get back out there and talk to people. The good data is not in your office and it's not online."

3 comments:

Nguyen Duong said...

so true. nice post. i'm a planner that's embedded with my client. i sit inside my client's office. close to the client. but not always close to the customer. there are times that i need to get outside the 4 walls of the client's office and take a trip to target, walmart, 7-11, or the mall. take off the client blinders and look thru the lens of their consumer.

erin said...

Exactly. Thanks for the reply.

It's absolutely necessary to be a "relaxed" and genuine consumer ourselves so that we can communicate a subjective and real opinion of the process to which we are drawing people with messaging. Lately, I have been concepting messaging as if this other world didn't exist because I haven't been in it. Shame on me.

Anonymous said...

Although I'm an interactive person and not a planner, I can only imagine the look I would get if I asked my agency for time to go be a consumer. Unfortunately, smaller agencies expect everyone to be glued to their seats for 50+ hours a week. They have no task code in C&P for shopping :) I found your blog through Twitter. Good stuff!