Wind Tunnel Marketing (in today’s Campaign)
16th September 10
Posted by Mel Exon
Posted in Brands, Insight
18 comments
Author: Jim Carroll, Chairman, BBH London
Jim wrote a post here a few months back which we’re happy to say Campaign magazine (campaignlive.co.uk) asked him to expand on further for today’s issue. We’re sharing the article in full here now, so anyone outside the UK can see it simultaneously. This is one of two posts – we particularly like his solution to the issue: Raging Against the Machine: A Manifesto for Challenging Wind Tunnel Marketing, which you can read here.
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Have you noticed that all the ads are looking the same?
Perfectly pleasant, mildly amusing, gently aspirational.
The insightful reflection of real life, the pivotal role of the product, the celebration of branded benefit.
Advertising seems so very reasonable now. Categories that were once adorned with sublime creativity are now characterised by joyless mundanity.
Some of you will recall the day in 1983 when we woke up and noticed that the cars all looked the same. There was a simple explanation. They’d all been through the same wind tunnel. We nodded assent at the evident improvement in fuel efficiency, but we could not escape a weary sigh of disappointment. Modern life is rubbish…
Are we not subjecting our communications to something equivalent: Wind Tunnel Marketing?
Have we not so formularised the process that we’re eradicating some of the elements that made advertising so effective in the first place? And has the Recession made us more dependent still on this Wind Tunnel Marketing?
The Origins of Wind Tunnel Marketing
I guess it all began with the best intentions: businesses taking Marketing more seriously.
Some years ago, with increasing globalisation, there was a drive to identify best demonstrated practice, to codify it and coach it. We developed acronyms, characterful shapes and ring-bound folders. We attended conferences, bunjee jumped together and went home with wittily sloganned T-shirts.
With the pressure at Board Room to demonstrate ROI, we became obsessed with proof and measurement, with norms and traffic light systems. What gets measured gets done and what gets green gets made.
Now of course the development of a common Marketing language and a culture of effectiveness has to be a good thing. But few noticed, as the industry professionalized, that the Cavaliers were being marginalised. A steady stream of mavericks made their way to the exit door, their hitherto precious gut instinct no longer deemed valuable.
Few noticed, as we learned to lean more heavily on our norms and pre-tests, that expertise and judgement were a devaluing currency.
And few noticed, at least at first, that the measures designed to raise the floor of communication output were at the same time lowering the ceiling.
The researchers had taken over the asylum.
When Relevance Trumped Difference
When I was young I was taught that behavioural change could be achieved through communication that was relevant, motivating and different. Somewhere along the way we’ve lost our faith in the power of difference.
There was an Age of Innocence. An era when brand owners were driven by an obsession for product and functionality. They had foresight, a passion for the positive impact a brand might have on consumers’ lives in the future. And they were steeled by the competition to believe that difference was critical to commercial success.
In the face of imitation and commoditisation, it became harder to sustain rational product differentiation. Increasingly we sought difference through communicating “emotional selling propositions”. And over time we learned to excuse the absence of difference if we could at least achieve some kind of emotional resonance with consumers. In our headlong pursuit of relevance, we commissioned endless focus groups and we worshiped at the altar of consumer insight. Gradually we have arrived at an industry consensus around what makes effective communication. But it is a very narrow definition, one that emphasises consumer insight and relevance, and one that minimises or excludes the once critical role of difference in the selling process.
Relevance has trumped difference. We now inhabit a world in which most brands in most categories approach most problems by asking the same people, the same questions, in the same way.
Is it any wonder that we keep coming up with the same answers?
Does Any of This Matter?
Perhaps it matters little that Wind Tunnel Marketing diminishes difference. So what if it makes for a less creative, less interesting industry? So what if the ads all look the same? Surely none of this matters if the Wind Tunnel produces more effective communication.
My own conviction is that Wind Tunnel Marketing is turning communication into a numbers game, a game where scale of resource wins every time – whether that be media budget, distribution network or sales team. The cost efficiencies of brand differentiation are notable largely by their absence. Surely in a fragile economic environment this represents an oversight. And in an environment where increasingly we need to earn rather than buy attention, it’s lunacy.
Of course, out of a crisis comes opportunity. And a number of Clients have already concluded that the rewards for bravery, subversion and calculated risk have never been greater.
Excepting these noble attempts to rage against the machine however, I’m concerned that at a macro level Wind Tunnel Marketing is gradually eroding the very foundations of consumers’ affection for communication and brands. The pop combo Groove Armada memorably remarked “If everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other”. I suspect we’re creating consumer fatigue through our homogenisation of our own product. Conventionally, when we see long term declining scores for brand trust and advertising enjoyment, we blame Own Label or the internet or Sky or the banks or BP or Naomi Klein. But maybe we as a Marketing and Advertising community should look in the mirror.
***
To read Jim’s solutions to the issue, check out his next post: Raging Against the Machine: A Manifesto for Challenging Wind Tunnel Marketing.
Also check out Chaz Wigley’s great post looking at the same topic earlier this year here.
18 Comments
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18 comments on “Wind Tunnel Marketing (in today’s Campaign)”
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marc shillum Said
(September 16, 2010 at 7:22 pm)great insight Jim, market research must transform to inspire unique patterns rather than enforcing standard replicated patterns. I miss having your sizable mind around.
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Hank Leber Said
(September 16, 2010 at 7:31 pm)
Great points, Jim.
It may have been long coming since the cars of the 80s, but the Wind Tunnel has gotten a huge boost from the digital explosion.
Now that everything is measurable, clients want to see results in every detail of a campaign – to a nauseating degree. This has become a sickness in many cases, as brand managers will try extra hard to highlight poor performance in a digital iteration because it’s essentially their job to do so. Often makes for a frustrating relationship. They’re so busy telling you why it isn’t working or can’t/won’t work in the future that they don’t hear or see the vision for truly differentiating, bold work.
I miss the days when we were champions of our own great ideas. Your thoughts make me feel like the problem is not that we’ve stopped being idea champs, but that the thought process is so corralled these days it’s the actual ideas that are suffering now. Sad.
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Ray Said
(September 21, 2010 at 10:40 am)
Was this spurred by digital? Hasn’t focus groups and testing been around for ages?
Reply to this comment-
Hank Leber Said
(September 21, 2010 at 5:45 pm)
Not spurred by digital, you’re right – measurement and testing have existed for a long time. But measurement methods are amplified by digital. Nowadays everything needs to boost total unbranded awareness, consideration, clicks, clickthroughs, etc.
We’re slowly losing the sense of brand and equity. Sometimes you can’t measure that via digital means (and focus groups only give you a vague often lucky reference).
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renaissance chambara | Ged Carroll - Links of the day Said
(September 17, 2010 at 11:04 pm)
[...] Wind Tunnel Marketing (in today’s Campaign) « BBH Labs – homogeneity in ad creative and ideas on how to combat it [...]
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Wind Tunnel Marketing Said
(September 21, 2010 at 10:54 am)
[...] Another one from BBH Lab. It’s pretty admirable for a chairman of the agency to put this out there, and there’s a follow-up. [...]
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Complicating marketing: market research (1/2) | Said
(October 12, 2010 at 10:57 am)
[...] reading here and here and especially [...]
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(October 14, 2010 at 10:19 pm)
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Jim Carroll is right | ESCAPOLOGY (the escape pod’s blog) Said
(October 19, 2010 at 12:30 am)
[...] theft of something that makes complete sense. It is in this spirit of larceny that i present this article from BBH chairman Jim Carroll. I espyed it in the latest CAMPAIGN [...]
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Sell! Sell! Said
(October 19, 2010 at 12:04 pm)
Superb piece. I agree 100%. Modern marketing as rounded off the edges of every product and brand. Character is driven out. etc.
Reply to this comment -
A Facebook Page (Even A Good One) Is Not The Answer « Rock Me Amadeo Said
(October 23, 2010 at 6:56 pm)
[...] Carroll (Chairman, BBH London) recently weighed in on a subject he calls Wind Tunnel Marketing. The idea that we have become so committed to becoming “relevant” to our customers that [...]
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Mason Zimbler | Wind tunnel marketing Said
(November 19, 2010 at 1:52 pm)
[...] just happened across this interesting article authored by Jim Carroll, Chairman at BBH London. If you’ve got a couple of minutes to spare, I [...]
Reply to this comment -
#Tendance 12 : #PRISE DE RECUL Said
(February 1, 2011 at 9:56 am)
[...] non mesurable ou risqué… Nous croisons ainsi régulièrement des marques leaders victimes de « l’effet windtunnel ». Ce n’est pas parce qu’on ne connaît pas le ROI de mettre son pantalon le matin qu’on ne [...]
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Thoughts on Circus Festival 2011 « The Communications Room Said
(February 28, 2011 at 12:54 am)
[...] Charles Wigley was also great talking about the biggest problem in our industry – The marketing wind tunnel. The reason most advertising these days is either ineffective or homogenous is because of the process we all go through is essentially the same and unenlightening. You can read it here. [...]
Reply to this comment -
Why does most advertising suck? | Richard Cordiner Said
(May 16, 2011 at 7:21 pm)
[...] And with this, the business of building brands became less about human truths and more about managerial algorithms. We pushed our instincts aside in favor of reason and analysis. We hung out in focus groups listening to the hallowed insights of The Consumer (who looked remarkably like us, by the way). We became addicted to pre-testing, slaves to norms and traffic light systems that wholly failed to account for the complexity of human thought and behavior. We developed onions, pyramids and traffic lights, filling them with arbitrary values. To quote a man far more eloquent and knowledgeable on the subject than I, Chairman of BBH London Jim Carroll: [...]
Reply to this comment -
What Advertising Needs To Learn From Gaga | SpyBlog Said
(June 2, 2011 at 8:00 pm)
[...] When you think about the full span of all the different ways and styles in which it’s possible to communicate, and the full spread of what it is possible to communicate, almost all advertising today falls with in a very, very narrow slice of that. It feels like advertising is more narrow now than it was in the 1950′s, before the creative revolution. Everyone is saying similar, bland things in similar twee ways to similar audiences (I once read a brilliant definition of this as wind-tunnel marketing). [...]
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Start Selling Ideas Not Products | Joyn Said
(August 31, 2011 at 10:05 am)
[...] referred to this homogenisation as “wind tunnel marketing“, and called for a change in [...]
Reply to this comment -
Wind tunnel marketing | Mason Zimbler Said
(November 11, 2011 at 4:29 pm)
[...] just happened across this interesting article authored by Jim Carroll, Chairman at BBH London. If you’ve got a couple of minutes to spare, I [...]
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