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Are Consumers Smarter Than We Are? One thing nobody ever really accused us of was being shy or bashful about the advertising industry leading our consumer woobies around by the little brass rings we had firmly attached to their nose holes. It was just a forgone conclusion, conventional wisdom if you will; Madison Avenue Demigods, smart; fly-over state Trolls and Prols, not-so-smart. |
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The Natural Order of Things is how we have referred to it in client meetings...for decades. Then one day the sheep looked up. We'd say, "Price." They'd say, "Value." We'd say, "New." They'd say,"Pass." We'd say, "Trust us." They'd say, "Trust this." And then they would slide that wallet/purse back where it came from and go on to the next guy's pushcart. Did that wise us up? Nope. We rationalized, recession, drop in consumer confidence, geopolitical this, socioeconomic that. Meanwhile the networks were charging our clients more and more for less and less and we were pushing that crack pipe |
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Can I hire you to help me put together a portfolio of ads? Rodney D. Joliet No. Wait. How much you got? -HW |
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After
reading your article I went to Battaglia and tried on a Brioni suite.
Whoa! it just felt like power– Benny L. Westwood Did
that story on TheBroadwayLtd.com really happen?- Dave P. Glendale |
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back and forth from client to client talking "share of mind" and "brand dialog" and "don't miss the upfronts!"Our customers? They were talking "ePinions," and "Deja" ( now Google) and countless consumer oriented chat rooms and forums. The collective learning curve of the world wide wait a minute was making them smarter by the millisecond. Sony was spending millions in production on commercials showing their customers taking joy rides on Soviet space capsules while recording the experience on their Sony DV Camera. Customers were reading consumer reviews on the Sony DV Cameras, that said " They need to shoot these suckers into orbit " and then heading straight to the better rated JVC line up. We were getting dumber and dumber about influencing consumer value perceptions. Consumers were getting smarter and smarter about evading hype, pomposity and bull-poopy about product benefits. We'd send our heavy-handed storm troopers into stealth mode their "Reputation Management" web forums, in an attempt to stack the deck. The forums would smoke out our operatives by having consumers rate frequent posters. Curses, foiled again. So now, here we are at the gateway to the Holiday buying frenzy. Thanks to WalMart and those wonderful workers in the People's Republic, the toy industry is still reeling from being pushed to the wall last year. Pundits are claiming that the big item under the tree this year will be the digital camera. The economy is revving up to be the best it's been since the mid-eighties. And what does Madison Avenue have to incite the consumers into a feeding frenzy? Ehhhh...wait a minute...I'm thinking...ehhh...nope. I can't come up with one memorable 30 second moment from the last two weeks of television viewing. Not one. Nothing that is compelling me to go out and get the new_____________________to make my wife forgive me for all those long nights at the office or missed weekends with the Munchkie. Nada. Nunca. Zip. But what about the web? Well all that spam in my mailbox pushing fake Rolodex watches comes to mind. Those annoying pop-ups from Orbitz are everywhere I wish they were not. Let me bounce over to CNN.com. No. I don't want a shake and ship Dell Laptop. I can get the same one a lot cheaper from Acer. How about Yahoo? They'll know what's hot. Bingo. Hot Holiday Gifts. I click. How about that. I'm at the Target site. And if I buy this week the shipping is free. Hmmm. The Perfect Present For Her. Under $20. Under $50. Under $100. I'm feeling smarter already. Who needs Network Television? Pick and click. The gift is on it's way. My ass is golden for another year. Branding? We don't need no stinking branding
All Aboard. I'm getting more and more e-mail about two of the three banners on this page and the content they're linked with, so I guess it's time to come clean. Fifteen years ago I saw the writing on the wall for the advertising industry as we know it. As Biz 2.0 pointed out in the article above, "Madison Avenue is stuck in the 1950's." That's why I decided to drop everything and move to Hollywood. Call it convergence, call it branded entertainment, call it prescience, but I was determined to learn as much about the business of entertainment as I knew about the business of branding and then combine that knowledge to benefit from both. I did and I have. Starting at the top, Fantazzzmia is a children's book that represents the tip of the iceberg. It is the first element in a complex, though platform agnostic franchise of children's entertainment properties that has already proven itself in book sales and will debut next month as a children's webisotic. Children aged 2-11 increased their average number of web page views in October by 36% year-over-year, compared to average growth of 15% for all web users, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Fantazzzmia is slated to grow right along with that demo and with a current base of more than 30,000 readers, the web traffic promises to surpass all expectations. TheBroadwayLtd.com is even more ambitious. I'm betting along with Bill Gates and Mark Cuban that the battle for the living room will be won by the home media server and digital content over broadband to HDTV rather than the tired paradigm of network television. TheBroadwayLtd.com is the vast pageant of the life and death of the world's first billion dollar corporation and the amazing plot to bring it crashing down and Wall Street right along with it. So far the first six episodes have attracted thousands of viewers from all over the world and we haven't even begun to open the throttle on this thriller yet. So keep your eye on these two webisotics for the twists and turns of both storyline and form factor. We will try not to bore you and make you proud to say "I was there from day one." Have a great turkey. Stay Tuned. |
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MARKETERS
FROM OGILVY
& MATHER ADRANTS BANK
OF AMERICA DELTA
AIR LINES And
You. |