The New Consumer Activism

I’ve recently bought a Hybrid – a Ford Escape. And I'm very happy with it. Now I am a bit of an eco-freak. I have a condensing furnace, buy only green hydro from Bullfrog, and am a member of Friends of the Earth. But a Hybrid is not a rational choice even for me. It emits more carbon than a small car – say a Ford Focus; there are concerns about the greenness of the batteries; and I’d have to drive 37,000 km a year to get a financial return. I don’t. http://www.edmunds.com/help/about/press/105827/article.html.

Now I do like what it says about me and my values, and I do feel smug about it, but that’s not the whole story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5rQM_HAcfA

I did it to encourage auto manufacturers to become greener. My rationale is this. While individuals in corporations are moral the corporations themselves are essentially amoral – they exist to make money. However if they see a profit to be made in being green they will go green. By being willing to pay over the odds for a Hybrid I’m telling them there is a market for green cars. Seeing this they will invest money in developing more products and hopefully ones better than current Hybrids.

This is what I call the New Consumer Activism.

The Old Consumer Activism essentially involved boycotting companies who the activists saw as doing things they didn’t approve of. Some were really quite successful: for example, boycotting Exxon for the Exxon Valdez and Nestle for Baby Milk in Africa. And there will always be a role for this sort of activism. However most were not effective for two reasons. They needed mass coordinated support to work. And because they attacked sales they generated defensiveness in the companies they were targeting, who then did their best to avoid doing anything.

Having worked with many major companies and knowing how they think I believe the New Consumer Activism is a more effective approach.

It creates a positive reaction in companies. They don’t see a threat; they see an opportunity to make money and so they put positive effort and investment supporting it.
It doesn’t need a co-coordinated effort. True it works better the more people are doing it, but it doesn’t rely on a public movement. Each individual makes a statement through their day-to-day purchasing and if enough individuals feel the same way then the companies notice in their sales (which they look at every day, not just when it gets in the papers) and respond.

So everyone, use your dollars to tell companies what kinds of product you want them to produce, where you want them to invest, and what you value.

Clients are from Mars; agencies from Venus.

Clients and agencies talk different languages and frequently fail to understand each other’s point of view.

Most importantly they have different beliefs about how advertising works. Now I apologize in advance to those clients who come from Venus and agency people from Mars. Yes this differentiation is an oversimplification, but I’m surprised how often it plays out.

Clients are at heart business people. They believe that effective advertising persuades people to buy their product. It carries a message which influences how they see the product which increases the likelihood of them buying it. There are of course many ways that these claims can be communicated – product demo, testimonial, metaphor, hyperbole, “news” announcement etc. The creative is incredibly important because it exists to get the message noticed and remembered and so can make or break the ad, but it is a vehicle to convey the message. The message and the claim is everything. Clients will ask:
- “Do we have the right message?”
- “Is our message getting across?”
- “Is our message breaking through?”
- And a concern - “Is the creative vampiring our message?”

Examples of such claims would include:
- Unlike regular soap Dove is pH neutral
- A full serving of vegetables in every can of soup of Campbell’s Soup
- British Airways is the world’s favourite airline

Agency people are at heart see themselves as part of the broader media world. They believe that effective advertising creates a bond with the recipient and people buy the product because of that bond. It engages them and creates an emotional affinity which says this is a brand for me. Here the message is relatively unimportant. What is important is the story and how strongly they relate to the advertising idea itself. Is the idea relevant and engaging? For agencies the idea is everything. Agencies will tell clients:
- “This is a breakthrough idea.”
- “People will love this idea.”
- “This will really get buzz/be talked about/go viral.”

Generally these ads convey lifestyle, values or an image which is attractive to the consumer. Here the creative is a key part of the communication. If the desired imagery includes “coolness” the ad itself must be “cool”.

Examples would include:
- The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty
- The Taster’s Choice Coffee Soap Opera
- Most Nike ads
- And because they are voted for by agencies, most creative award winning ads.
So what happens when Mars meets Venus. Often clients see agencies as self-indulgent, trying to create entertainment for its own sake with no regard to its selling effect. Agencies see clients as narrow minded people who can’t see the big picture. But the truth is they both want the same thing. They both want breakthrough advertising that makes their brand successful and indeed famous. But they come from different planets as to how to achieve it. And the result is often tension.

I worked on the Gold Blend couple campaign (Taster’s Choice here) and the client was always uncomfortable, asking where was the product sell. To the agency the ad worked because it was creating an aspirational image for the coffee which made it desirable and carried implications about quality and taste. It didn’t need to say anything about the product to have that effect. And the agency’s view seemed to hold; it went on to win an IPA Ad Effectiveness Silver Award. I admire the courage of the client to approve an ad they were uncomfortable with and which didn’t talk in their language.

But I also worked on a pitch for George Brown College. There the client had come up with a killer claim – “George Brown College helps you get the job you want” supported by a strong proof point “8 out of 10 grads get a job within 6 months”. I admire the creative team who restrained themselves from doing cool ads that appealed to the cynicism of 18-22s (several other teams who pitched the business showed no such restraint) and “merely” brought the claim alive in a direct and clear way.

Now if this duality is true then it raises more questions:

Which is most effective?

How do you choose which way to go?

How do you (client or agency) learn to speak the other’s language?

How you brief your advertising?

How do you evaluate and research it?

I’ll come back to these later.