We marketers have this neat notion that our esoteric understanding of just the right combination of lever-flipping can send hordes of carbon-based bipeds marching through a hypothetical construct we call the “Consumer Purchase Funnel” (or as I like to call it, “The Cone of Uncertainty”) and bring order to consumer behavior.
As such, Awareness – Interest – Consideration – Intent – Purchase – Advocacy unfortunately gloss over a few minor details like how strange people can be, our mood, culture, upbringing, birth order, education, character, customs, friends, attitudes, finances, life circumstances and daily struggles that make us all unpredictable at best, incomprehensible and worst.
For the Consumer Purchase Funnel to be the factory of brand fortune it purports to be, every person would have to be a mindless drone in a constant state of searching for something to purchase. Allow me to put the main tenants of the CPF into a story about the fictional journey of a consumer, lets call him Ralph:
“I had the most amazing experience transpire over the past few weeks. I don’t’ know when it happened exactly or where I was but I became Aware of a product. Through exposure to subsequent messaging over time I grew more Interested. As I began to think more and more about the product I shortly thereafter entered into a phase of Consideration. Then I did some digging on my own and lo and behold, the reputation for this product was superb. That was enough for me. I now had Intent to buy. At this point it was as if the product had chosen ME….quite obviously this was a date with destiny. Then it happened…. I made the Purchase. Now I needed to take that final crucial step and close the loop to ensure an enduring pact in the form of Advocacy. I was merely a consumer but now I am that which other consumers turn to for information prior to any purchase consideration (after all, 92% of people trust brand advocates, according to a recent Nielsen report). For now, my journey is complete… until next time!”
Look – you have to advertise, or risk getting left in the dust. But the volume and variety out there today, “the variability in advertising” as I heard Mr. Wonderful recently refer to it as on Shark Tank, is dizzying. Now, there are platforms and process parameters en masse assigned to each and every stage of the Funnel. But the only one to hit ‘em all with far and away the majority % of effectiveness and attenuate our fickle nature – is Television. It just is. If you want to indulge in digital, go for the clean, well-lit and brand safe extensions of that local, community trusted Media pillar. But please, don’t use the programmatic black box to check a box. The latest scandal is so atrocious I don’t even want to put it in writing, but you can read about it here.
There’s one proven way to navigate the Cone of Uncertainty and that is to Blast the entire thingwith Mass Media. So go ahead, Ralph is waiting…
