The problem with blindly jumping on the Ehrenberg-Bass bandwagon

I am very happy if people are concluding from Ehrenber-Bass and How Brands Grow that they should be targeting everyone in Australia.

This is an incorrect conclusion to draw from their arguments which means that those who genuinely apply the principles will continue to benefit from them.

Well noted Jon.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing…

Thanks for this piece John. I am surprised to hear that Ehrenberg-Bass is advocating that any brand should completely dispense with all segmentation and targeting and even more so that any marketer with half a brain would put that into practice. It’s quite clearly absurd.
Equally absurd is the opposite narrative that mass is dead and that all media investment should be apportioned to 2 or 3 core audience personas on digital channels because they are the most likely to buy and generate the most efficient use of media.
Targeting everybody is hugely wasteful and only a handful of brands have budgets that could even remotely achieve this consistently. Targeting too tightly is putting all your brand exposure and growth expectations into a small basket. Big brands need the bleed effect of mass media but you must start with a focus on your core or risk missing them entirely.

Correct.
Billy Bragg used to say ‘if everyone who claimed to have seen the Sex Pistols in 1976, really had seen them then they would have had to have played 3 months solid at Wembley Stadium, not a couple of dozen shows at suburban Art Schools and Soho strip clubs. Similarly, if everyone who claimed to be applying EB principles to marketing had actually bought the books and read the papers then Byron & Co would have given up their academic jobs a long time a go and be kicking back on some private island next door to Branson, Musk and assorted Bond villians..

I think, from my understanding (and I am not in Byron’s league by any stretch), that E-B are very much about mass awareness. And it’s the various interpretations from people who have bought the books and watched the video that are muddying the waters. My contention is, if you know who’s most likely to buy your product, even at a mass scale, why would you not try and at least craft your message to suit their ears?

If people are claiming we don’t target based on “How Brand Grow” they are not reading it properly.If you subrscribe to it you should be targeting category buyers – if your category has female skewed purchasers that should be accounted for in your creative and your media buy.

I agree Rob,
Hence my frustration.
Thank you for neatly summing up in four lines what it took me so long to explain.

I think the key message from EB is to target all buyers in the category. Rather than target everyone.

As one of the founders of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, and an advertising researcher I want to thank you for your article and your praise of the work we do. Always great to hear what people are thinking so we can link it to the evidence that we continue to amass. I’ll write a response to clarify some of our positions which we will share with Mumbrella readers tomorrow.

As one of the founders of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, and an advertising researcher I want to thank you John for your article and your praise of the work we do. Always great to hear what people are thinking so we can link it to the evidence that we continue to amass. I’ll write a response to clarify some of our positions which we will share with Mumbrella readers tomorrow.

But others might suggest that the fine folk at the institute are talking “all potential buyers” in a category – given the lack of loyalty noted in their research. It’s a very short step from there to “all buyers”. Hence the “all communications to all people” mindset.

Excellent news Rachel,
I look forward to the read.

Indeed John. Crafting messages to suit different segments within the category, each with differing triggers or brand perceptions is something every marketer ought to be doing if they have the budget, resource and smarts. For all its detractors and well-worn criticisms, digital does an incredible job of this and the correct use of search and programmatic amplified by DCO is incredibly powerful and as close to right time, right place, right message as we can currently get.
I wonder if Dr Byron Sharp and the late and very great Erwin Ephron were to create their own media start-up, it would be a multi-channel (yes, TV, print, OOH and digital) programmatic solution. And the word campaign would be banned.

Very much looking forward to Rachel’s response…

Has anyone see the empirical evidence behind the graph showing “Women Make Up 85% of All Consumer Purchases”?

For example, the last column shows that women make 93% of all Food/Groceries purchases.

Have a look next time you are in Coles or Woolies. Only every tenth person should be male.

And if you look at the 2011 Census data, 24% of homes are single-person homes, and 45% of those homes the occupant is male. There’s almost 11% of men who make the food/grocery purchases.

I suspect that the research asked men and women do they ever purchase the food/groceries and 93% of women said ‘yes’ and that it has been misinterpreted that 93% of women solely purchase the food and groceries.

But then again maybe 91% of all new home purchases are made by women. And maybe on Venus that is true.

Very funny, and insightful comment. Eaon.

We can only go on the numbers we’re given.
My point remains the same.
Are you saying we should assume all people engage with all advertising in the same way?
Or, if people do engage with advertising in different ways, we can ignore the numbers because you don’t agree with the data?
Sorry to be picky. I’m not seeing your point.

Thanks for a great and insightful read!
I would agree with everything you mentioned in your article, however I’m not sure any of this goes against the E-B principles.
For me, they say ‘target the market’, not ‘target everyone’ which is a nuance but an important one. So if your market is 85% women, then targeting the market would mean targeting 85% women.
Another thing they say though, additionally to ‘target the market’ is that what we marketeers commonly call ‘wastage’ may not be wasteful at all since, for example, men might buy tampons every once in a while, non-runners might buy a running watch as a present for someone else, etc. This means we should still target the market but not feel bad about reaching people outside the market because even that is not (totally) wasted.
Another, and last, point is about emotional messaging in advertising: what I take out from E-B and How Brands Grow is that the key objective is to drive mental availability, which is better achieved through distinctive and branded, but also memorable advertising, which focuses on an emotional, rather than a rational/functional message. So again, it seems to me that the findings from the ‘Field & Binet – The Long and the Short of It’ study which show that emotive messages are more effective at building memorability support the E-B and How Brands Grow laws.
Keen to hear your view on this.

Aren’t you mixing people versus how much they purchased?

Are women buying 93% of the groceries… in terms of basket size/cost.

If so, couldn’t single households be buying less groceries than other households… smaller baskets. Less mouths to feed than the average household.

If I buy the milk and bread on the way home, both my wife and I will have bought groceries and made decisions about grocery brands this week. But my wife will have spent a heck of a lot more doing that task.

I think this article misses the point of their work. The main idea is that you need to target category buyers, getting as much physical and mental availability as possible. This would certainly be better achieved with emotionally driven marketing collateral.

You don’t target all Australians for lipstick, most lipstick wearers are female. But the idea that lipstick category buyers form these distinct segments that require different marketing approaches doesn’t stack up. As an analyst who’s done the work, I can tell you this has been my experience.

As for the 80% of purchases being “controlled” by women, I think that is incorrect. I found links that describe a similar figure reporting “influence” of purchases, but that is pretty murky territory, and could work the same the other way around. Articles that quote such shocking numbers are usually cooking the books, often using a small sample and taking liberties as to what it meant. That’s why I think such data can be ignored as it may not have been well-vetted (if that is not the case, happy to change my position here, but the evidence does seem weak).

In any case, I enjoyed this article as this is a very important discussion to have any promote.

Thanks,

Jehan