Robin Wight’s disastrous speech

No sooner had I posted my blog about the conceptual travesty called ‘advertising effectiveness’ than Robin Wight kindly came up with a perfect example – in the form of a speech at an event called The Battle of Big Thinking.

You can read his speech here. I recommend you read it carefully – and note what it does.

It’s a very clever speech of course, as you would expect from someone like Robin Wight. Ostensibly, it’s about applying new discoveries in brain science to a rather technical debate about the pre-testing of advertising research in the quest for more effective advertising. However, closer inspection – once you clear away the carefully constructed aunt sallys – reveals a different agenda. Robin Wight was presenting a new, improved sales pitch for advertising agencies.

The sales pitch goes something like this.

     “It is scientifically proven that most decision-making is inaccessible to introspection by the conscious, rational mind. There is, however, a race apart: a race of geniuses who have the rare and unique ability to see into other peoples’ brains and understand their decision-making processes – even when ordinary mortals cannot do this for themselves. This race of geniuses also have an even rarer and more precious ability (generated by their unique access to special ‘insights’ that they alone have access to). They can reach into peoples’ brains, “embedding slogans and images” into them, thereby changing what they think and do … without the dumb klutz ordinary mortals even being aware that it’s happening!

     “By doing this, the special race of savants are doing these dumb klutzes (called ‘consumers’) a service. Why? Because the poor dears’ brains find decision-making so hard they really don’t do it very well. By ‘building brands’ into consumers’ heads the savants are ‘enabling’ the dumb klutzes “to choose between products with minimum brain energy”.

     “These savants with the rare and special powers of consumer brain transmutation are called advertising agencies. They can make their clients fabulously rich … if, that is, clients are willing to pay these agencies the fabulous rewards they so truly deserve.

     “Oh, and by the way, you have to believe this is true because it’s been proved by new breakthroughs in ‘neuroscience’, a science that’s so complicated that only very clever people like advertising agencies can understand it. So if you are a client, don’t worry your pretty little head about the actual proof (after all, as a mere ordinary mortal, 85% of your decisions will take place inside your brain beyond the reach of your consciousness). Just hand over the dosh pronto to this new breed of neuroscientifically supercharged brain alchemists and you too can be fabulously rich! Promise!”

So why is Robin’s speech is so disastrous? Because the way he has framed this debate, the advertising industry loses, whatever it does.

First, we have to ask whether Robin’s ‘magic bullet’ (his words, not mine) really exists. If it doesn’t, lots of people could squander an awful lot of time, money and energy on a wild goose chase where only one party benefits (ad agencies). So before we swallow too much neurobabble, it’s worth taking a closer look. My own personal view is that Robin’s interpretation is partial to the point of being misleading. If you want an alternative theory, take a look at John Bunyard’s work on the ‘expectations matching heuristic’ at Newcomen. To me, it’s much more plausible.  

But what happens if Robin’s approach is right? Well, then we have to look at the relationship it creates between the advertiser and the consumer – an adversarial one. Setting neurobabble aside, take a careful look at what Robin’s speech does.

First, it treats consumers as pieces of putty in the hands of advertisers. It views advertising as a unilateral activity where one Entity A (the advertiser) does something to another Entity B (‘the consumer’), whether Entity B likes it or not. Entity A is active and in control. Entity B’s only role and purpose is for its brain to be moulded – ‘branded’ – to suite Entity A’s goals and purposes.

Second, it creates a measurement philosophy that completely ignores the question “what harm/benefit does this bring Entity B, the consumer?” Under Robin’s model, the consumer’s brain is an object to be worked upon by the advertiser, in pursuit of the advertiser’s interests. The only interests that matter are those of the advertiser, so that’s the only measure that matters. Whether the piece of putty suffers or benefits along the way is neither here nor there.

Thus for example Robin says in his speech that the core competency of advertising is “building a brand into consumers’ brains … Old fashioned television advertising at its best has served brands pretty well by embedding slogans and images in the brain.” Note the wording: ‘has served brands pretty well’. Not a word about serving consumers.

(Robin apparently deals with this problem by noting that decision-making is expensive in terms of brain energy. But his comments about ‘enabling consumers to choose between products with minimum brain energy’ have nothing to do with enabling consumers to make better decisions. It’s all about ‘enabling’ consumers to ‘choose’ the advertisers’ brand without having to think about it, regardless of whether that choice is best from the consumer’s point of view. )

Now, if you were a consumer rights activist, politician or regulator and you read Robin Wight’s speech, would you say, “Oh goody, this is a future we all want!” – advertisers messing with consumers’ brains for their own commercial advantage? Or would you say, “If this is really true, it should be banned!”

Robin Wight is using this speech as a launching pad for a new campaign to ‘save advertising’. In fact, he’s actually putting another nail in advertising’s coffin. Because, rest assured, tomorrow’s regulators, legislators, activist campaigners and journalists are reading speeches like this, and they are preparing to throw the content of these speeches back in the faces of the advertising industry next time it protests with wounded innocence at more unfair incursions into ‘freedom of commercial speech’.

If you swallow Robin’s approach, you’re probably wasting a lot of time and money and inviting a regulatory and PR backlash, both at the same time. That’s the thing about the inflated claims of faux branding and faux marketing. They are worse than ineffective. They are their own worst enemy.

Alan Mitchell         www.ctrl-shift.co.uk               Newsletter