As I alluded to earlier, I did not make it over to MIXX till this afternoon (and I’m not sure if I will try going on Tuesday again to catch what is remaining of the sessions).  My first stop was afternoon session 5.  Now, I might end up interviewing Rex Briggs for the Emetrics Summit - though it’s possible that I got what I got most of the questions answered from this session that I would have asked him in a interview.

Workshop 5
What Sticks, Why Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds

Presented By:
Rex Briggs, Principal, Marketing Evolution

Rex started by saying that Advertising can be analyzed in the same way Drug Companies analyze data, which had not been done before.  He said that based on their findings (Marketing Evolution is a Marketing Research firm) 37% of all Advertising is not effective and you might as well take the money and have burnt it!

This reminds me of one of my former clients, The House Designers, that was, in my opinion, wasting good money running after PPC that, I felt (based on hard data), was not performing at all.  I used the term "burning money" in the same exact way  Rex Briggs used it.   Why people burn money, run ineffective advertising? - they may not want to look  at the assumptions behind the results or they may not understand what the results are.

The problem of ineffective, wasted marketing was broken down to 3 basic categories:

Advertising creative =36% of the problem, 31%= Messaging problem (customers are getting a different message than the one you’d like them to get via your advertising) and 83%=Media Spend (usually not picking all the right Media to run a campaign against). 

Also, there’s an issue with accountability of results, that many upper execs don’t want to look too closely at the results which behind them, are often smoke and mirrors.

There’s a lot more in the book and hopefully, I will have a chance to read it by next month’s Emetics Summit.