The Belief Gap
Product Vs. Proposition
“The better the singer’s voice is, the harder it is to believe what they’re saying.” – David Byrne
Advertisers have historically been tasked to give our clients beautiful singing voices. As the auto-tune of the corporate world, we’ve continually been asked to create breakthrough campaigns that grab attention and generate popular interest. But the dilemma here is if we are successful, we are more likely to be exposed for selling unremarkable or irresponsible products.
Being a marketer today – when the exposure rate is faster than ever before in history – can be disheartening. You’re so often briefed with unbelievable reasons to believe. Or you’re tested to solve non-advertising problems with advertising tools. So even when your campaign succeeds in gaining cultural relevance, the product review forums squash the doubtful claims the client pushed through. For unremarkable products, advertising is both a tax and a band-aid solution (albeit an increasingly ineffective one).
There are cases where you see unremarkable products with remarkable marketing, and also cases where you pair remarkable products with unremarkable marketing. In both scenarios, something is missing. The true win comes when we marry stand-out communication with stand-out products. More easily said than done.
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HER NATURE HIS NURTURE 
Sean, your view reminded me of Bill Bernbach – “A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it’s bad.”
That’s the idea exactly, Michael. Bill Bernbach was ahead of his time. Thanks to new tech, today, good advertising means more people than ever will know it’s a bad product faster than ever.