Byron Sharp: Marketers still don't understand how advertising works

According to the head of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, brands complicate their situation when they cannot base their marketing on their own data and on impressions.

The book How Brands Grow was published about ten years ago, but people in the advertising business still benefit from it, and its author Byron Sharp is still asked for details. "The book deals with the basic rules of how brands compete and how customers buy. It's like the laws of physics that don't change even after the advent of digital technologies," explained the popularity of the publication, head of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and professor of marketing Sharp, in the Better Marketing Pod podcast from the World Federation of Employers (WFA). "I think that in the next ten years I will still be answering similar questions, because there is still a need to change bad practices and there is still something to discover," he added.

Podcast host David Wheldon, who was awarded the Order of the British Empire this year for services to advertising and marketing over a 35-year career, was interested in the biggest myths and fallacies still prevalent in marketing. "The biggest problem in marketing is not understanding what advertising is and how it works. Just the fact that the term 'search advertising' is used is wrong. When someone is looking for something on the Internet, it is as if they are already standing at the shelf in the store, then it is about promoting the sale of products, not advertising," answered Sharp.

According to him, the misunderstanding stems from the long-term concept of advertising as changing people's attitudes with the help of persuasive arguments in the style of sales representatives, which the industry will struggle with for many years to come. “People still think that advertising will help to immediately increase sales and move market share. When they're frustrated that change isn't coming, they throw money at marketing mix modeling. That's nonsense," Sharp added.

Read the full article in Marketing & Media.