Creative malnutrition among MBAs
My left- and right-brained worlds collided in epic form a few days ago.
I shared work to a client team of brand management folks at a well known consumer product company. And though I knew none of them beforehand, I immediately recognized each one the minute I started presenting.
These were MBAs.
MBAs who concentrated in marketing and then moved directly to a consumer brand company. And who therefore, bless them, haven’t processed marketing messages like real-life human beings in years. Maybe decades.
On one hand, it’s impossible to argue with their company’s success; it’s had a whole lot of it. And a history of some great ad campaigns too.
But…
When I hear a client say (in reaction to headlines that maybe would require the reader to spend two seconds for the ‘aha!’ rather than one), and I quote, “we never want the consumer to have to think,” I shudder. These weren’t math equations I was proposing. Just turns of phrase and some clever metaphors.
It begs a retelling of the great David Ogilvy’s Hall of Fame quote: “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”
I sat through many marketing classes as an MBA candidate. And I had scores of cringe-worthy moments when fellow students — whose careers in accounting, banking, finance and consulting made them a gathering of the least creative minds that God could assemble — would try to rationalize advertising campaigns, often at the encouragement of their professors, and always at the bewilderment of yours truly.
No matter how many great ideas these classmates of mine saw, they didn’t get it. Everything was squeezed through this bizarre, hyper-critical filter that parsed each idea to smithereens. But then off they went into the marketing world, never getting it.
Never getting that consumers don’t parse each idea to smithereens.
Never getting that you have to give them a reason to care about you. Always. Even more so if it’s a crowded category and you’re a late entrant. (Which was the case in my experience this week.)
Never getting that consumers aren’t sitting idly by, praying that Brand X give them yet another choice in Product Category Y.
Never getting that consumers aren’t fools.
Whether it’s a giggle, a surprise, a tear — something other than “I have a product and I say it’s great, so go buy it.”
It amazes me that this is still a debatable premise.
Asking consumers to think a little isn’t the worst thing that can happen. Giving them no compelling reason to think about you absolutely is.
