Your say / Business
‘Let’s debunk some marketing myths’
I’m sure every marketer under the sun appreciates the value of research to prove claims and demonstrate the value of what we do, so I often look for industry insights to add substance to what I’m saying. It’s all very well me chirping on about how brilliant video marketing is, but people need proof.
However, when I was recently writing a blog post about powerful Christmas video marketing campaigns, and I wanted some evidence to pinpoint exactly how and why video has become such an effective tool for online advertising, I was pretty shocked by the volume of dodgy data being purported as fact.
One of the questionable observations I came across was the statement that ‘the average Internet user spends 88 per cent more time on websites that have video content’. This might sound great at first glance – the perfect stat for me to impress upon potential clients – and it’s a claim that’s been repeated far and wide, cropping up on literally millions of web pages. Yet, the original source seems to have vanished into thin air, so there’s no way of verifying its legitimacy.
In response, I decided to produce this video debunking a couple of video marketing myths:
A real source of resentment is when I come across an article that quotes an interesting stat from a study, something mind blowing that would really help to hammer home my point… but instead of referencing the original source, it links to a list of marketing soundbites and then you’re off on a wild goose chase, clicking links left, right and centre as you try to decipher fact from fiction.
I shouldn’t need to be such a sleuth to hunt down the truth, but the trouble is, once these stats are out there, they often go unchecked and are repeated time and again, presumably because they’re convenient and add weight arguments – even if they’re not always accurate.
In the aftermath of surprise election results and ‘post-truth’ being named OED’s word of the year, the general mood is certainly one of you shouldn’t always believe what you read. That sentiment goes for advertising as much as political polls, but Bristol’s innovative marketing industry really should confront this lax attitude towards dodgy data.
Jon Mowat is a former BBC documentary filmmaker, and he now heads up Hurricane on Bath Road Studios. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
