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..
Fear And Self Loathing In Advertising.
The Greatest Success Metric Is Sales.
Foot In (Word Of) Mouth Disease
In the Begining, There Was The End.
The Rise And Fall
Of The Creative Class
What's Love Got To Do With It?
Champagne Brand
Beer Marketing Budget
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Tired Of Being Wired. I talked to a lot of kids on a recent project I had to crank out about the nature of being a kid in the 21st century. Talking to kids is not as easy as it used to be. First of all, most tweens and teens are decidedly non-verbal when it comes to talking to "old dudes." I have a four-year-old at home and we have longer conversations than the ones I was able to get out of these tweenieboppers. This is surprising, because today's tweens are supposed to be the most literate lot in a generation. The "Harry Potter Effect" is how educators have it pegged. Fantasy books now top the young adult best seller list. |
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And science fiction films make up the top five box office hits this past year. Kids want any reality but the reality we've got. The proliferation of wireless phones, e-games and portable music players are all adding to the isolation factor that marks contemporary childhood. Hence, they got nothing to say. |
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I think nobody tells it as straight as you do. This business is "broken." It's going to take visionaries to fix it. Keep it up. –Frank C., Pittsburgh Visionaries have to care. Don't confuse me with anybody like that . – hw |
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Nothing to say. But what I did find out talking to these kids was that our sense of language is indeed changing. On one hand it's being truncated into text messaging cryptics. On the other hand it's being stilted by song and rap lyrics. And in many cases it is being obviated all together by the ubiquitous "what-ever". What does the future look like for a society that depends on language to move its mountains of merchandise? If the most effective means of marketing is word of mouth, what happens when words no longer matter? We need to think about that now. We need to look into ways of breaking through the wireless walls that surround our kids. Sponsored programming won't do it. These kids have their tune-out button on a hair trigger. Everybody is quick to say that nobody reads copy any more. These are the folks who think the visuals need to do all the heavy lifting. The problem is that truly gifted visual artists are as rare as insurance salesmen on death row. The other issue is that all indications are clear that people will be taking their own media with them rather than sitting in front of it in the living room. This means that screen sizes are scaling down, down, down. The room for available visual information is getting tighter all the time. So that leaves us with no interest in words and no room for pictures. Not a good place to be. The closest I can come to an answer is "shock and awe." We are going to have to shock consumers into paying attention to what we have to tell them. Then we have to awe them with the relevance of our messages to their specific unmet wants needs and desires. Our viability as an industry is going to become totally dependent upon this ability. One of the other problems that will only get worse with wear is the pollution of our media outlets. The delivery mechanisms for our "shock and awe" messaging is becoming less and less effective by the moment. Less effective e-mail is choking itself on spam. Next month I will no longer read my email. I don't have the time to wade through hundreds of penil enlargement ads to weed out my business correspondence. I will send out a mesage to every address in my address book that as of June1 I will no longer be checking my e-mail. Don't expect a reply. Less effective television continues to spend millions and millions on lackluster programming. Nobody is watching. Nobody cares. I create programming concepts for television, yet I can't stand to watch it for more than two hours a night. Twice a week. Less effective radio has gone to the spot-pod mode of programming dayparts. I hear it coming. I push the button and change the station. I haven't heard a radio spot in months. Less effective print. The art of creating print advertising died Less effective outdoor. Who decided that the way to combat visual clutter was to introduce neon and video boards? So the bottom line seems to be that the audience is trying to hide from the reach of the media and the media is committed to become less and less impactful. I wonder if they are still hiring for the night shift at Mickey D's. Stay tuned.
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