A Fundamental Error ¹

By Paul Richard McCullough

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Marketers and Researchers make a fundamental error almost universally when developing and testing marketing communications. This error is particularly common and particularly serious when inflicted upon advertising and packaging. We all do it. And we all do it almost all the time. The error isn’t to believe that the medium is the message. The error is to believe the medium is the product.

The primary role of any marketing communication is generally to sell products (ditto for services). There are, of course, exceptions but usually what we want to do when we communicate with our customers is to persuade them to buy our product. So what our advertising and our packages need to do is somehow motivate our customers to get off the couch, run to the store, go straight to the aisle we’re sitting in, grab us, not the other guy and then rush to the checkout. It is not necessary that our advertising have high proven awareness (an axe murder filmed live would get great awareness scores), that it be entertaining (how many funny ads have you tried to recall for your friends and you couldn’t remember what was being advertised?), or that it win CLIOs for the agency (awards and sales are obviously and sometimes fatally different objectives). It’s not necessary that customers think our packages are pretty or attractive (“oh, that package is so cute! That’s the rat poison I want.”). Strictly speaking, none of that is relevant. But these are usually what we strive to create. These are usually the standards by which we evaluate.