Last week, one of my former managers called me. After the pleasantries, she said to me, “Sesan, there’s something you used to say about advertising and good products.” I wondered why something “I used to say” over 10 years ago would warrant a call in 2026.
Nonetheless, I didn’t think twice before I recalled what I used to say (the clues were telling), because, interestingly, I still say it today. So, what did I say? “No good advertising sells a bad product twice”. I can’t claim ownership of the statement; I heard it from my advertising lecturer, Dr Tejuoso, more than two decades ago, but it became a defining statement for my marketing career.
So, after a short catch-up with my former manager, I wanted to understand why she wanted the statement. Summary: products are not selling, and management (which she’s part of) is putting pressure on marketing to ‘tell better stories and increase awareness’.
If you joined marketing yesterday, you might not understand the nuance of that situation, but if you’ve spent time, you’ll know that it’s one of those times where the truth needs to be deflected, and responsible parties need a scapegoat to make themselves feel good. All fingers usually point at marketing. “More social media”, “more influencer”, “target GenZ”, etc are all tools of that trade.
I once consulted for a brand facing slow sign-up because of significant, sector-specific trust issues. So, our agency came up with an idea that made a single claim: “If we don’t deliver on time, fire our CEO”. He was a very open client, so I led the agency to him. When we got to the point of the campaign claim, the man paused us, sat up, looked at me, looked at the claim again, and started explaining why ‘that’s not the pain of the customers’. Any novice knows that customers can’t (officially) fire a CEO of a non-public company, but our CEO prefers not to make that reassuring, bold claim. I leave you to imagine the end of the story.
In marketing’s history, the result of the post-porting campaign with Nigeria’s Telecoms sector by Philip Consulting in 2013 tells an even more revealing story. MTN had the best ad campaign of the era, but lost the most customers to porting. This result doesn’t invalidate the magic of advertising; it only tells a deeper story of how a dichotomy can exist between the feeling of advertising and the experience of a service when performance is missing. I have used the result in several training sessions, and the responses when I ask why the disconnect is always the same – service quality made people port or stay, not ads.
Raja Rajamannar, in his book Quantum Marketing: Mastering the New Marketing Mindset for Tomorrow’s Consumers, argues that marketing today is hardly 4Ps in most organizations, and he suggests four new lenses through which marketing should be viewed.
So, if Marketing isn’t responsible for product development/quality, distribution, and pricing, why does it get questioned when sales issues arise due to performance? In the current marketing era, the best marketing can do is proactively or reactively manage the reputational fallout of a product or service performance issue.
Everyone in the organization, especially senior leadership, is responsible for product performance. Marketing doesn’t fix a bad product or service. It can clean the mess, though – hopefully it’s a one-off.
Marketing’s stock-in-trade is to win customers’ minds, but the product or service must deliver on the expectations set by marketing.
Leaders always care about a positive brand perception from their stakeholders; unfortunately, a positive perception doesn’t happen just because of good stories told by marketing. It happens when brand promise meets brand experience/performance. When this happens, marketing activities get more than the label of vanity metrics; they deliver measurable and repeatable outcomes.
When good advertising meets good products, the outcome is always magical. Driving sales or keeping customers isn’t just about telling stories; it’s about making the product deliver on its promise.
