Retail. Brand. Direct Response. Digital. Traditional.

Oh, how people in the biz love to parse advertising into different types.

Trouble is, it’s all bullshit.

Because to consumers, an ad is an ad is an ad is an ad.

They don’t differentiate.

To them, there is only one kind of advertising and that is brand advertising.

Why brand?

I say brand simply because every piece of communication you put out there says something about your brand.

Every ad – indeed, every point of contact with the public – positions your brand in the marketplace.

By way of illustration, when I worked on Chrysler at BBDO, we had clients who would not only buy but insisted on great strategic and creative thinking for what would typically be called their brand ads.

At the same time, Chrysler engineers were coming up with all kinds of amazing cars: the original minivan, the first minivan with two sliding doors, the Viper, the Prowler.

Trouble was, the client also had a lot of other inventory they needed to move off the lots – but they didn’t want to put time and money into the strategic and creative work necessary to do the job.

Instead, they kept shifting media money that had been earmarked for “brand” into “retail” i.e. schlocky newspaper ads with starbursts and other detritus.

And the result?

When tracking studies were done, the consumer perception of Chrysler was not one of “they are the most innovative car maker.”

No, the perception was that Chrysler was “the discount car maker.”

So whilst Chrysler may have thought they were telling the engineering story, the shift of media weight to retail discount messaging meant that was not the message the public was getting.

Is it any wonder that Chrysler is in the toidy today?

(To be fair, they did understand that brand advertising for the minivan – their bread and butter – was important and thus the brand media spend was preserved. Consequently, we had our greatest success there.)

Yes, indeedy-doody, all advertising is brand advertising.

Even the general public has come to realize this about their own personal brand as communicated through Facebook and the like.

“Ooops. Maybe posting those drunk-with-a-donkey photos for the entire world to see wasn’t such a good idea after all!”

Wouldn’t it be nice if we in adland could learn as quickly as the public does?

So next time you hear someone say, “It doesn’t matter if the creative is any good, it’s just retail” or “It doesn’t matter if the web site is off brand strategy because it will be up longer than the advertising media buy” there is only one appropriate response.

Off with the Kurgan’s head!

There can be only one and it is brand.

- Craig Cooper