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
Amtrak: Third World Nation On Wheels.
New Music Means
New Marketing.
Automotive Advertising Hits A Dead End.
Has Advertising LostControl Of The
Creative Process?
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If Advertising is No Longer Meaningful, What Comes Next? Nobody knows about advertising like these three dead guys. And I quote: "Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art," according William Bernbach. "If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think," said Sir David Ogilvy. "The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself," spaketh Leo Burnett. If they were alive today, they would all have the same thing to say. "Advertising sucks." |
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It doesn't take an advertising legend to realize that most of the advertising that passes for advertising these days is about as meaningful as tits on a tarantula. We keep talking about it. Advertising keeps talking about nothing that matters. Meanwhile the advertising keeps getting less attention. What's wrong with this picture? |
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Why don't you round up all of these columns and put them in a book? - Jen R. Trenton I did. It's on a roll in the fifth floor Ladies Room. – hw |
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Yessirree, boys and girls. According to Wired magazine, there's something strange going on in ad land. Even as companies have spent enormous amounts of time and energy introducing new branding campaigns and defending established ones, Americans have become less convinced and far less persuaded by advertising then at any tiime in our history. Consumer goods markets used to be very stable. If you had a set of customers today, you could be pretty sure most of them would still be around two years, five years, ten years from now. That's no longer true. A study by retail industry tracking firm NPD Group found that nearly half of those who described themselves as highly loyal to a brand were no longer loyal a year later. Even seemingly strong names rarely translate into much power at the cash register. Another remarkable study found that just 4 percent of consumers would be willing to stick with a brand if its competitors offered better value for the same price. So what exactly did Ford think was a "bold move" about upping its ad spend to an all time high of $894 million this year? The high costs of closing plants and cutting jobs, combined with a drop in income from auto sales, that led to a loss of $1.19 billion, or 64 cents a share, during the first quarter of 2006? Oh, the insanity of it all. But enough about the old business of meaningless advertising. WTF comes next? When do these empty suits plan on getting the message? On the bread lines? We are really running out of rope. And there is nothing on the horizon that even comes close to saving the day. Even with the web's supposed 74% penetration of U.S. households it still only averages about 1 hour a day compared with 6 hours of TV. Where are the thinking caps? Where are the whizz kids? If all that R&D money can only yield a 10% success rate in new product development among the global 1000, why not put some of the R&D money into a new way to create advertising? And make no mistake about it: it's the way advertising is created that's broken. Most agency creative departments are anything other than "creative." And, as Mr. Ogilvy said,"It's not creative if it doesn't sell." If I were running Y&R New York, the first thing I would do is burn anything that said "creative" and re-name the Creative Department the Sales Department. Then I'd fire every person that wasn't at their desk by 9:15 am. Next, I'd fill all the vacancies with people who can connect with people who buy shit. Then these ex- bartenders, screenwriters, hookers, psychologists, police officers, intelligence agents, actors, composers, and newswriters would begin to re-engineer advertising. But Martin Sorell isn't serious enough about saving his own ass to hire me. So the answer won't be coming from Madison Avenue. Pity. No, I'm just going to have to continue to re-engineer advertising right down here in greater downtown Long Beach. One opportunity at a time. But first, my partner and I need to set guidelines for this re-engineering task: Axiom One: Advertising has had its day. Axiom Two: We are entering a new era. The Post-Advertising Era. And Axiom Three: People ignore advertising, because it is not meaningful to them any more. In fact, people want to be "consumers" no more, "customers" no more, "markets" no more. People just want to be people. People who have a job they want done. They are looking to hire a product or a service company to do that job. Noted Harvard B- School Marketing Professor Theodore Levett said it best to his students, "People don't want a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole." People just have a job to in their life. "Who can I pay to do the job?" is all they care about. But first, they have to get some information. They go the web. To the guys at work. To the girlfriend. To the girlfriend's girlfriend. People gotta have it. They got the need to know. When they are ready to buy, they know the job they want done. Advertising is no factor at all. To these people, Advertising is for those who don't know any better. Stay tuned.
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