Industry veteran Sir John Hegarty told the BBC in a recent interview that despite the popularity of digital advertising, broadcast advertising is the only medium that can make a brand truly “famous”.
“Look, there’s a logic to digital advertising,” Hegarty told BBC News business reporter Dougal Shaw. “But you are constantly wanting to expand your brand, make it more famous and add value to it – and only broadcast does that.
“Brand fame is important because it affects customer decisions, it allows brands to resist competitor pressure and it allows premium pricing.
“You and I are never going to buy a Rolls-Royce, but we know about it, we know it’s the world’s most luxurious car and that adds value to the brand.”
Now the creative director of The Garage Soho, Hegarty first became revered in advertising in the 1980s and 90s for helping to build ad campaigns for brands such as Audi and Levi’s jeans. He was also the co-founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) and founding partner of Saatchi & Saatchi.
The industry vet believes there has been a “loss in faith” in broadcast advertising in recent years due to the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Google persuading brands that ‘advertising is a science’.
“They say to clients, ‘Why are you doing all this advertising to people who are never going to buy your product, why don’t you be more efficient?'”
“When people talk about your ads, that’s free advertising,” Hegarty told the BBC as part as its CEO Secrets series. “But on social media you’re talking to a small group of people, you never grow bigger than that. That’s the failure of modern marketing which we notice, because you don’t get those great big campaigns. When we did ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ for Audi, it became a famous line.”
“Brand fame is fundamentally important and marketing today seems to have forgotten that.”
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Hegarty is also the chairman of a company called Whalar that works alongside influencers. Recently trends like deinfluencing – the act of telling consumers what not to buy – has threatened the influence marketing landscape, but Hegarty feels that “influencers are a good way for brands to speak to a select group of people.”
“It’s just another piece of equipment in your armament. When TV came along, it didn’t kill radio, radio didn’t kill the theatre, flatscreen TVs didn’t kill cinema – the brilliant thing today is you’ve got options. But you have to understand the principles by which brands grow. Principles remain, practices change.”
