Dear Tig,

I've asked a lot of "brand-side" practitioners and academics whether you need to build awareness through brand advertising before going after orders through direct response. All of them say the same thing: if people don't know you or why you're relevant, they won't order from you. I've also talked to lots of DM-types who swear that awareness advertising is a big fat waste of unmeasurable dollars. Your opinion?

Looking for Clarity

Dear Looker,

The age-old argument between branders and direct marketers is about as enlightening as football coaches' various doctrines about offense versus defense.

Or, to use a brander's analogy, the debate between the “taste-greaters” and the “less-fillings.” Both are useful tools, one often more appropriate than the other in any given instance.

If someone tells you that one is always more important than the other, then he's selling you something.

How to tell which one is most appropriate--or even more difficult, how they may symbiotically help one another--requires two qualities that many marketers lack: impartiality and common sense.

Be careful of the natural biases inherent in branding and direct marketing. Numbers-oriented people (which includes many of us veteran onliners) tend to feel quite comfortable with the direct stuff. But doing branding work is a whole heck of a lot more fun on a day-to-day basis. These influences, and others, should be recognized and avoided.

Unfortunately, many marketing departments early on develop a culture wrapped around one type of marketing versus another, which can be a pattern quite difficult to break.

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Dear Tig,

My company continues to spend the same amount of money in the same media with the same type of creative messaging quarter after quarter, and I don't think this is the most effective use of our funds. Problem is, now that we're so deeply in this rut (the new CEO used to run marketing) no one wants to listen to alternatives. They claim that we're going by the numbers, and my bosses tell me any of these other ideas are speculative. Can you help me?

Thanks, Stuck

Dear Sticky, A great way to show relative effectiveness of marketing dollars is to conduct an analysis between your own efforts and those of your closest competitors. These competitive analyses, aside from often providing very useful insights, often get the blood rushing in slackened marketing groups.

It leads to questions such as why are we not exploiting this opportunity we see being used by all the others. This moves the alternatives from the world of speculation to a hard reality against which you are competing.

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Dear Tig,

We're a small agency in a mid-sized city, and we've finally gotten around to firing our worst client (unreasonable demands and a poor bill paying history). The problem is, we're not sure exactly how to phrase this to outsiders. We don't want to go bragging that we fired a client, but then again, we don't want other prospective clients to think we were fired by him. To make matters more urgent, I have two local papers calling me to ask about it. What say you?

One Client Lighter

Dear Lighter,

The proper way to handle this is to suggest that you “declined to take further assignments” from the client. It's truthful, respectful and properly gets across the idea that it was your decision.

To the degree you feel it necessary to go into gory details, some old standbys include “deploying internal resources on other projects” and “recognizing that the businesses had evolved away from their original fit.”

Some creative-run shops like the little turn of phrase “creative differences” to describe causality. I think that's a mistake, as it rings of prima donna art directors.