In 2005, A.G. Lafley, CEO of the world’s largest advertiser, Procter & Gamble, launched the idea of “moments of fact” to the advertising world. As he wrote within the P&G Annual Report that yr:
“One of the best manufacturers constantly win two moments of fact. The primary second happens on the retailer shelf, when a client decides whether or not to purchase one model or one other. The second happens at dwelling, when she makes use of the model — and is delighted, or not.”
P&G rapidly adopted up with the concept of a 3rd second of fact centered on post-purchase phrase of mouth. Later, in 2011, Google VP (and P&G alum) Jim Lecinski coined the concept of the zero second of fact, when customers realized they want one thing and do pre-purchase analysis (typically, in fact, by Googling it).
Twenty years after A.G. Lafley launched the idea, moments of fact nonetheless carry an amazing quantity of affect in how we take into consideration advertising. Entrepreneurs now create elaborate buyer journey maps oriented round these and different “moments that matter” in a client’s path to buy and focus their advertising on “profitable” these moments.
So why does buyer expertise nonetheless so typically fall flat? Regardless of having extra instruments, expertise, and information than ever, the precise buyer expertise hardly ever lives as much as the potential. These days, I’ve been giving a brand new keynote discuss on this matter titled “The Buyer Journey to Nowhere” (right here’s a recap and video of a current one).
Buyer journey mapping has skilled us to think about customers primarily as consumers on a linear path to buy, reasonably than as advanced human people with ever-changing wants who don’t take into consideration our manufacturers practically as a lot as we predict they do.
It’s simple for entrepreneurs to develop “Funnel Imaginative and prescient” — dropping sight of the particular client as a result of we’re so centered on the traditional linear advertising phases of Consciousness, Trial, Repeat, and Loyalty.
I’ve at all times like HBS professor Theodore Levitt’s warning to keep away from Advertising Myopia. As he famously stated,
“Folks don’t wish to purchase a quarter-inch drill. They need a quarter-inch gap.”
Listed below are just a few associated cartoons I’ve drawn over time:
“If advertising saved a diary, this might be it.”
– Ann Handley, Chief Content material Officer of MarketingProfs
