Fortune is with the brave

Journalists, the German satirist Karl Kraus once said, are those people who always want to have known everything beforehand afterwards. There is no doubt that his accusation cannot be entirely dismissed; especially when journalists act not only as reporters but also as critics. Then one can always counter them: "If you really could have done it better, why didn't you do it yourself?"

Well, perhaps because many of us (the author of this article explicitly includes himself here) are more suited to theory than to practice. But perhaps also because for every "level" there must be a "meta-level"; for every product there must be an independent evaluation - this constitutes the essence of public debates, no matter whether they are in business or politics and no matter what the topic. It takes some to "do" and others to analyze the result.

If you follow this premise and apply it to the Swiss marketing and communications industry, then DirectDay 2022 really won't come a day too soon: Its motto "Bold is Gold" is almost like Jakob Bosshart's famous "crying in the wilderness," opposing a dictate of mediocrity and risk aversion that has become established in our country's communications industry. This, at least, would be the analysis from my ivory tower of business journalism that can be listened to (or against which, as I said at the outset, Karl Kraus may be cited). The reasons for my observations are manifold, they can hardly be held against a single individual personally, and one could write a book (or at least an HSG master's thesis) about how the industry has maneuvered itself into a conformism from which it now hardly seems able to pull itself out. But that would be too little help at a time when rising inflation and recession demand quick action. Instead of over-analyzing the status quo, the stakeholders must take the reins quickly and "boldly" - because it would be madness not to take any risks now.

"Risk Awareness, Reversed"

As "Advertiser of the Year" David Schärer suggests in the interview on the left, this will first require a total reversal of risk awareness among all those involved in the industry's processes. Marketing and communications executives, who manage budgets (and, admittedly, often have a hard time doing so: According to the Harvard Business Review, around eighty percent of American CEOs feel a "latent" or "acute" distrust of their CMOs - figures that are likely to be similar in Switzerland), must finally abandon the principle of "Don't fix what isn't broken". Mediocre marketing that relies on supposed "security" does not preserve the status quo, but endangers it in the medium and long term. The idea that "another year of chocolate bars on a white background" would be enough to keep sales at Valora kiosks constant may seem tempting. But what if, in said year, a competitor emerges to blanket the whole of Switzerland with a guerrilla campaign and really ruin their carefully cultivated "share of wallet"? I have a suspicion where the (already suspicious, see above!) CEOs would look for "pawns". So the new watchword, especially in difficult times, is: Risky is not to do something extraordinary; risky is to do nothing at all.

Posture is "bold" - or arbitrary

Let's go one step further: Does your company claim to represent an attitude? Does it write the equality of all employees, regardless of their origin or sexuality, on the rainbow flags hoisted in front of its Zurich headquarters during Pride Month? And is this then used for proper self-promotion? As much as this action is to be welcomed in principle, it is not an attitude, it is cheap symbolic politics. The few die-hards who are still bothered by such communication measures in Switzerland are not relevant. Marketing based on attitude only becomes credible if there are people who are made angry by it. Yes, angry! When the same flags are also hoisted in front of offices in Moscow, the United Arab Emirates or African capitals where "homosexual propaganda" is subject to draconian penalties. Or when supporters of Donald Trump burn their sneakers because Nike testimonial Colin Kaepernick openly protests against the ex-president's xenophobic policies, yet continues to support "his" brand. The success that Nike's attitude campaign around Kaepernick had afterwards was celebrated by award juries and trade journalists worldwide - and many marketers probably felt a certain envy of never having triggered such an impact themselves. But, as I said, impact comes through attitude, and attitude is "bold" - or arbitrary, and therefore redundant.

The economy of attention

Those who have no use for attitude-based advertising can also approach the significance of expressive communication that is clearly differentiated from the mass of advertising messages via pure statistics: The most conservative (!) estimates assume that people in German-speaking countries are confronted with 300 to 500 advertising messages per day; other studies assume 3,000 to 10,000 such messages per day. The truth will lie somewhere in the middle - but combined with the flood of information that pours in on us via our cell phones, our laptops and print media, that is - to put it casually - simply a whole lot of input. And here it comes, the moment of truth for all marketing and communications managers: Would you yourself notice what you commissioned from your agency and what is now circulating in Switzerland or internationally among "only" 300 or even up to 10,000 other messages? If you can answer this with a spontaneous, convinced "Yes!", then congratulations are in order. Anyone who hesitates has actually already answered the question with a "No." And that's why events like DirectDay, which take "Bold is Gold" as their theme and hopefully inspire a few hundred people (multiplied by this magazine, at most a few thousand) to pause for a moment, are so important. This industry cannot continue as it is. No one is asking you, dear readers, to perform miraculous deeds. Just a little bit more courage.

How much courage does it take today to act "boldly"?

In a completely fragmented media world, where we are exposed to information content equivalent to several daily newspapers per day, messages have to be assertive - otherwise they get lost. This is so obvious that I always argue for a reversal of "risk thinking" in the industry: the question "What if we attract negative attention?" is readily asked. But it would be much more important to be concerned about not attracting attention at all.

To do this, you have to get the decision-makers in the companies out of their comfort zone. How difficult is that?

Attention costs a lot of money, and I see it as one of our most important tasks to manage the resources of our clients responsibly. So we have to get them out of the comfort zone of mediocrity - and say clearly: those who are remembered are the nonconformists. To do this, we put together a coherent and "bulletproof" argumentation as a team. And in pitches, I like to describe the impact of a campaign "from the end": What media potential do I see in a bold, polarizing proposal? What headlines can we generate? That helps enormously.