I hope the Summer is allowing you to keep cool. Me? I was born cool. But that is another story. Meanwhile, this weeks question was submitted by subscriber Dennis T. of Seattle, WA. This Weeks Question:What will replace advertising in the Post-Advertising Era? The easy answer is "Post-Advertising." But we never-ever do anything easy. The accurate answer is "Transformational Ideas will replace Advertising in the Post-Advertising Era." This will call for a wholesale reshuffle of all of the uncommon wisdom we currently try to shove down our client's throats as "thought leadership." |
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Transformational Ideas take a great deal of heavy lifting to define, let alone execute. The obvious first step lies in the definition of what exists now that is in need of transformation. Gaining an accurate description of your current status in the marketplace and a clear demarcation of the playing field is not as easy as it seems. The first place to start is a clear understanding that what you know of your current audience may not necessarily jive with what your current audience knows about you. It's a lot like the shock that Cognac distributors had at discovering that huge segments of their audience were upscale, black and single. Conventional wisdom had put the market at suburban, white and occasional. When Hennessy did their homework, it lead them to a Transformational Idea. Position their brand to Blacks who happened to be Early Adaptors. They didn't just run ther ads in Essence and Black Enterprise. They chose to run themin Wired and Fast Company with ads that were obviously directed to Black tech-buffs. The Post Advertising Era will demand that transformational thinking go significantly beyond the media plan and the creative brief. So in defining the playing field we have to factor in more than just demographic, psychographic and geographic profiles of the audience. That complex roadmap will provide us with a dynamic overview of the worldview of our current audience. If we were serious about it, we would model all of the variables in a complex adaptive system model on our local mainframe. Then we would be able to begin to work on the perimeters of our Transformational Idea overlay. Why? Because now we have a fairly accurate idea of what can and cannot be transformed. Whereas advertising is all about words, pictures and strategic framework, what will come to replace advertising will be all about content, context and probable outcomes. What do we want the audience to know? How do we want the audience to react once they know? Where do we think the knowledge will drive the audience from where they are now? How will that audience action bring about transformational change in the status quo? Where do we start when we strive to come up with a transformational idea? We start with the outcome. Whereas traditional advertising is only concerned with the creation of awareness among the audience, the transformational idea is concerned with the perception of value among the audience. In other words, how do you transform the value perception of the audience from "So what?" to "Gotta have it?" Stay strong.
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