![The value of investing in some digital channels is questionable at best.](/content/dam/images/g/s/g/e/n/l/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gtube4.png/1486524890315.jpg)
The chief marketing officer of PepsiCo North America Beverages, Seth Kaufman, was recently quoted as saying: “Consumers’ attention spans have changed, and no one is watching television without using a device at the same time.”
Leaving aside the almost certainly false claim that consumers’ attention spans have changed, I found his assertion that no one is watching television without using a device at the same time to be the most worrying part of his statement.
Clearly, he uses a device (a phone, presumably) when he watches TV. Equally clearly, the people he knows also use a device when they watch TV. But to suggest that no one does otherwise betrays a staggering ignorance for a senior marketer.
And he’s not alone, either. The 2016 UK Ad Nation study, conducted by Ipsos Connect and commissioned by Thinkbox, found that marketers estimated the proportion of people multi-screening while watching TV to be 50 per cent, while the industry data puts the actual figure at just 19 per cent.
![Ryan Wallman says marketers' fixation on digital channels is putting the tactical cart before the horse.](/content/dam/images/g/t/u/k/c/k/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1484796284615.jpg)
Barrage of hype
So most people do not multi-screen while watching TV. This probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise to those who live in the real world, but evidently some marketers live in a world of their own. And while we’re all naturally inclined to make assumptions based on our own experience, the job of marketers is to understand the people in their market.
Beyond what it says about these marketers’ lack of market orientation, this is also a neat example of a related problem in the marketing industry – namely, a preoccupation with all things digital.
You can barely look in the general direction of a marketing publication these days without being hit by a barrage of hype and hyperbole about digital. Marketers continue to increase their investment in digital channels, which is a problem, because it’s influencing practice at the expense of marketing fundamentals.
As Melbourne Business School’s Professor Mark Ritson has repeatedly pointed out, the notion of digitally led marketing is utterly inconsistent with the important marketing principle of media neutrality. That is, no channels should be prioritised before the appropriate research has been done and a strategy formulated. To be digitally led is to put the tactical cart before the strategic horse.
What’s more, the value of investing in some digital channels is questionable at best.
Online advertising is particularly dodgy. In the past couple of years, it has become clear that click-through rates on display ads are abominably low (0.06 per cent on average), fraud is rampant and ad blocking is on the rise; Facebook was recently found to be overstating some of its metrics by as much as 80 per cent. Meanwhile, a 2016 study by the American Marketing Association showed that more than 88 per cent of marketing executives could not prove any quantitative impact of their social media marketing.
Evidence-based wisdom
So if I am forced to take a side in the current debate between digital and traditional marketers – a silly distinction, but that’s another topic – I’m firmly with the latter. I think marketers are much better off heeding the evidence-based wisdom of people such as Mark Ritson than believing the braggadocio of the digital gurus.
It’s inevitable that digital channels will eventually become critical tools in brand building, given their growing presence in our daily lives. But we should remember that they are just channels like any other, and unlikely to be successful in isolation.
So will they change the fundamental principles of good marketing? In my opinion, no. After all, marketing is ultimately dependent on human behaviour and while the technologies will change, people won’t.
As the legendary advertising man, Bill Bernbach, once said: “It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man.”
Ryan Wallman is head of copy at Wellmark.
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