Ehrenberg-Bass News

CANNES: With the rise of programmatic ad buying, the capabilities of marketers targeting an audience of likely buyers have never been greater, but the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute maintains that segmentation, whether for creative or media planning, can limit a brand’s ability to grow.

Marketing is full of myths, anecdotes, and long-held beliefs of what drives growth. I think part of our job as marketers is to continually question these assumptions.

I love these two books. Over the last decade or so I’ve heard enough to last me a lifetime about how the key to growth is to focus tightly on a precise customer type, eschewing mass marketing and targeting those customers directly to the exclusion of all others. The consultants who propound this idea never seem to notice the irony that they themselves live on Twitter and would sell their own kidneys for a three-inch quote in a low-circulation business mag.

Coke does it like a boss. Apple did it brilliantly for a decade. Dyson is up there, too. They all do bad advertising, and they make it work.

I was recently asked on a TV interview if rival sponsors (eg Coke, Pepsi) both adopted the Institute's discoveries wouldn't there be no competitive advantage? That is, wouldn’t both ‘be back at the starting line’ ? My host laughed when I said that was an excellent question, but also quite stupid. I explained that it was a bit like two rival hospitals deciding not to adopt this new ‘medical research stuff’ because if they both did then they’d just be the same. There’s more to it than that of course.