The New Marketing Reality by Ken Bernhardt Regents' Professor Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University Atlanta Business Chronicle - January 21, 2005  Every once in a while one hears a speaker that makes you think.  I had that experience recently when J. Walker Smith, president of Yankelovich Partners, spoke to the GSU Marketing RoundTable. Walker has just co-authored a new book, Coming to Concurrence: Addressable Attitudes and the New Model for Marketing Productivity, which argues that marketers must change the way they operate due to a number of trends in the environment. First and foremost, consumers today are resisting marketing efforts.  It's notable that the Do Not Call Registry has 64 million numbers enrolled, 55 million of which are residential. Software that blocks pop-up ads has become increasingly popular. Sales of TIVO and other digital video recorders that enable consumers to skip through television ads are growing rapidly.  In a recent Yankelovich study, 60 percent of consumers said they "would describe myself as a person who tries to resist or avoid being exposed to marketing and advertising." More than two-thirds of consumers said they were interested in products and services that "enable me to block, skip, or opt out of being exposed to marketing and advertising." Over half (54 percent) say they "avoid buying products that overwhelm me with marketing and advertising." They say these things even though they recognize the value of advertising to the economy - - 71 percent say that the "amount of marketing and advertising exposed to is a fair price to pay for living in a free market society" and 68 percent say it gives them "useful ideas about how to make my life better."  In other words, marketing and advertising are okay in concept, but I don't want to see it myself ("not in my backyard"). Comparable studies from 40 years ago showed that only 14 percent of consumers had an unfavorable view of advertising and only15 percent said "advertising needs attention and change." In spite of the rise of these consumer attitudes, many marketers don't get it. Their solution to TIVO and skipping through ads is product placement - - if consumers won't watch the ads, then darn it, we'll make them see the products in the programming. The problem, of course, is that consumers are too smart for this and knowing that marketers paid for the product placement, they resist the intrusion and form negative attitudes toward these products. The 2004 Yankelovich Monitor Survey of Marketing Directors asked the respondents to identify the major issues facing marketers. At the bottom of the list  was "consumer hostility to marketing and advertising" with only 27 percent of the marketing directors naming this as an important issue. There have been a number of studies that show that marketing productivity is plummeting. There are many reasons for this including the proliferation of media clutter, consumers' increasingly busy lives, and the Internet, which has enabled consumers to take control - - they no longer have to be passive recipients of information from marketers, they can proactively seek information about products when they want it. But a bigger cause in my mind is the lack of trust many consumers have toward marketers. According to a December 2004 Gallup poll, only 10 percent of consumers give advertisers high ratings for honesty and ethical standards and only 20 percent rate business executives highly. While these scores are higher than used car salespeople at 9 percent, they are far below nurses (79 percent rating high or very high), grade school teachers (73 percent), pharmacists (72 percent), or physicians (67 percent).  Even banks are not exempt from consumer mistrust. A recent American Banker/Gallup Study found that almost one-third of U.S. consumers believe that a bank has violated their financial privacy.  This is the highest level recorded since the question was first asked a few years ago. Sixty percent express concern that their primary financial institution might release their personal financial data without their consent. It's no wonder consumers want more regulation of marketing and advertising. In last year's Yankelovich Monitor study, the top 5 things consumers said needed more government regulation were (in order) water pollution, toxic waste, air pollution, advertising, and nuclear safety. As Walker Smith says, note that the other 4 can kill you. So what are the implications of all this? First of all, today's consumer, whether they are buying consumer products or business to business products, is much smarter, more empowered, less trusting and forgiving, more demanding, and more resistant when dissatisfied.  Thus, marketers must respond to this new environment by providing greater value. They must communicate in a manner that respects the new consumer by informing, educating and entertaining them rather than trying to overwhelm them or deceive them. They must do things that generate trust, perhaps the single most important factor in marketing today. Giving consumers more control will help promote trust. A better job of understanding consumer expectations will enable you to develop products that satisfy true consumer needs and are authentic. Ensuring that consumers are treated with respect will be critical. Instead of marketing to the masses, better targeting so that you are communicating to consumers about things they are interested in will help make your messages more relevant and better received. In sum, there is no one thing that must be done differently - - it is many things, and unless these are done by marketers, consumer resistance to marketing efforts will continue to grow, making marketing less and less effective in the coming years. Some marketers are responding - - August Busch IV, president of Anheuser Busch, was recently quoted as saying, "last year we did well with some ads that could have been considered distasteful. We are now taking a more cautious approach to get in front of the mood of the country." So what are you going to do differently in 2005 to regain the confidence and trust of your consumers?