Advertising Myopia Oopsia

When I decided to write about what I call myopia in advertising and marketing, I was pretty cocky. I've been harping about this for years, and for good reason: Business owners are often so consumed with what they think their company is all about, that they neglect to question what their customer thinks. It is so common a problem, that I spend the majority of my marketing briefs describing how customer perceptions differ from those of business owners and operators. And how to capitalize on those customer's expectations.

Whereas a business might be incredibly proud of the accuracy of their wrist-mounted, certified-quartz banded chronometer, their customers don't care unless they are told why they should.  In fact customers won't be interested in the least if they don't first know that the product in question is a watch. They have to understand what the product or service means to them personally before you can tell them that it's better than all the others. Or that it is worth paying more for. It is the classic case of “What have you done for me.”

But since I'd been dealing with this issue since I first began in advertising, more than 25 years ago, I thought I'd check to see if anyone else had ever noticed this phenomenon. And (BLAST YOU GOOGLE), it turns out somebody else had.  A certain Theodore Levitt had written a paper on what he called "Marketing myopia" some 50 years ago. According to Wikipeda, "This paper was first published in 1960 in the Harvard Business Review; a journal of which he was an editor." So, I guess, I was not all that original after all.

Can you plagiarize before reading your source material... apparently...

Now, in my defense, I was not doing advertising in the 1960's. No character at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce was based on me, not even one of Don Draper's kids. In fact, little Sally Draper was proficient at mixing drinks long before I ever could. I’ll bet, other than occasionally being kookoo for Cocoa Puffs, I was completely oblivious to advertising.

I encountered myopia in advertising and marketing quite independently when I came across clients blithely ignoring their customers, because, I supposed at the time, customers were too ignorant to matter. I came to realize later that it was simple pride. Pride of ownership. Pride of authorship. Pride of invention, development, execution and superiority, all of which are attributes worth being proud of.  Just not to the exclusion of profits. Even the most ignorant customers have money.

So, thank you Mr. Levitt for validating my observations, um… before I was able to observe them. I guess (blushing) this would be a great time for me to finally read your paper.