Ramsey Naja is chief creative officer at JWT MEA
“I once read a research document that featured a remarkable quote from a consumer. His piece of wisdom? “If you have to advertise your product, it means it stinks”. Now, you could look at this either with a mounting sense of insecurity, or with the assurance that your job is safe considering the malodorous credentials of so many products on the market.
But there’s also the whiff of an interesting debate here: does a good product sell itself, without the need for PowerPoint presentations on profound market insights and PhotoShopped beauties drooling over it? The recent spat between Apple and Samsung over an ad that compared their smart phones directly is telling in this respect. Here you have two excellent pieces of technology that deliver relatively similar experiences fighting over which is a smarter buy.
Frankly, in this case, the product hardly mattered. Whilst one of those giants rubbed his hands feeling the kind of one-upmanship normally associated with playground taunts relating to whose daddy spends the most time in the gym, the other was carried away on the shoulders of a virtual army of fanatical worshippers who would defend it even if it stole their girlfriend on prom night. And this is the key: no matter how good your product is, what counts is the number of people who believe in its DNA, and who will believe in it blindly unless it lets them down in dramatic fashion – which today is unlikely, given the fairly level playing field in a category’s higher echelons.
In an age when the number of fans is vital to a brand’s survival, the communication that carries its brand idea, rather than its product advertising, is the one that defines the rules of engagement. If your product rides on an über-popular brand idea, the chances of a rival, competing strictly on performance merits, are reduced to those of a good presidential candidate with a speech impediment landing a killer blow in the televised debates. In normal circumstances, a successful advertising-free product simply relies on a well-advertised brand.”
