The
Battle For Coca-Cola
Rages On.
Ain't
Nothing Like
The Real Thing, Maybe.
I
Don't Mean To Say
I Told You So, But...
Are
Consumers Smarter
Then We Are?.
The
Four Great Myths
Of Global Branding.
Mr
Bevis Butts Heads
At Mitsubishi
The
Best Laid Plans
Of Mice And Men.
Dare
to Be Great:
The Mad Genius of "The Matrix"
Mitsubishi's
New Marketing Boss
Out Of The Frying Pan.
Concept Is Stronger Than Fact.
Value
Perception In A World
Gone Mad With "Cool"
The
Future of Advertising
The Brand
The
Future of Advertising
The Targets
The
Future of Advertising
The Grid
The
Future of Advertising
The Swarm
Technology
Making The Message
Meaningful
The Only Business That Matters Is The One You're In.
What
Ever Happened To The
Big Idea?
The Post-Advertising Era Is Here
Confessions Of A" Liar For Hire"
Good, Bad and Ugly At the Moment of Truth
A Post-Advertising "Big Idea".
The Value Of A Paying Pustomer.
Emergence Of the "Empire of One".
All customers Are Created Equal
Playing God An Other Atrocities
the
City That Spawned
The Age Of Advertising..
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The Death Of Dumb. O.K., so now I'm mad. Actually, I'd go so far to say, I'm mildly outraged. For years I've had to put up with Senior agency guys and their not-so-senior clients eviscerating my work with the phrase, "Yeah, but how will it play in Peoria? (or Wichita, or Kansas, or Bumfuck.) And then came the agony of having to revisit the work and "Dumb it down." Not one time did anyone ever think to stand up for the folks in Peoria, or Wichita, or Kansas, or Bumfuck. |
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Even when there were people in the room from Peoria, or Wichita, or Kansas, or Bumfuck. People whose parents, classmates, neighbors we were dismissing as the idiot breed. Nobody ever said, "Just hold it one cotton pickin' minute there, Bub. I get what this ad is trying to do and I think it's fucking great. And I'm sure my neighbors and the boys down at the Cheyenne Roundhouse or the gals over at the Kawanis club would dig on it too." Didn't happen. |
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"So you're thinking about bringing your brand of New York Edge" advertising to Long Beach, huh? I'm sure everybody in in Long Beach will join me in pushing you and it over your "New York Edge.-Ben F. -LBC I been thrown out of better bars than Long Beach.-HW |
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In fact I've been in the room when just the opposite occurred. "Jack is right. My cousin Lucy and her husband back in Bumfuck would never get that headline in a million years of Sundays." Poor cousin Lucy. Sold down the river by that snobby snoot of a cousin of hers who got lucky enough to be dating a guy who knew a guy who got her a job at BBDO. Well I'm here to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I'm here to say DOWN WITH THE DUMB DOWN! I am hereby putting Madison Avenue on notice that the combined populations of Peoria, or Wichita, or Kansas, or Bumfuck are mad as hell and they won't be taking it any more. So what exactly are they gonna do about it? Well I'm here to tell you what they are gonna do about it. Absolutely nothing. That's right. Nothing. Consumers are gonna do so much nothing about all the "dumbed down" advertising that Madison Avenue keeps shoveling at them, by engaging in one, simple, universal practice. Ignoring it. Dozens and dozens of the readers of MadisonAveNew.com have written me in the past few weeks telling me about the miserable results of their primary research activities as they relate to messaging efficacy. Every one of their notes had the same thing in common. Not only are their messages ineffective. Their messages are completely and totally ignored, in the purchase process. They don't even show up on the research radar. "Seen and noted" scores are coming back with an overwhelming percentage of zeros in the box scores. Not seen. Not noticed. Not relevant to anything that has to do with inducing trial or influencing purchase. In essence, meaningless. But not everybody is embracing this cult of "dumbvertising." James Cherkoff, a London marketing consultant who specializes in what he calls open-source marketing, believes just the opposite. Mr. Cherkoff stated in Ad Age, " (marketers) create all the messages and then send them out. The new model is outside in: What you want to do is receive all the information you can from the outside and incorporate them in the processes of the company. They (companies) have to actually open up their own systems and the way they interface with the world." Given this theory and other recent developments in the marketplace, it seems as though those folks deemed too obtuse to grasp the more sophisticated selling propositions conceived by people like me are now speaking amongst themselves. What they are saying is changing the landscape forever. "The new Chevy Impala sucks! The door lock circuit interferes with the steering wheel locks so you can't turn the wheel or get out of the car once you turn on the ignition." All of the "American Revolution" advertising from Brand Chevy doesn't mean squat if that consumer comment comes up anytime somebody puts "Impala+things gone wrong" in the search engines. And trust me. More people are going to Google than to CBS to figure out which car to NOT buy. So that means that fewer and fewer folks really care how smart or dumb we on Madison Avenue think they are. We and everything we do and all that we spend and whatever we say have become irrelevant. We are just not smart enough to figure out what it takes to get their attention and keep it. We have been talking down for so long, they no longer look up to us. Or to our clients. Blogs, podcasting, peer-to-peer websites, RSS Feeds, everything under the sun that lets people talk to each other about their shared interests, that's who they are listening to. And the folks at the ad agency? How can I put this so they (you) will understand? Hmmmmm? How about this? You're fucked.
Stay tuned.
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