Quick! Name a car introduced in 1958 that was a commercial failure.

Most people, including those born years later, can answer the question without a hint. (Like, say, it was named after the company founder’s son, and it sort of rhymes with “pretzel”).

Fifty years after its ignominious withdrawal from the market, the car still enjoys top-of-mind awareness. Amazing as that may be, I find this even more stunning: Many marketers still wrongly equate top-of-mind awareness with advertising success. They have allowed the metrics of reach to usurp the metrics of sales.

Consider how many ad agencies brag about “getting your name out there,” “getting noticed,” and the “number of people who remember your product.” If such are the standards of success, then the next advertising awards competition should honor the Pretzel Automobile campaign with a medal for “lifetime achievement.”

Originally, advertising was held to the same standard as salespeople were. Indeed, advertising was invented to stand in for, or extend the reach of, salespeople. The salesperson’s job description hasn’t changed much in 200 years, but advertising’s has. Salespeople who fail to produce sales are summarily dismissed, no matter how many positive impressions they leave behind. Yet advertising is often deemed “successful” based solely on the number of people who are exposed to it or remember it.

Where the problem started

Just how, and when, did marketers become so enamored of the metrics of reach? A clue exists in the origins of advertising agencies themselves. Early ad agencies didn’t sell creative services. They were agents who brokered pages in publications. Needing a metric for pricing, publications began counting subscribers and pass-along readers, and charged advertisers by the thousand. (Later, broadcast stations would measure audience size per time segment, and Web sites would count clicks and views.) By the time agencies added creative services to their offering, number-of-persons-reached had already become an accepted standard.

The standard persists today, and in at least some cases has outlived its usefulness, as an example from early 2009 illustrates. A well-known fast food chain, knowing that sales of its fish sandwich tend to rise during Lent, wanted to boost this year’s sales in that season even higher. Its ad agency produced a video starring a plaque-mounted singing fish that had attained a modest cult following in the 1990s. The agency uploaded the video in hopes it would go viral — and it did. The spot garnered a million hits in four weeks, drew 4,000 members to an online fan site and inspired a host of parodies. The client, agency and trade press hail the video as a success. Yet amid the hoopla, there has been no mention of the video’s effect on fish sandwich sales — which happens to have been the original objective.

It is true that a video cannot generate sales without garnering viewers. Equally true, lots of viewers may lead to lots of sales. May. But to assume as much is naive. History brims with widely recognized, well-remembered campaigns that failed to sell. To name a few: a stomach remedy campaign (think spicy meatballs), a failed new cola formula, a beer that whimsically defined what was manly, an intrusive duck, a fast food spokes-Chihuahua, a lying car salesman and a white mustache. All of these campaigns, I might add, were highly decorated at advertising awards shows.

Why low awareness doesn’t always hurt

As high awareness doesn’t ensure sales success, low awareness doesn’t preclude it. While direct response marketers know that they could reach the masses via the U.S. mail, they resist the urge. Instead, they harness the power of direct mail to ferret out people who are likely to want what’s for sale. Thus, despite a lack of ubiquity on the world stage, direct mail marketers strike gold selling steaks, books, music, computers, kitchen tools, hardware, clothing, heavy equipment, pens, stationery, shoes, intimate apparel, medical supplies, coffins, appliances, motor vehicles, sports equipment, build-it-yourself kits — in fact, just about anything you can name. Not one of these marketers can tell you how many people remember their direct mail. But they can tell you how many orders the last mailing produced.

They can also provide a host of other useful, hard data generally unavailable to those who execute pure awareness marketing. This includes predictive results, cost-per-sale, profitability per individual customer, detailed customer profiles and buying patterns, most-profitable items, best mail dates, winning incentive offers, most-compelling headline, most-persuasive copy, which colors and layouts work best, effectiveness of direct mail contents by the individual piece, strategic value, and more. None of this information is inferred or theoretical. It is grounded by sales and money in the bank.

The metrics of reach have their uses, but they can also lull the unwary into a false sense of security. Top-of-mind awareness is only a success if your goal is top-of-mind awareness. If your goal is sales, perhaps you should measure that instead.

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing and a popular convention speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, the American Marketing Association, the James Randi Educational Foundation and others. He can be reached at Steve@ResponseAgency.com.