My firm just received an assignment to work on a retail project. Not a big shopper, I started to visit a lot of stores. And, to my surprise, not every retail store felt like the Apple Store. So much time and energy is invested in developing sophisticated campaigns, social media strategies and buying media to get people to visit a store.

Just to encounter this.

An extreme example, I know. But when you look closely at the majority of stores, the in-store experience feels like an afterthought. The signage looks like it was printed in some cheap shop and you feel trapped in a never-ending infomercial from the 70’s.

What’s the point of bombarding people through your integrated strategies when potential customers feel like they are being punished when entering your store? The same is true for online stores. They can be as messy and unbearable as the above.

It’s pretty astonishing that every retailer in the world has a Social Media policy or a PR crisis strategy. But they don’t bother policing in-store brand infringement and violations. Yesterday alone I encountered dirty carpets, stained windows, faded POS material, spills and broken glass. And don’t get me started on the unmotivated, bored and annoyed employees.

We spend a lot of time talking about shiny tools and how we can make the Top 2% of brands even better. Walking through the retail horror that’s common in our world, it seems we should spend more time on getting the basics right and elevating the bottom 60% of brands.

Clean-up on aisle 15, anyone?

Whenever the topic of useful advertising comes up, many people point to utilitarian apps like the sponsorship of “Sit or Squat” by Charmin. That’s a nice example but it just gives you a tiny idea of the usefulness of advertising.

Why advertising is useful

Imagine you never watched any car advertising. You were dropped on earth from some outer space planet and you decide to buy a car. Imagine walking down a street filled with car dealerships. Where do you start?

Personally, I don’t have a cereal problem. I eat muesli. Nothing else. But when my kid was born, I suddenly had a cereal problem. Hundreds of cereals in the supermarket. Which one to choose?

Advertising makes brands noticeable and interesting

Advertising helps me to make a quicker and more intuitive decision when buying cereal for my daughter. I don’t have time to read the label of each box and make a complete rational and linear decision. I can make an intuitive decision that’s supported by rational thinking: A brand name with low-sugar and many nutrients.

Advertising helps me to ignore the vast majority of offers that could clog my mind. It makes some things more noticeable to me and more interesting. It helps me accelerate the decision-making process. And that’s very useful because I have more important things to do than choosing a cereal for my daughter.

Brand loyalist vs. light buyer

The majority of our purchase decision are done as a light buyer: There’s a Coke and a Pepsi in the gas station fridge. I never think about Pepsi or Coke, will take one of them depending on my mood. I might have seen a funny commercial from Coke, a social initiative from Pepsi – whatever. Over the years I made extensive associations within my brain about each brand through a combination of past experiences and ongoing encounters with the brand. A brand is just a metaphor for a complex pattern of associations that exists in the heads of people, not in the head of the CMO. We have associations for thousands of brands in our brain. And they tend to fade away when we don’t keep them alive through product usage, marketing or advertising. More importantly, if the message is not consistent, it forces our brain to work too hard for something that we don’t care that much about. Almost every food product falls into that category. Almost every CPG item.

And then you have brand loyalists. There are people that will only buy certain car brands. My wife swears on Crest toothpaste. I will never buy anything else than Colgate Total. No reason. Often, there’s no reason.

And, often there is: Apple. Google. Your hairdresser. Guiness Beer.

To be really useful, advertising needs to focus on the light buyers. They need reinforcement of neural structures to optimize their associations. Don’t confuse them with too many messages. Volvo should be safety. Nothing else. Not focusing on safety, confuses people and makes them think that Volvo gave up on safety. People don’t care to listen to your complex brand message. They won’t. They never did. (Besides the few brand loyalists.)

Advertising helps make better decisions. More intuitive. Better informed.

That’s very useful.

Ask any husband and he will admit: We’re lousy at noticing stuff. Especially pathetic when it comes to little details: shoes, jewelry, nuances in hair style. This is not limited to men/husbands; it’s a common human flaw.

Watch the video.

Around 50% of all participants fail to notice that when a person stops to ask them for direction and temporarily disappears behind a passing distraction, they reappear as someone else entirely.

We have limited capacity for attention

And it  gets worse when a moving object distracts the eye. When we focus on one thing, we become completely oblivious of all but that one specific thing.

No wonder banner ads perform terrible. Humans just don’t have the capacity to process that much visual information. We’re focused on getting a task done, not process additional information. And, what we’re processing is not valuable to brands. Millions are visiting the Yahoo! homepage each and every day. Multiple times. Even if you have the best animation and visual cues, a small share will even remember the kind of ad that was running. A tiny fraction will remember the vertical. And only 5 will remember the product name. 3 work for the agency, 2 for the brand.

Seriously, we’re just not designed to process this information in a meaningful way.

You will fail as a digital advertiser and succeed as a digital publisher

Think content. Think value. Think utility. Think being helpful. Think being a support system. And forget about chasing them. Instead, attract them with enticing content and interesting stories. Re-learn the art of storytelling and explore the science of journalism. Become a “real” voice with a POV, expressed through bold content.

You have no choice. Many will flock to great content. Nobody pays attention to your great online ad.

Image: Hat Tip to Charles Frith (Love your stuff)

Tom Peters famously said: “Go hire some freaks and fire all the “ruts” that got you into this mess.”

Nietzsche is quoted above.

As you might know, Nietzsche was off his rocker, but he was good. (Surely, he was a freak according to Tom Peters.)

When you ONLY esteem those who think like you, you never have the chance to objectively evaluate your ideas.

They grow outdated, they are just plain false, whatever — if they are wrong, you’ll never know because you only trust people who reinforce your ideas, not correct you. Challenge you. Make you smarter.

Can you imagine if teachers allowed students to go on making the same mistakes over and over again, never correcting them?

That’s happening at executive suites all day long

They say 2+2=5 and get a bonus at the end of the year.

Coddled, stubborn children who always think they are right become adults who act the same, never valuing  the truth, just their own opinion. Or the opinion of their peers. The people working for them don’t count because they’re not part of the club.

A sad, dark world indeed.

We should esteem all people based on honesty, compassion, intelligence, etc. regardless of whether or not they are self-affirming.

If John Mack would have listened to freaks, the financial crisis might have been avoidable.

If Obama would have listened to freaks, we might have more than two, not workable options to deal with the deficit.

If Apple would have listened to a freak, they might have…oh…iPod…iPhone…iPad. I guess they listened.

Hiring a cog might be the safe and predictable solution. If you want to fail and become obsolete.

For me, hiring a freak is the only way out.