Meet Dave – The Media Planner’s Worst Nightmare?

Today I would like you to meet Dave - a marketer's worst nightmare. Dave is a real person, a friend of mine, and the more I talk with him the more I think he may well be one of the biggest challenges of the marketing community's future.

He's an attractive marketing target. A well paid business professional in his early 30's, with young children, wife, mortgage, two cars, two high-end computers, and a taste for some of the premium things in life - boutique beers are a typical indulgence. He even likes shopping. He'll pay cash for everything and will happily buy big-ticket items whenever the need arises. But talk to him about an advertisement being flighted and he'll look at you blankly. More than occasionally too, he'll come up with a line like "did you see that great new XX ad on TV last night?" and be referring to a 6-month old campaign. Heck, it took him 5 months to notice that Farmers had rebranded.

Why is this? Why are all the marketers aiming at Dave missing the mark so widely? One would think he was actively avoiding commercials, but not really - he knows advertising is necessary, and that it can be a good service too. He enjoys good ads, whatever the medium, and has no qualms about following up on ads and buying what they've been pitching, if the offer suits. So what's causing the breakdown between the creation of these ads and his reception of them?

Talking with Dave, we've both deduced that he's not seriously avoiding advertising per se. It's really a case of careful, selective media consumption, in the context of a busy life. He won't slob out with television unless it's a 'must-see' which is going to make a real difference to his life, or something he's been watching for too long to stop now. So most of his television is watched on video - the news, 3am BBC documentaries, and some regular subserviently-fun stuff such as The Kumars and the Simpsons. Needless to say, the ads during those shows are still being fast-forwarded.

As for radio? Dave drives a lot, and so he's quite an attentive car-radio listener. Which immediately means the commercial stations are avoided because Dave feels that radio ads are mostly condescendingly bad in quality and overly predictable - he can't fast-forward these of course, so it's a switch to bFM, Cool Blue, or the CD player playing his own downloaded compilations.

The newspapers? Dave loves them, and will store issues for days until he has the time to read them. But as with TV, he applies the question "do I need to know this" when reading them, screening out much of the content and seeing the ads days after their publication, usually after the sales being advertised. His magazine and internet reading habits are similarly focused. And as for DM, as many would propose? Not at all - he's happy with things as they are and is disinterested in unsolicited offers - when he wants to know, then he'll go looking.

On the face of it, Dave is unusual. He is at once agreeable and receptive to advertising, a thoughtful and receptive media consumer; yet as such, he's also more sensitive to any advertising which he regards as insulting or wasting his time. He is also quite time-pressed, and so filters out most advertising given the chance. But is this so unusual? The underlying causes of Dave's behaviour are not really that rare - a lack of time and a heightened awareness of the "how and why" media works, with the resultant resistance to be sucked into the tired hooks designed to keep people listening or watching till the next ad break. Given that both of these factors (time pressures and ad-aversion) can only be expected to increase in prevalence, people like Dave can be expected to become ever more common, thus reducing the effectiveness of advertising across the board.

So how does an advertiser reach through to Dave? Fortunately, in this limited space, the answer is clear - there are ads he happily checks out, which he can remember well and will act upon. He sees them most days and still considers them even when poorly done. The winner ... is outdoor billboards. Dave covers a lot of miles around town - he's in his own world at these times, with his own thoughts and music his only company. So when great billboards for SkyTV, FreedomAir, Tui Beer and nZoom keep getting passed by him and noticed every time, they've got to be more successful than the other options. Perhaps marketing's worst nightmare will be the outdoor sector's best dream?

Jonathan Dodd