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PUBLICATIONS FINANCIAL FIRMS GOVERNMENT/NGO (New This Month) |
AUTOMOTIVE Chrysler Motors MCorp. General Motors Mercedes-Benz NA Mercedes-Benz MUSA Mitsubishi Motor MSales Nissan North MAmerica Volkswagen of MAmerica Harley-Davidson TECHNOLOGY ENTERTAINMENT CONSUMER PRODUCTS
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Knock, knock! I don't care who's there. This is no joke. A growing portion of our marketing audience no longer answers the door when we call. Or knock. Or bang on the walls. They are just too cool to care. We have become irrelevant to them. Our client's products and services are ho-hum. Our million dollar TV spots are worthless drivel to be TiVO'd at will. But you knew that, right? AT A CERTAIN POINT EVERYTHING BECOMES ADVERTISING. You look out of your bathroom window and there is a Goliath-sized Beyonce staring at your dripping self giving you that Gillette Foamy look from the side of the office building across the street. You pick up your tooth brush and there is the Coke logo they beamed into it as a result of the RFID chip in the six-pack you bought on sale at Seven-11. Not that you notice because like everyone else you have become advertising immune. But advertising will not be denied.Advertising is too arrogant to realize they need to get with the program. Marketing decision makers think that all they have to do is yell louder to get your attention. Network television is doomed as research is shifting to commercial-based research rather than program based research. This means that in the very near future advertisers will be able to tell when their spots have been TiVO'd out of existence or allowed to live. If 40% of the network's spot inventory is zapped that means that they will be making 60 cents on their former dollar. This translates to less money to spend on quality programming and therefore even fewer viewers and even more spot zaps. The tipping point is edging closer and closer every day. And even the guy who parks your Jag has a theory on how to fix the broken advertising business model. Meanwhile the audience is marching off into the sunset. Chanting, "We don't need no entertainment." They got their own off-the-cuff user generated videos and the like to keep themselves distracted. And don't look now but Hollywood is picking up their DV cameras and making some hilarious home-brewed funnies. Will Ferrell and Adam McKay cracked us up recently with a drunken spoof on Will's confrontation with his toddler Landlord on http://funnyordie.com , which has to be seen to be believed. This spoof had no sponsors, no fanfare, just fall down funny dialog and a million hits a day. The writer of the clip, Adam McKay was a former SNL scribe and penned Ferrell's last two flicks. But this they did for fun. And now that it has gone viral it's for sure that scores of other writer actor teams will be taking the same route to promote their personal brand names. If so, user generated content will get a major upgrade. The big question on everybody's mind is (or should be) whether the massive audiences of the recent past ( 10-30 million) are about to be surpassed by much smaller audiences of 1 to 3million. The web is all about fragmentation. And if so, how will all of these mini audiences be managed by marketing decision makers. Those audiences who are too cool to care about one size fits all entertainment vehicles may begin to pay attention to more esoteric or off the wall selections as served up by the web. Only problem is, that they now access this programming commercial free. The minute it becomes sponsor driven it may loose a large part of the even smaller audience. The other issue is even finding it at all. I went to youtube.com to find the Will Ferrell video. Wrong address. I then had to go to Google. With no idea of the name of the clip I had to look for every listing with Ferrell's name on it. Bummer. But that is what we have to work with when we migrate our selling messages to the web via viral video. Most agencies have no idea at all what it's going to take to bust through the "Wall of Whatev" that the entire Gen Y tribe seems intent on using to shield themselves from us. What's worse, they are not even trying to figure it out. Meanwhile advertising apathy is spreading like the black plague. And like the weather, everybody is talking but nobody is doing much of anything new. Perhaps our industry is also, too cool to care. Stay tuned.
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