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The 30% Rule

October 14th, 2008

Anytime you create or test an ad campaign, you’re subjecting yourself to something I call “The 30% Rule.” The 30% Rule goes something like this: no matter what you say, or how simple you try to make something, 30 percent of the people still aren’t going to get it.

Let me repeat, 30 percent of the people won’t get you. A generalization, yes, but in my experience it is almost always the case.

And who exactly makes up that 30 percent? You know them. They’re the ones we “dumb down” our ad campaigns for. The ones we fear might misinterpret what we’re saying. The ones we don’t think will be able to follow the bread crumbs we’ve left for them. Those who, heaven forbid, might blink when a key bullet point appears. Or write a letter expressing their disappointment when we treat them like thinking individuals instead of spoon-feeding them bland copy points as we would a bunch of mindless invertebrates.

The concept we loved in the creative presentation, upon further consideration, might be too far over their heads, we reason, so let’s just dial it down a few degrees…you know, take out anything that may be seen as controversial, esoteric or require critical thinking. Not enough to ruin the idea, mind you, but enough to broaden its appeal. You know, just file down the rough edges a bit.

I’m sorry to say this, but once you fall into that trap, you’re zero-for-two. Making a communication “more universal” (a nice way of saying “dumbing it down”) almost always results in the loss of the engagement edge that attracted us to the concept in the first place. And as far as making sure “the rest of them” get it? They don’t. The 30% either don’t have the mental synapses to grasp what we’re saying or they’re just too pre-occupied with the other million things they don’t understand. So basically, instead of producing a campaign that would have done a great job of engaging 70% of the market, you end up running one that does a great job of engaging 0% of the market. Kind of a lousy trade-off, wouldn’t you say?

The scary thing about that 30 percent is they’re usually the ones we turn to to see if our marketing efforts were a success. Our canary in the coal mine, so to speak. And at the first whiff of them finding something in our messages “unclear” or our use of visuals “offensive,” our immediate urge is to head back to the shop for a makeover.

So what do you do about that 30 percent? My advice is to ignore ‘em. Accept the fact that you’re never going to create something that appeals to 100% of the people 100% of the time, and focus on your “sweet spot”–the key (narrow) market you’ve identified. Don’t compromise on what would earn their engagement. The biggest challenge in marketing today is attaining engagement. And anything you do that compromises the potential for that engagement is going to be detrimental to your ROI. The challenge today is to make your marketing communications smarter. Not dumber.

Making changes to a concept because you’re afraid “somebody might not get it” doesn’t make it any better. It just makes it less interesting. And is that the way you want your customers to see you?

Posted by Mickey