Why do big brands keep making the same mistakes

Too many marketers as well as brand and advertising managers still aren't thinking things through and these mistakes are costing a fortune.

By Chris Moerdyk

30 Sep 2015

A few years ago I pulled out some interesting brand facts from credible sources for my clients and they are well worth repeating.

86 percent of people skip TV commercials, yet brands still spent $19.8bn last year on TV spots.

243 retail brands have gone out of business in the USA in the last five years.

Spending on social, including influencer outreach, makes up only 10 percent of brands' digital marketing spend.

Annual digital marketing operating budgets represented 2.5 percent of a company's revenue in 2012.

The average large brand has 178 social media accounts.

The average brand CMO tenure is 43 months.

Facebook brand pages achieve an average engagement rate of 1 percent.

About 20 percent of digital marketers are looking for a new job, and more than 66 percent will be doing so in the near future.

86 percent of consumer feedback online is being missed by brands.

70 percent of marketers do not collect social media data about competing brands. 70 percent of consumers prefer getting to know a company via content marketing such as sponsored articles rather than ads, but brands spend more on advertising than on this type of content.

The average post from a Facebook brand page only reaches 16 percent of fans.

About Chris Moerdyk

Apart from being a corporate marketing analyst, advisor and media commentator, Chris Moerdyk is a former chairman of Bizcommunity. He was head of strategic planning and public affairs for BMW South Africa and spent 16 years in the creative and client service departments of ad agencies, ending up as resident director of Lindsay Smithers-FCB in KwaZulu-Natal. Email Chris on moerdykc@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @chrismoerdyk.
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