By Jarvis Cromwell
This year Black Friday morphed from a single shopping day into a mega four-day shop-a-thon, helping many retailers turn profitable for the year and, possibly, breathe a little easier.
Yay.
Of course consumers were most responsive this year to deals and door-busters – and increasingly they are triangulating price and product information online to make the most informed decisions they can. In the online channel, retail is becoming a five-day Thanksgiving-through-Cyber Monday treasure hunt – a tsunami that gathers more strength with each passing year. ChannelAdvisor’s early reports indicate that online same-store sales have already surged 32% over last year.
While pundits from all corners are cautious to warn that this season’s strong start isn’t guaranteed to hold through Christmas, it sure seems that there are more customers in “them thar hills” this year.
So for marketers thinking about how to boost the effectiveness of their advertising and capture some of that holiday customer gold, here’s a tip: lose the puffery.
Why?
Because advertising with puffy, trumped-up or otherwise useless claims is likely to turn consumers away, rather than entice them to buy. In the December issue of the Journal of Consumer Research and just in time for the holidays, researchers from the University of Illinois report on this new fault line for advertisers. Allison Jing Xu, a co-author of the study, warned that: “When consumers suspect that advertisers are just trying to manipulate them with useless information, they may react negatively and lose trust.”
The study appears quite unique in seeking to gauge consumer reaction to technical, tough-to-decipher advertising claims that aim to give products a competitive edge. You know what we’re talking about, that secret sauce that actually offers no meaningful benefit, aka puffery.
One important finding from the study is that while puffy claims can still work by swaying less-informed consumers, they are more likely to alienate knowledgeable buyers who provide the greatest sales potential. Puffy ads, then, appear to forsake long-term customer value for short-term profit.
Of course issues of truth in advertising and puffery have been around, like, forever. The number of internationally marketed “quack” medicines grew to be such a problem in the 19 century that by 1909 the British Medical Association published “Secret Remedies, What They Cost and What They Contain,” in an effort to inform and protect the public.
Now in today’s digital marketplace where consumers are triangulating price, features and benefits in an instant, puff is less and less likely to drive the bottom line. And given the decade-long slide in public trust, precious few consumers are assuming the truth lies at face value when it comes to messages issued by big companies, politicians, the media or pretty much any authority for that matter. (Only the military and a few others have retained public trust.)
In this new world, nuances ring truer than words and people are quite savvy regarding the messages they receive. One study in the U.S. found that less than a quarter of consumers in the U.S. believe advertising messages to be true. Another in the UK found that 60% of consumers feel that brands tend to promise more than they deliver.
Yet despite all this, we’ll find plenty of puffery stuffed into our holiday stocking this season. But be forewarned: as the online channel continues to grow companies that believe they can still use their marketing as an image wrapper to cover up competitive weaknesses, will increasingly find that the customer is no longer fooled.
What do you think? Please let us know in the comments – we’d love to hear from you.
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November 30, 2010 - 10:17
Jarvis, ‘tis the season to be jolly … and for the most part, consumers are feeling giddy about the deals they believe they’re getting on everything from cars and hard goods to consumer electronics and clothing. So, while I totally agree with your premise that too much hype might come back to bite you, I wonder if that’s going to be the case when consumers truly believe they’ve gotten an incredible deal. With deep discounts aplenty, is a consumer really going to be upset when that new appliance turns out not to be all that it was supposed to be? After all, if you paid half the original markup, you still might end up with a great deal. There’s probably a psychometric study out there that weighs all the variables – price vs. perceived value, product performance against advertising claim/positioning and competitor offerings, etc. – that ultimately determine customer satisfaction and loyalty. As for the advertising claims and hype, as Jarvis cautions, they apply not only to manufacturers and marketers, but all the way down through the entire distribution chain to online and brick-and-mortar retailers, and shippers. For the retailers, of course, it’s about which ones are able to deliver on their promises of best prices, product availability, and timely delivery. The latter’s also where the shippers come in. Who needs a stale fruitcake that shows up at your door two days after New Years, a broken crystal vase, or an otherwise spiffy new shirt and tie packed in a rain-soaked carton? Happy Holidays!
November 30, 2010 - 11:00
Thanks Al. I agree with you about the power that discounting has on consumers, particularly in this economy. Retailers know that consumers get as much – sometimes more – of an endorphin rush on finding a deal as they do on the product itself. And amen to stale fruitcake.
December 1, 2010 - 07:01
The good news: communications and “sensing” technologies are combining to enable retail marketers to move from “puffery” to precision in their communications with customers and potential customers.
Here’s how:
1. Using analytics to determine the precise and hyper-local weather conditions that trigger product demand for a specific demo
2.. Using weather data/forecasts to sense exactly when, where and whom to send a specific message
3. Using mobile technology to serve up a high value message that looks more like advice than a “puffed up” ad (aka spam)
While this kind of messaging is still relatively nascent, the future is, literally, now. We live in uber-interesting times!
December 6, 2010 - 13:21
It’s becoming a “one-day sale” everyday. The intersection of depressed price points, lofty performance claims and persistent “dealing” make for an unclear value and trust environment.
December 6, 2010 - 14:00
Totally agree Paul.
Any one have thoughts on how marketers can recapture the trust and value equation when the one-day sale becomes an everyday phenom?
February 4, 2011 - 17:53
[...] in marketing messages. See “Why the Holidays, Profits and Puffery Don’t Mix” here.Another frequent cause of poor messaging performance is bad optics ¬– the failure to accurately [...]