Adland is an island
Introduction
We spend eight hours a day thinking about the brands we build.
Many of us more.
We consider our clients’ companies and the categories in which they compete. We visit the sites in which our products are produced and the stores in which they are sold. We analyse their adverts and comb through their campaigns.
But as our knowledge of a brand expands, so too does the distance that divides our audience and us. The closer we get to our brands, the further we get from our consumers.
They do not pore over our positioning. They do not dwell on the details of our designs. They do not ponder our products, prices or promotions. In fact, they do the opposite.
Whilst we spend our time thinking about our brands, our consumers spend their time thinking about anything but.
Bob Hoffman puts it best:
“A lot of people have shaky jobs. And many have unstable families. Some have illnesses. All have debts. Lots have washing machines that are broken, and cars that need a tune-up, and funny things growing on their backs, and boyfriends that are always getting high, and socks that have holes, and hair that is falling out, and toilets that are unreliable, and 10 pounds of extra stomach, and kids that are unhappy, and teeth that hurt, and rent to pay, and a lot of things to care about. One thing you can be pretty sure they don't care about is your brand.”
Our brands are an important part of our lives, but they are an insignificant part of the lives of others.
This, however, is not the only dimension upon which we differ.
This article argues that we have different demographics, attitudes and personalities. It argues that we consume different media and consume it on different devices. It argues that we spend our working lives differently, our downtime differently and it argues that we shop at different stores.
In short, this article argues that we are nothing like the consumers we serve.
Let’s start at the top.
We have different demographics
In 2018, the Advertising Diversity Taskforce published a paper titled “Who Are We?”.
The report compiled the diversity data of 2,589 respondents across 15 different agencies and compared the findings against national averages. The result is the largest ever census of media and advertising employees. Let’s look at some headlines.
When it comes to social mobility, 61% of respondents said the industry was either “not diverse at all” or “somewhat diverse but could do better”. 31% of those in leadership roles had a private education, considerably higher than the industry average (22%) and over four times greater than the total population (7%).
A similar story plays out when we look at social backgrounds. Only 17% identified as belonging to the C2DE social grades, under half the national average of 40%.
The report also confirms the dramatic underrepresentation of the over 50s in our industry; a concern that I highlighted in The Ageism in Advertising. Only 10% of the sample were over 45 and only 2% were over 55. By comparison, 29% of the UK workforce is over 50 according to the Office of National Statistics.
In terms of gender, women outnumber men in every position up to and including Associate Director. However, beyond this level, the trend inverts and the trend lines diverge. By the time you get to board level roles, men outnumber women two to one.
Finally, and perhaps most damningly, a massive 58% of respondents said the industry was “not diverse at all” in terms of disability. Only 1% of the industry is registered disabled, seven times lower than that of the working population and 22 times lower than that of the total population.
Discussing the research WPP's UK country manager, Karen Blackett, said:
“Our industry needs to evolve if we want to survive and play our fullest role in society. This report shows we have some ways to go.”
But it isn’t just our demographics that make us different. We also hold different attitudes.
We have different attitudes
Over the past three years Reach Solutions have published three reports titled Why We Shouldn't Trust Our Gut Instinct, The Empathy Delusion and The Aspiration Window. Together this body of research compares the values, moral foundations and aspirations of 7,500 British consumers against a panel of over 700 marketing and advertising professionals.
The findings present a compelling case that a chasm exists between our industry’s attitudes and those of our audience.
We have a strong liberal leaning. 92% of media agency employees voted remain in the 2016 EU referendum compared with only 48% of the active electorate. Furthermore, almost half of the agency sample (48%) identified as left wing compared to just 28% of the modern mainstream.
We are also much more concerned with material matters. 47% said having a high-status job and earning lots of money are important to them. Only 28% of the modern mainstream agreed. Similarly, 18% said having many expensive possessions was important to them, almost double that of the broader population (11%).
What’s more, we have a much greater appetite for attention. 47% said that being unique and standing out from the crowd was important to them, compared to just 28% of the wider audience. 25% agreed that having their name known by lots of people was important versus just 14% of the modern mainstream.
And it goes on. The research found that we are much more accepting of risk, more open to strong emotions, more attuned to the latest fashions, more narcissistic and more in need of a sense of belonging.
To summarise three years of research I’ll quote from the The Aspiration Window:
“The evidence we have presented is robust and consistent. Advertising and marketing is an elitist profession and its work is conditioned by the privileged social and economic status enjoyed by the people who work in our industry. In every framework and context we have explored, this creates a profound disconnect between ad land and the mainstream audiences that we are trying to engage and influence.”
But it isn’t just our attitudes that make us different. We also have different personalities.
We have different personalities
Justin Lines, a researcher at Kantar, asked 100 advertising planners to take a Myers–Briggs Type Indicator test.
The test attempts to identify the respondent’s personality type by assessing it on four dimensions: introversion/extraversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling and judging/perceiving. Once complete, the user is assigned one of sixteen archetypes, each with a four-letter name.
At 21%, the Planners’ most common personality type was ENFP (The Campaigner).
According to the test:
“[Campaigners] tend to see life as a big, complex puzzle where everything is connected – but unlike Analyst personality types, who tend to see that puzzle as a series of systemic machinations, Campaigners see it through a prism of emotion, compassion and mysticism, and are always looking for a deeper meaning.”
ENFP, however, is the seventh most common personality type among the total population at just 7%.
At the other end of the scale, the most regularly occurring personality type among the total population is ISFJ (The Defender). Around 14% of the population identifies as such compared to just 2% of the industry strategists.
The archetype where the Planners’ personalities diverged most from that of the population was INTJ (The Architect). A member of the general public is eight and a half times more likely to display these personality traits than a member of the Planning sample.
But it gets worse.
Not one of the industry respondents received an ISTJ, ISFP or ISTP test result. Yet these three personality types account for over a quarter of the wider population.
What’s more, the sixteen personality types can be categorised into four broader groups: Analysts, Diplomats, Sentinels and Explorers. Over 90% of the Planners fall into one of the first two but over 70% of the population fall into one of the second two.
Lines puts it succinctly:
“The [Planners’] results are almost the opposite of the population.”
But it isn’t just our personalities that make us different. We also consume different media.
We consume different media
In 2016, Thinkbox set out to understand how the media diets of adland compared to those of the Great British population.
They commissioned Ipsos to interview 800 nationally representative residents about their attitudes to, and use of, media, technology and advertising. The same questions were also put to a panel of 300 members of the advertising industry.
92% of ad people had used YouTube in the past three months compared to just 60% of the population. Similarly, 90% had used Facebook, compared to an average of just 62%. The report goes on:
“Ad people are at the forefront of technology and continue to be hopeless social media and subscription VoD addicts. We’re 4x more likely to have used Twitter within the last three months than the general population. There is a huge sevenfold difference between ad people and the general population for LinkedIn usage and ad-folk are more than twice as likely to have used Netflix or Amazon Instant Video within the last few months.”
In 2017, ThinkTV commissioned the marketing academic Professor Karen Nelson-Field to run a similar study in Australia.
Nelson-Field found that industry professionals were 96% more likely to have used Snapchat in the last 7 days, 140% more likely to have used Instagram and a staggering 285% more likely to have used WhatsApp.
Finally, in 2020 ThinkTV worked with Ipsos to repeat the study once again, this time in Canada.
Whilst only a quarter of the Canadian public had used Spotify in the past month, almost two thirds (63%) of the professional panel had. They were far more likely to have used Pinterest (27% versus 44%), over twice as likely to have used TikTok (13% vs 32%), and three times as likely to have used Reddit (13% versus 39%).
Three different studies in three different markets and yet one remarkably familiar finding.
But it isn’t just the media we consume that makes us different. We also consume it on different devices.
We own different devices
The Canadian research conducted by ThinkTV and Ipsos went far beyond crunching the data on the content we consume. It also delved into the hardware upon which we consume it.
The introduction to the study remarked:
“As an industry we pride ourselves on staying on top of the latest trends and keeping up with the newest gadgets and offerings. But what if those technological and culturally forward behaviours are skewing our perceptions about how Canadians use and perceive different media?”
At 97%, the penetration of smartphones was pretty close to complete among the industry respondents. However, among the general public the figure dropped to four in five (78%). The second most commonly owned device in both the “them” and “us” groups was a smart TV. But again, the levels of ownership showed a significant separation. Two thirds (67%) of the advertising sample owned one compared to just under half (49%) of the total population.
When the researchers looked at more modern technologies, the divergence became deeper. Two thirds of Adland owned a TV streaming device, well over double the portion of the public (27%). Furthermore, those in advertising were over three times as likely to own a smart speaker than the average Canadian (58% versus 19%).
These findings are corroborated by a study conducted by Nielsen and TAM Ireland which compared the lives of 150 advertising, media and marketing professionals to those of the TV viewing population of the Republic of Ireland.
98% of those in the industry had a laptop in the home, compared to 72% of the Irish average. 78% of those in advertising claimed to have a tablet device in the home, almost three times the figure of the broader population (28%).
But it isn’t just the devices we own that make us different. We also have different work lives.
We have different work lives
Whilst our industry is very progressive when it comes to technology, we are not quite so forward-thinking when it comes to the way we work.
The Nielsen and TAM Ireland study found that the TV viewing public were two and a half times more likely than those in the advertising industry to work mainly from home.
What’s more, two-thirds (66.3%) of Irish commuters travel to work by car compared to just under half (47.7%) of the industry sample. Our industry is almost twice as likely to walk or cycle to work (21.8% versus 12.2%) and four times as likely to commute on public transport (33.1% versus 8.4%).
We aren’t representative when it comes to how we commute. But we are also not representative when it comes to how long we commute for.
The average TV viewer was almost twice as likely to live within 15 minutes of their workplace (27.2% versus 15.5%), whilst the average advertising professional was over 50% more likely to spend longer than 30 minutes getting to the office (61.5% versus 39.4%).
We spend longer getting to the office, but we also spend longer in at as well.
Just 2% of adland claimed to leave work before 18.30, almost four times fewer than the Irish public as a whole (7.4%). Over one third (36.4%) of adland said they leave work between 20.00 and 20.30, double the amount of the TV viewing population (18.4%).
In a comment to The Irish Times Jill McGrath, the CEO of TAM Ireland, said:
“The findings serve as a reminder to people in the industry that their preferences do not represent those of the “typical” viewer.”
But it isn’t just our work lives that make us different. We also use our downtime differently.
We have different interests
In August 2020 Jacob Wright, the Chief Strategy Officer at BBH Singapore, used Global Web Index to profile the interests of marketers against those of the general population in Western markets.
According to Wright’s research, the industry was about twice as likely to be interested in business and around 50% more likely to follow the latest technology trends. Furthermore, around a third of marketers said they never go to the gym compared to just over half of those not in the industry.
Inspired by Wright, I decided to replicate his research and dive deeper into the data. I used Global Web Index to compare the interests of those who work in advertising, marketing or PR against those who don’t across seven Western European markets.
In line with Wright's findings, my research uncovered that our industry is 233% more likely to be interested in entrepreneurship and 174% more interested in investments.
But it isn't just financial topics which tick our boxes, we also over-index on sports and gaming. We are 186% more likely to have an interest in esports, 131% more likely to be interested in gaming and 130% more likely to be interested in playing sports.
Toward the end of his piece, Jacob Wright concluded:
“Generally speaking, ordinary folks are just much more chilled out than marketers. They are far less preoccupied with their careers, their personal fitness, keeping up with technology and looking at social media. They look for good deals and use coupons and loyalty programs but they are less likely to consult “expert opinion” before a purchase. They are much more interested in books and literature than they are in business. They are unashamed about their love of television. In fact they just love to be entertained.”
But it isn’t just our interests that make us different. We also shop at different stores.
We shop at different stores
For my final chapter, I'm going to revisit two pieces of research that have already been referenced in this article. First up is the ThinkTV research from Australia.
The study found a deep disconnect between the stores used by each audience. Adlanders, for example, were seven times more likely to use local farmers’ markets and five times more likely to shop at local independent stores.
At the other end of the scale, the average Australian was more likely to use the mass grocery channel, including stores such as Coles (43% versus 33%), Aldi (14% versus 10%) and IGA/Foodland (5% versus 3%).
Kim Portrate, Chief Executive of ThinkTV, commented:
"Adland already knows the bubble exists and the study allows us to have a good laugh at ourselves. But it also makes a serious point. Knowing what people like, feel and do is critical to our success when it comes to growing brands. But we also know that our own preferences can lead to projection bias, which ultimately impacts the spending decisions we make about media."
The findings are also reflected in the Nielsen and TAM Ireland research.
18.9% of Irish TV viewers reported shopping at Dunnes Stores, over double the Adland figure of 9.3%. Similarly, 15% of the broader population claimed to shop at Supervalue, almost three times the amount of adland (5.3%). The adlanders, on the other hand, were over 6 times more likely to shop at Superquinn (19.2% versus 3%), over twice as likely to shop at Lidl (10.6% versus 4.8%) and almost 50% more likely to shop at Tesco (33.1% versus 22.5%).
Back to Jill McGrath:
“The findings serve as a reminder to people in the industry that their preferences do not represent those of the typical viewer."
When it comes to shopping, the story is similar to what we've already seen. Our preferences are perpendicular to those of the population. We are much more likely to shop local and much less likely to shop mass.
Conclusion
So there you have it. We are not our audience. We have different demographics, attitudes and personalities. We consume different media and consume it on different devices. We spend our working lives differently, our downtime differently and we shop at different stores.
But the differences don’t end there.
Back to Bob Hoffman:
“Marketing people are living in a world of their own. They don't wear the same clothes as "average" people, they don't go to the same restaurants as average people, they don't drink the same booze, buy the same food, watch the same programs, drive the same cars, see the same movies, or live in the same neighborhoods as average people. The only time they come into contact with real people is at the DMV, which they find disgusting. They think they "understand the consumer." They don't understand shit.”
The evidence is clear. Adland is an island. We have our own culture and customs. Our own preferences and practices. Our own passions and pastimes. A gulf separates us from the society we seek to sway. We are detached from the mainland. Divorced from the mainstream. A world unto ourselves.
We like to think that we are clued into culture. We like the idea that we have the population’s pulse. We like to believe that we have a plethora of perspectives. But we don’t. We are a monoculture. A legion of the like-minded. We are nothing like our consumers and everything like each other.
But don’t take my word for it.
Harry Guild, a data strategist at BBH, used 419 lifestyle statements from TGI’s 2019 UK dataset to create the Group Cohesion Score. Guild’s metric enabled him to calculate the relative like-mindedness of different professions. Those in marketing received a score of +5.8, demonstrating a considerably higher level of homogeneity that those in Law (+4.0), Information Technology (+3.2), Human Resources (+1.6) and Sales (+1.2).
Over to Guild:
“Looking at cohesion by profession, Marketing is by far the most like-minded industry that TGI measures. This is advertising’s biggest problem in a single chart. This is the monoculture. How can we possibly understand, represent and sell to an entire country when we exist in such a bubble? We like to style ourselves as free thinkers, mavericks and crazies, but the grim truth is that we’re a more insular profession than farming and boast more conformists than the military.”
I’ll repeat Guild for emphasis. This is advertising’s biggest problem.
How can we create work that is distinctive when we are all so similar? How can we connect with consumers when we have so little in common? How can we change their behaviour when we don’t understand it in the first place?
I believe it’s time this changed. It’s time we burst the bubble. It’s time we interrupted the insularity. It’s time we migrated back to the mainland.
Our industry must become more inclusive. We must welcome a breadth of backgrounds and a profusion of perspectives. We must more closely reflect the audiences we aim to affect.
Our industry must excel at empathy. We must sharpen our ability to stand in others’ shoes. We must learn to feel from our audiences’ frame of reference.
Our industry must embrace objectivity. We must put our own attitudes aside and demonstrate disciplined market orientation. We must not allow our gut feelings to guide us. We must replace the subjective with the substantiated.
Whatever research you read, whatever market you measure, the story is strikingly similar: We do not mirror the masses. If we wish to improve as an industry, we must do all we can to overcome this. We must be more inclusive, more empathetic and more objective.
Maybe then, we will all spend a little less time thinking about the brands we build and a little more time thinking about the people we build them for.
Notes
This article was nominated for Post of the Month in February 2021 on Neil Perkin’s blog Only Dead Fish. It was the runner up.