Dunn's Den of Knowledge.

A common mistake by advertisers to assume that a new user of a product goes through these stages:  (1) awareness of the brand, (2) favorable attitude, (3) purchase. So therefore, the first purpose of our advertising is to create awareness. After all, you aren’t going to buy something that you aren’t aware of.  And then, the next step is you must think highly of the brand.  And the payoff is you’ll buy it. 

The problem is “Awareness” becomes the empty goal of the ads. Awareness of what? Some intrusive ads catch your attention by their cleverness.  Did you ever tell your friends, “Hey, did you see that ad where the guy….”?  But you forgot what the product was. 

Certainly it’s essential that a brand should earn favorable acceptance ratings. I learned this when I had an ice cream client.  When choosing the “Flavor of the Month,” we had people come into the dairy and taste and rate a number of new ones. But the “winners” often turned out to be flops in the market place. Why? Because they didn’t have staying power. We switched to a different method. We gave them a generous amount of several flavors to take home.  Then we visited them after two weeks and measured how much of each their family had eaten. The winners were the flavors that were consumed most. So the initial attitude was trumped by behavior. And that stood up in the real world.

Here’s a way to get the horse before the cart. Start with the reason-for-being—the one benefit your brand or service brings to the customer, the promise that ends up with purchase behavior. Make that the hero of your ads. Make that the marching order for your advertising agency or your in-house creative group.

What I’m suggesting is to compress the three stages mentioned above. Don’t think of it as a leisurely process.  Make awareness/attitude/behavior happen simultaneously. Make the end use the reason for the awareness, and if that’s good enough, favorable attitudes will follow. The cyber generation expects immediate results.

 George Lemmond