What is the answer to the question of, “Sales are down, customer counts are falling … what can we do?” For many marketers, the answer is to spend marketing dollars on an advertising campaign. In fact, this is not true to a large extent. Too many marketers are obsessed with advertising and they think that the solution lies within advertising. Well, they can’t be blame isn’t it? Advertising has always been thought of the BIG creative medium that will capture the attention of the mass market and most marketers have been brainwashed with this math equation:

Advertising = Increase Sales + Increase Customers

Well, this is not true at all where many empirical research have proven such generalizations where an increase in advertising spent does not lead to increase in sales and doubling advertising expenditures for established products increased sales just 1% – 2%.

So what should be the replacement for Advertising in this math equation? Perhaps it should be:

Better product/Better Experience = Increase Sales + Increase Customers

which John Moore at Brand Autopsy’s original posting points out. Of course, this is too simple of a math equation for an answer to the above question but it is definitely not:

Advertising = Increase Sales + Increase Customers

Well, for me, my simple match equation would be:

Integrated Marketing Communication = Better product/Better Experience = Increase Sales + Increase Customers

What’s your math equation?