Steve Cuno has a passion for blending science with marketing. The founder and chairman of Response Agency Inc., a direct response marketing firm in Salt Lake City, Cuno is a nationally recognized expert in branding and measurable marketing. In his new book, Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing, Cuno focuses on hard evidence and debunks myths about success based on focus groups and “gut” feelings. He sat down with Deliver recently to discuss his crusade against marketing-by-intuition. DELIVER: What’s the new book about? CUNO: It takes a critical-thinking and science-based and evidence-based approach to marketing. What the typical advertising agency says is, “Gee, we like this concept.” If they measure at all — most don’t — the measure is “We like it, it won awards, and the client likes it, so it’s successful.” A more honest approach is to take a critical look at results to see if your advertising is meeting measurable objectives. DELIVER: Why do you think so many marketers remain reluctant to embrace real measurements for their campaigns? CUNO: One reason is the thing we call denial. It’s very human of us. Think how many parents prefer to think their kids aren’t using drugs, no matter where the truth actually lies. Job preservation is another reason. If you’re my client and you’re happy, which would I risk: Showing you potentially damning numbers or, if you’re happy, leaving well enough alone? We don’t measure what we don’t want to know. I teach a two-day seminar for the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) called “Busting Marketing Myths.” Here’s an interesting thing: We covered a section on why focus groups are not good predictors, and I got some very interesting feedback. Creative directors did not question the point. Instead, they asked if I was suggesting they should go back to their agency and clients and tell them they’re doing it wrong and should change methodology. They said they weren’t going to do that. Why not? Well, if you’re in an agency and you’re a couple of rungs down on the ladder, you’re not going to say, “Guys, this is not working.” Also, the ego: Who wants to be wrong? We all know this about human beings. In any debate, most people are more interested in defending their point of view than figuring out what the facts are. They also believe advertising cannot be scientifically measured. Well, direct mail has been doing that for years. DELIVER: How so? What has direct mail’s role been in an increasingly more accountable marketing industry? CUNO: If I mail to 100,000 people and if 1,000 buy, I know exactly what I gained from my effort. I can do the math and find out how much I spent and how much I made. Now, contrast that to a TV commercial like the new one for a popular soft drink that tells the world something about its particular “side” of life. I challenge you to tell me how many people got out of their chairs and bought that soft drink as a result of that campaign. But in direct mail it can be measured: I mailed this many. This many people replied. But that’s just scratching the surface. Let’s take it to the next level. Let’s say there were 100,000 mailings, and I want to know if people prefer the product in red or green. I can split the mailing and have every other in red and every other in green. All I have to do is count replies. The market will show me which color they are more likely to buy. DELIVER: So for, say, a direct mail firm, what numbers should marketers pay closest attention to? CUNO: So many people think direct mail is focused solely on the number of orders it produces. That is a primary and excellent use of direct mail, but direct mail can do other things, too, like give you feedback about the brand or about your market’s preferences. So, first, decide what you’re trying to achieve. Is your objective cold, hard sales? If so, you should pay attention to that. Or are you trying to get customers to give you information about themselves? Maybe you want to find out what kind of coffee they drink, or what day of the week they prefer to go to the store, so you can use that information later. Maybe you want to test one headline against another for use in a branding campaign. You can test all of these things with direct mail. DELIVER: How can evidence-based marketing aid a brand? CUNO: Here’s an example: We have a national client that was acquired by a larger national company. The new parent company wondered if they should rebrand the acquired company. To find out, we did a series of direct mail tests, some using the old brand, some using the new. In this specific case, we learned that the brand identifier made no difference in sales. What mattered was the deal we offered. For this client, the result had interesting implications. Perhaps neither brand is as strong as they thought. DELIVER: Do you think the push toward testing and metrics in advertising will get stronger? CUNO: Ads have to earn their keep. I can’t peer into the future, but I can tell you one thing. When a company is fat and has money to burn and just loves an ad campaign, sometimes they’ll keep it as an expression of the ego and as a personal indulgence. If you’re not fat and don’t have money to burn, the fact that you love the campaign is irrelevant. You simply want to know if it is producing. DELIVER: Some CEOs are saying their companies cannot afford to market as they have in the past because of the recession. Should companies cut their marketing budget during tight economic times? CUNO: It’s very telling when companies cut marketing budgets. The idea of marketing is to sell stuff and raise profits. If you cut your budget because things are tight, it’s an admission that deep down inside you suspect your marketing isn’t selling. Why else would you cut marketing? When things are tight and you know your marketing is working, you will increase it. Cutting effective marketing when sales are down is like cutting insulin because someone’s diabetes got worse. Large Business, Measurement, Medium Business, Opinion, Small Business