Make Digital Marketing Work

This morning whilst enjoying my cup of tea and hangover curing sausage sandwich I flicked the television on and say what seemed to be a hastily put together piece on BBC Breakfast Time.

In it several people were discussing the Procter and Gamble ad for Olay.  The ad is for the well known anti wrinkle treatment but the (still amazingly stunning) Twiggy had been airbrushed to hide her own wrinkles.  The ad has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), Procter & Gamble were apparently (according to the piece I saw) unaware of the level of photo retouching that had been applied and were quoted as saying that the level  of airbrushing was  inconsistent with their own policies.

The ad received two complaints via Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson’s anti airbrushing campaign which has now received over 700 complaints in total referring to a number of ads.

The fact that this story which I would normally only expect to read through my industry bulletin emails has made the nations news service is certainly indicative of the strength of feeling on this subject.

A few years ago Dove created the Evolution ad which won a host of awards at the time and is widely believed to be one of the finest Ads of the decade

This seems wholly out of step with the news today, I mean Twiggy is a national treasure and gorgeous, she doesn’t need any help persuading people how gorgeous she is.

It also underpins what we have been saying for ages

1)      Consumers don’t believe what you tell them

2)      Consumers don’t believe what you show them

3)      They will believe what an acquaintance says no matter how little they actually know them

The Olay ad is a fine example as to why this attitude exists.  It’s a wrinkle cream, and you showed someone with their wrinkles airbrushed out.  What bit of that made sense and how silly do you feel about doing it?  Naturally P&G didn’t authorise or suggest it, but somewhere in the chain someone decided that Twiggy without a touch up wasn’t enough, and that was a huge mistake.

The digital marketing world in which we inhabit forges relationships between consumers and brands and is centred on the customer.  This ‘old advertising’ example is a megaphone shouting out the big idea (buy our product and you will look like Twiggy).   I don’t think I can highlight any clearer the difference between the two approaches.

We think that this form of advertising not only doesn’t work, but is actually harmful to a brand, after all who wants to be branded as a liar?