The Case Against "Brand" Advertising

In my lifetime (and that's a VERY long time) I have rarely if ever seen as much interest in television as I've seen in the past few years. I have never seen as much high quality programming. And I've never heard as much talk among average people about television series.

And yet, if we are to believe the numbers, advertising spending on social media is kicking TV's ass. The question is, why? It is my belief that there's no problem with the medium of television, there's a problem with what the advertising industry is feeding the medium.

When I first got interested in writing about advertising, I wrote about the significance of brands. At the time, and ever since, I have written that the value of a strong brand should be self-evident. Any controversy should not be about the value of a strong brand, but about how a strong brand is built.

At the time I wrote..."Some things can only be achieved indirectly. Sometimes, the more directly you address a problem, the worse it gets...You can’t be happy by trying to be happy. If you want to be happy you have to go fishing, or eat a pizza... It’s the same in marketing. You want to have a strong brand? Quit branding. A strong brand is a byproduct. It comes from doing a lot of other things right."

When it came to advertising, I wrote...The best way to build a brand is not directly with "brand" advertising. It is indirectly with excellent product advertising.

This is truer today than ever. Much of what we call "brand" advertising has become squishy and free of discipline. We’ve become flabby and self-indulgent. Brand advertising has come to mean pretty much anything we can put a logo on.

Unfortunately for TV, it has become the go-to medium for advertisers who want to do "brand" advertising, but have nothing to say. When the TV spot appears, it won't actually be about the product. It will be about the user, her lifestyle, or the brand "meaning." In other words, mostly horseshit.

• Pretty pictures and a nice track are not enough.
• Pounding your chest for world peace is not enough.
• Grandpa and Timmy playing hoops is not enough.
• Buying a pop tune and having people jump around is not enough.
• Holding a mirror up to the viewer and saying 'we're just like you' is not enough.

Successful brand building is difficult work and requires advertising that says something. Ads that build brands best are those that have a clear and specific message about a product and deliver it in a distinctive way.

My instinctual belief in the superiority of product advertising to "brand" advertising was bolstered when the New Yorker magazine ran a piece several years ago about the period of inflationary growth at Apple. In it, they quoted Steve Jobs and Jony Ive...

Steve Jobs: "If I had a spiritual partner at Apple, it's Jony. Jony and I think up most of the products together and then pull the others in and say 'Hey, what do you think about this?' He gets the big picture as well as the most infinitesimal details about each product. And he understands that Apple is a product company."

Jony Ive: "I can't emphasize enough: I think there's something really very special about how practical we are. And you could, depending on your vantage point, describe it as old school and traditional, or you could describe it as very effective....We put the product ahead of everything else."

Allison Johnson, Apple's VP of Worldwide Marketing at the time, said that at Apple "brand" was a "dirty word" and Steve "dreaded, hated" the word branding.

Now let's go back to the question of why social media advertising is growing at such a rapid pace compared to TV advertising. There are clearly a number of reasons, including the growth of the medium itself. But I am convinced that one of the reasons is that advertisers are using these two media differently.

It has been my observation that social media advertising is generally focused on the product. Marketers tend to create ads that place more emphasis on the product when they advertise on social media than they do when they advertise on television. This may be one reason that they believe social media advertising is producing better results for them.

If advertisers believe that social media is the place to promote the "product" and television is the place to promote the "brand," television will continue to lose. There has never been a better medium than television to do distinctive product advertising. But there has also never been a better medium than television to piss away money on fatuous "brand" advertising.

As a marketer, building a strong brand should be your number one priority. And the most effective way to do it is with product-focused advertising.

Bob Hoffman is the author of Advertising For Skeptics and The Ad Contrarian newsletter.