Misattribution in the advertising world is widespread and wasteful. But why does the industry still persist with it, asks David Quinn.
I had a bit of an epiphany recently and it questioned a lot of things I thought I knew about this business. It all started when a friend of mine noticed something funny.
You see, his partner and himself are planning to buy their first house and so are in the market for a mortgage. They are doing their research – as you do – visiting all of the relevant websites, making calculations on the mortgage calculators and so on. What he noticed was that all of the websites of all the main lenders and brokers featured a picture of a young couple sitting on a sofa.
Naturally I didn’t believe him at first. After all, mortgage lending is a competitive sector with many competing brands who would want to stand out from each other. However a quick search confirmed his observation. Sure enough there they all were – pictures of smiling young couples sitting on couches adorning every mortgage website and quite a few of their ads and social media posts too. Of course there were slight differences between them, like one of the sites featured a couple who were sitting on a couch as it sped through a desert, but that was about it. Apparently this must be the new way to sell mortgages now.
One Voice
This is an example of a sector speaking with one voice. It’s like some sort of weird mind virus running rampant across every market sector. All the competing brands seem to be speaking with one voice. Promoting the sector rather than themselves. And ever since my friend pointed it out, I have started to notice it everywhere – from health insurance, gaming and alcohol to supermarkets, telecoms and cars. Across all market sectors. No one seems to be immune from it.
It really baffles me why this happens. Surely the first job of a piece of marketing collateral is to stand out from the competition? Did no one in the marketing department or agency of these various lenders check what their competitors were doing and think well maybe we shouldn’t use an image of a young couple sitting on a couch if we want to stand out?
When all the brands start to sound alike and promote the sector rather than themselves something strange happens. Misattribution rates soar. Research has shown that up to 84% of advertising communications are misattributed. This means that up to 84% of consumers (the people you want to attract and sell to) misattribute your marketing communications and attribute them instead to the market leader. In the example of the mortgage sector, this means that many of the communications and therefore most of the spend of many of the competitors is being misattributed to AIB, which I am assuming is the market leader in this category. This, in my view, is the uncomfortable truth about the advertising business.
This is worse than wasting your budget. This is actively supporting your main competitor in a very competitive market. Imagine proposing this as a business strategy – your boss would call security to escort you from the office. That’s how ridiculous this situation is. It is also a massive failure of the imagination on the part of the people responsible. Surely there must be other imagery out there that can help sell mortgages.
David Quinn is founder and business director of Bloom and a board director of IAPI
