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February 9, 2004 - Strategy Magazine
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Strategy/Decima Poll
Ads rarely drive purchases
Only 4.7% of Canadians cite recent ads as 'most important influence'

by Lisa D'Innocenzo
page 1

When it comes to encouraging purchases, advertising has the least weight, according to the latest Strategy/Decima poll.

Only 4.7% of 2,000 Canadians cited "recent ads" when asked the multiple choice question, "Which of the following is the most important influence on your purchases?" Price was the most popular response at 49.1%, followed by brand recognition (25.4%) and limited-time special offer or discount (15.7%), while 5.1% of participants refused to answer or didn't know.

While agreeing the results are statistically significant, Peggy Richardson-McKee, SVP at Toronto-based Decima Research, isn't surprised that advertising scored so low. But she suggests the numbers may be skewed since consumers "don't like to admit that advertising has an effect on them."

"The question is also fairly broad and you don't know which category they're thinking about. There's a lot of difference between buying a coffee versus buying a car."

Philippe Garneau, partner and executive CD at Toronto-based brand consultancy GWP Brand Engineering, agrees and points out that, regardless of what they say, consumers are impacted by all of these components together. The fact that brand recognition also scored lower than expected is misleading, he adds.

This is because "a purchase is never the result of seeing an ad," but rather a combination of a series of events. Explains Garneau: "You have to have heard of the brand, it has to have been endorsed in your own mind, and you have to have found it at a credible retailer. Then there's word of mouth, there's all these other things.

"The fact of the matter is that brands do matter to people, but they're going to tell you that what really made them move was a rational proposition - that it was good value for the money at the right time. They're never going to admit to having bitten on those shiny hooks known as brands."

However, Garneau was a bit more concerned about the results of a second question that asked, "Have you ever decided not to purchase a brand because of annoying or misleading advertising?" Forty-seven per cent answered yes, compared to 51% who said no.

"It was higher than I would have thought, but I think it's also part of the fact that you get social points for being offended by advertising," he says, adding that this is particularly true among higher-income, higher-educated consumers who may have read Naomi Klein's No Logo, or taken media studies in university.

Certainly, the likelihood that consumers were turned off by advertising grew with household income and education. More than 57% of Canadians in the $100,000-plus range answered affirmatively, as did 60.3% of those with a post-secondary degree, compared to 41.3% of consumers with household incomes under $40,000 and 36.3% of those with a high school education.

Garneau thinks most respondents likely equated the synonyms "annoying or misleading" with "offensive," and that they were probably never intended as the target audience for the offending spots anyway. But that's not to say marketers should completely discount the results; they should consider the risks when they push the boundaries of taste.

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