Mouseprints On Your Brand

I have a simple equation to suggest to my friends who endeavor to measure brand equity: commercials with lots of fine print -- spoken or written, and referenced in the vernacular as mouseprint -- cost you more poker chips than they could ever deliver.

Mouseprint comes in two broad flavors:

1. The your-head-could-blow-up warnings, like the ones in commercials for exotic drugs or alcohol
2. The we-didn't-mean-what-we-just-promised qualifiers, which appear in credit card and travel promos, for instance

Does anybody take at face value the branding promises that are hobbled by mouseprint? 

Nothing can hide it; whether printed in .005 pt. type or spoken by an agitated chipmunk, the mere existence of mouseprint is a cue that the advertiser is revealing something that it otherwise wouldn't want to reveal, save for the requirements of regulators, or the warnings of suspiciously protective lawyers (or both).

Or is it?

• The mouseprint billboards on cigarette ads haven't really stopped people from smoking.  In fact, they've sometimes served to reinforce the bad boy branding benefits of lighting up
• The suggestion that an erectile dysfunction drug might result in the problem of an erection lasting more than four hours comes across as a downright benefit promise, not a caution
• People still pay the same money for smaller portions of cheese slices and laundry detergent, even if those size changes are noted on the packaging

Now, your immediate reaction might be cool, consumers can be conditioned to buy things irrespective of completely rationale inhibitions.  Marketers are just too damn creative, whether in how the warnings are worded, or where graphically represented.

Nope.  It's bad news for brands, for two reasons:

Selling to consumers who aren’t paying attention is not a branding transaction.  It's exploitation, however slick an expository veneer you choose to put on it.  If people are not paying attention to what should clearly interest them -- say, the suggestion that a product could make them bleed profusely from all orifices, or something -- then how do you know what they are reading or hearing?  Are they interpreting, remembering, adapting, or applying your branding messaging in ways you expect?

Remember, a survey or focus group captures a moment in time.  At best, you get answers to specific questions that may not be valid the moment the test concludes or, just as likely, weren’t even true, only the respondents didn't know it.

And marketers talk about trying to establish or maintain some consistence atmospheric presence of brand in the subconsciousness of such targets?

Second, if they ignore the warnings, they won’t ignore them for long.  Slick branding that diminishes or exploits mouseprint eventually backfires.  Interest rates go up.  There's one less serving of cheese for the evening's meal.  Somebody's head blows up because they took a drug to give them better urine stream.

All the PR crisis communications in the world can't undo the damage such events cause, because there are networks on the Internet where these truths are communicated and preserved.  No consumers stay unaware forever.

Just as likely, maybe there’s no crisis directly relevant to the mouseprint, yet something bad happens to the business.  Lead paint is discovered on a toy.  A plane crashes due to no fault of the airline.  If consumers have been in a lulled state of ignorance when they transacted with a business, any conscious, material, negative event can serve to shock them into awareness.  And it's awareness of bad stuff, followed thereafter by suspicion and cynicism. 

Brand loyalty depends on reality of consumer experience, not blind or unconscious trust.  Microprint relies on such consumer disinterest, and allows companies to exploit it.  A single negative event reveals the paucity of such a strategy.  That's bad for everyone involved.  And it's particularly bad for brands.

When the marketing gaggle talks about engagement, isn’t this a prime example of where it’s needed?  Nobody needs to get engaged with creative branding, per se: rather, isn't it in the best interest of businesses to make sure they're not just following the letter of the law (or the minimizing inventions of their graphic artists), but actually conversing with their consumers honestly, openly, and repeatedly? 

The alternative is a ticking bomb, however softly the clock might be advancing.

If you have mouseprints on your brand, your customer will eventually see a rat.

Comments

[Branding Blog]

You're killing me with these great articles. It seems like you can write forever on branding.

I never really thought about the blurbs before until now. I think most consumers just tune it out like they do most TV advertising.

But you're right, they are trying no to reveal this baloney so buyer beware.

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