Advertising is Not a Tax for Being Unremarkable

I'm sure you've all seen this quote. It's attributed to Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad, and goes something like: "Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable." (I was reminded of it most recently reading Josh Porter's blog, Bokardo.) It sounds good and, at first blush, correct, but it's not for lots of reasons. Broadly, the line between advertising, marketing, branding, and communications has always been a blurry one. Depending on who you talk to they have a very different definition. For the purposes of the quote, let's assume when Stephens was talking about advertising he was specifically referring to the buying of media space across platforms like television, magazines, and websites. With that as the working definition, there are lots of complicated reasons big companies advertise their products. Here are a few:

• Distributors love advertising: If you're a CPG company you advertise as much for the supermarkets as your do for your product. The more money you spend the better spot they're willing to give you on the shelf (the thought being that people will be looking for your product). I don't think there is anyone out there that would argue shelf placement doesn't matter. At the end of the day supermarkets are your customer if you're a CPG company, so keeping them happy is a pretty high-priority job.
• Advertising is good at making people think you're bigger than you are: Sometimes a company or brands wants to "play above its weight," making people think they're bigger than they're actually are. When we see something on TV or in print, we mostly assume there is a big corporation behind it. Sometimes that's more important than actually selling the product.
• Sometimes you're not selling a product at all: There are many companies who advertise for reasons wholly disconnected from their product. GE, for example, isn't running TV commercials about wind turbines to solely try to communicate with the thousands of people who are potentially in the market for a multi-million dollar purchase. A part of why they do it is to communicate with the public at large who is both a major shareholder for the company and also the end consumer of many of their products (many planes we fly on run GE engines and our electricity probably wouldn't reach our house without GE products). How remarkable their products are has no bearing in this case, since we would never actually be in the market for the vast majority of the things they produce.

Broadly, though, the point I'm trying to make is that while many write off advertising as having no purpose (or being "a tax"), it's just not true. What's more, as advertising becomes a more seamless part of the process of being a brand in social, I think this will only become more true. If you see a piece of content performing well on Twitter or Facebook why would you not pay to promote that content and see it reach an audience beyond the core? At that point you've eliminated the biggest challenge traditionally associated with advertising (spending tons of money to produce something and having no idea whether it will actually have an effect on people). Seems to me if you're not willing to entertain the idea you're just standing on principle.