Even today, Einstein's ideas about gravity and the speed of light are still being tested and scrutinized.

Not so in advertising and marketing. If enough big mouths say the same things loud enough and often enough they quickly become facts.

As most readers know, I am highly skeptical of many of the claims made about the magical powers of digital advertising.

The other night it occurred to me that perhaps a good analogy for the effectiveness of digital communication in advertising is the effectiveness of digital communication in education. While there are obviously some huge differences, there are also some similarities.

Marketing experts have been warning us that unless we commit ourselves fully to digital technology, we will die. Similarly, education experts have been saying that digital communication technology is the only way to dig ourselves out of the education mess we have created.

In 1997, a committee appointed by then President Bill Clinton, which included Charles Vest, president of MIT and Charles Young, ceo of Hewlett-Packard, warned us that we had an urgent need to bring computer technology to our classrooms. The fact that there was inadequate research on the effectiveness of classroom computers didn't bother them. They concluded...
"The panel does not... recommend that the deployment of technology....be deferred pending the completion of such research."
They, too, were in a big "do or die" hurry.

In addition to issuing hysterical warnings about the dire consequences of not adopting their pet panaceas, educators and marketers also face challenges that are similar.

First, they have to decide what to do with a fixed and limited budget. Would a school district get better results for its money by hiring more teachers, putting computers in classrooms, paying for more teacher training, buying more books, or doing any number of other things with its budget?

Similarly, would a marketer get better results by hiring more sales people, buying a spot on the Super Bowl, doing trade incentives, creating an online advertising program, or doing something else with their money?

A second resemblance is that digital technology seems attractive in both cases because not only does it promise a new way of communicating, it also promises a more engaged participant. The undeniable allure of technology is assumed to create a more engaged individual -- whether that individual is a student or a consumer.

Finally, in both cases digital technology also presumably provides a more interactive experience -- an end to the one-way communication style of teacher-to-student or marketer-to-consumer.

With those parallels in mind I started to do some research to see how wired classrooms were doing. The results were enlightening.

From a paper called "No Access, No Use, No Impact: Snapshot by Shopping Sidekick Plugin issued jointly by researchers from the University of Michigan and The University of North Texas, we learn...
There is general agreement that computing technologies have not had a significant impact on teaching and learning in K-12 in the U.S., even though billions of dollars have been spent in purchasing, equipping, and supporting the technology.
From The New York Times piece entitled "Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops" we learn...
...the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse (NY), has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse...
"After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none," said Mark Lawson, the school board president...
...the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not...
In one of the largest ongoing studies, the Texas Center for Educational Research, a nonprofit group, has so far found no overall difference on state test scores between 21 middle schools where students received laptops in 2004, and 21 schools where they did not.
In a second NYTimes article called "In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores", we learn...
...the Kyrene School District (in Chandler, AZ) as a whole, offer what some see as a utopian vision of education’s future...
...the district’s use of technology has earned it widespread praise. It is upheld as a model of success by the National School Boards Association, which in 2008 organized a visit by 100 educators from 17 states who came to see how the district was innovating.
The digital push here aims to go far beyond gadgets to transform the very nature of the classroom, turning the teacher into a guide instead of a lecturer, wandering among students who learn at their own pace on Internet-connected devices.
Advocates for giving schools a major technological upgrade — which include powerful educators, Silicon Valley titans and White House appointees — say digital devices let students learn at their own pace, teach skills needed in a modern economy and hold the attention of a generation weaned on gadgets.
The techno-crowd in both the education and advertising industry have a lot in

common.

They are very strong in their assertions, and very weak on proof.

They continue to inflate the hysterical threat-of-not-accepting-their-solution language, despite

contradictory data.They think anecdotes are evidence.

When data does not support their position, they jump to false goals -- like

the dubious engagementargument.There is a lesson to be learned here. Whether you are

selling cheeseburgers, trying to lift the educational achievement of children, or

operating in any other field of endeavor, technology has so far proven to be no

substitute for strategy.

　

　

Knowing your customers is especially useful at times of abrupt and unexpected change

- a recession, for example. Having a strong sense of why people buy from

you as well as what they buy can help you to avoid damaging knee-jerk responses.

Is everyone else in your sector rushing down-market in anticipation of a boom in

demand for cut-price 'value' offerings? If you stick it out at the top of the

market, you might be able to grab for yourself a big chunk of the tasty

high-margin business that remains.

Now, in future you must remember this, engaging your audience is key to your

future success< You should focus on "engagement", "relevance" and

"customization" to make an impact with consumers. Additionally the rise of

new media has ushered in the era of "performance marketing". Businesses

hoping to derive the maximum benefit from digital media must provide customers

with information tailored to their individual needs, be it

on the web, or analogue media. Communications should also take the form of a

two-way conversation, with consumers being able to customise the content they

receive in line with their personal preferences.

This means adopting a truly interactive communication mindset. The age of

push marketing is behind us. What counts now are dialogue, engagement and

relevance, Digital channels that can deliver consumers with established

interests can charge handsomely for that capability.

Customer focus is important, because it can help you to see beyond industry

orthodoxy and understand why people buy from you rather than go somewhere else.

It requires a different mindset and the ability to cast aside those cherished,

but often erroneous, shibboleths about what can and cannot be done, that all

businesses create for themselves.

Advertising will fail:



The internet is the most liberating of all mass media developed to date. It is participatory, like swapping stories around a campfire or attending a renaissance fair. It is not meant solely to push content, in one direction, to a captive audience, the way movies or traditional network television did. It provides the greatest array of entertainment and information, on any subject, with any degree of formality, on demand. And it is the best and the most trusted source of commercial product information on cost, selection, availability, and suitability, using community content, professional reviews and peer reviews.

Advertising Agencies have treated consumers as a Ponzi scheme.



Success in marketing and advertising has been bought by promises with costs far in excess

of reality. We have hoped for a tomorrow in which record sales growth will yield

record levels of marketing expenditures to cover the promises when they come due

The problem?....tomorrow never comes!! Our legacy to our successors should

not be temporary austerity but a permant, massive reform of Marketing and

Advertising. We have to be unflinching and utterly practical in recognising the

scale of the challange.

The business of advertising is particularly rife with delusions

We think we know how advertising works. We think we know what will motivate people and what

will not. And yet, every day we unconsciously filter out compelling evidence

that what we think we know is terribly flawed. After months of "research"

and "testing" we create TV spots that have no effect. After hundreds of thousand

of dollars in development we launch websites and online campaigns that no one

ever sees. And yet we continue. We go into new business presentations and

make bold, cocksure statements about our own particular brand of delusional

advertising philosophy. And we never have the guts or self-assurance to tell the

truth -- that all our posturing is just an estimate of likelihoods and a

speculation on probabilities. Part of it is our fault. We are not

willfully deceitful. We just find it very hard to admit that we are devoting so

much of our energy and our soul to something about which we really understand so

little. Part of it is the environment. Our clients want results. They

don't want to hear that they are spending millions of dollars on likelihoods and

probabilities. Advertising is chock full of contingencies and unintended

effects. There are a multitude of critical steps in the development of strategy,

creative concepts, media plans, and spending alternatives. None of which assures

success. Every one of which can foreshadow failure. Something as routine

as the casting of a photo shoot or TV spot can have an enormous effect on the

success or failure of a campaign. And that is just one of a thousand equally

weighty variables. We cannot possibly assess all the variables in a methodical

way. So we fall back on our prejudices and our mathematical models of how

advertising works. In other words, we call forth our delusions. The

workings of the real world are impossibly complex and messy. And in advertising,

as in every other human endeavor, we "prefer to turn a blind eye to reality's

messiness."

　

Free... As In Doughnuts



I know a guy who spends hours looking for illegal MP3s to avoid paying $.99

on iTunes. Some people are likely to prefer watching ads to paying for content

despite all the drawbacks. The point is not that advertising is

bad for everyone in every situation. But it is unfortunate that advertising is

so often seen as the best or only way to make money from digital wares.

It's worth remembering that ad-financed television came to the fore at a time

when no alternative would have been feasible. The technical challenges of the

day involved getting a decent picture on a 17" CRT without standing next to the set holding the

antenna all evening. Subscription or pay-per-view models were not in the cards. Now we have the

technology to meter and charge for content in many new ways, but we've gotten into the habit of

expecting TV shows to be free.

One of the quirks of human psychology is that, once we get used to free doughnuts, we are enraged

by the idea that we might have to pay for them.

If we succumb willingly to disfigured television shows, psychological

manipulation and higher prices on SUVs and shampoo so that we can avoid paying a

few dollars for entertainment and internet services, we have no one to blame but

ourselves. When the most frightening hoax imaginable is that Facebook

will start charging users, we can hardly blame them for slathering more and

more lucrative ads onto their website. It would be fantastic if creative types

were to look for less intrusive ways of financing their work. But that is

unlikely to happen until consumers start to realize that free is sometimes the

most expensive price of all. And best told by interactive communication!

More from the "Marketers rate below politicians..." research study.

The study's findings suggest that the ads that are more traditional -- and less able to track for

engagement using digital tools -- are actually the ones consumers say they prefer. The study found

that people prefer to view advertising in their favorite print magazine (45%) or while

watching their favorite TV show (23%). Only 2% stated that they prefer to view

ads via social media and 0% said they like ads in an app.

Companies investing in branded social-media sites should also pay attention

to this finding: Just 2% of respondents believe information about a brand from a

company's social-media site is credible
.

"Make no mistake, creativity will always be our calling card," Ms. Lewnes

said. "But digital has given marketers an opportunity to rewrite their roles.

Marketers today have access to technology that gives them critical data and

insights about their customers ... insights we can turn into more relevant,

high-impact marketing. People want messages and marketing that's more customized

to their needs. And businesses want to be able to measure the impact of their

marketing dollars. Digital gives you both. As an industry, we need to accelerate

the move to digital. Only then will we be able to get the respect and

credibility we deserve."

Considering the participants of this study aren't merely a cross-section of

average consumers but also include 250 top marketing professionals, it seems

imperative that the industry needs to start from within. How can you expect

folks to respect you if you don't respect yourself?

According to the study, the majority of consumers --53%-- stated that most

marketing is "a bunch of B.S." That's compelling evidence of a big reputational

challenge the industry must tackle, and fast.

Consumers are Fed Up with Corporate Advertising and Manipulation

Recently, the New York Times reported on a new poll showing that a majority

of Americans are fed up with the hailstorm of advertising we all

suffer through. According to theYankelovich Partners poll:

* 65 percent said they believed that they "are constantly bombarded with

too much" advertising; * 61 percent agreed that the amount of advertising

and marketing to which they are exposed "is out of control"; * 60 percent

said their opinion of advertising "is much more negative than just a few

years ago"; * 54 percent of the survey respondents said they "avoid buying

products that overwhelm them with advertising and marketing";* 69 percent

said they "are interested in products and services that would help them skip

or block marketing;"





The Times story is below.

As the kingpins of Madison Avenue gather for a major annual meeting,

there is further evidence of the growing challenge they confront in seeking

to break through the cacophony of advertising that surrounds - and

increasingly annoys - consumers.

At the management conference of the American Association of

Advertising Agencies, which begins today in Miami, senior executives will

learn the results of a survey of consumers conducted on behalf of the

organization by Yankelovich Partners, the market research company. The

survey, to be presented tomorrow at the opening general session of the

conference, shows that the effectiveness of campaigns that agencies produce

for marketers is deteriorating, said J. Walker Smith, president at

Yankelovich, because:

The survey findings are significant because industry executives

are frantically searching for ways to forge more emotional connections

with fractious, and fractionated, consumers that differ from conventional

methods like running 30-second television commercials and print

advertisements.

The risk posed by some of the new approaches, like placing sponsored

brand messages or products in the entertainment content of programs

or publications, is that consumers will consider such selling strategies

even more obnoxious.

"People have a love-hate relationship with advertising," said Mr. Smith,

who offered a preview of the survey in an interview before the conference

began. "But a far greater percentage are saying they have concerns,

primarily related to its growing obtrusiveness."

For instance, Mr. Smith said, 54 percent of the survey respondents said

they "avoid buying products that overwhelm them with advertising and

marketing"; 60 percent said their opinion of advertising "is much more

negative than just a few years ago"; 61 percent said they agreed that the

amount of advertising and marketing to which they are exposed "is out of

control."

Also, 65 percent said they believed that they "are constantly bombarded

with too much" advertising; and 69 percent said they "are interested in

products and services that would help them skip or block marketing."

How to market an antimarketing product to people surfeited with

marketing? Ah, there's the rub.

Even when fewer than a majority of the survey respondents agreed with

a statement, Mr. Smith said, the results offered little solace for

agencies. For example, what he called a "fairly significant" 45 percent of

respondents said the amount of advertising and marketing they were exposed to

"detracts from the experience of everyday life," while 33 percent said they

"would be willing to have a slightly lower standard of living to live in a

society without marketing and advertising."

The results also offer some suggestions, Mr. Smith said, to help narrow

what he described as "the growing gap between how consumers want to

be communicated with and the way advertisers communicate with them."

However if you use Interactive Marketing Communication, properly executed, all these problems

disappear, customers want to interact with your information, they do want to express opinions to

you. The trouble is, most people in advertising/marketing don't really understand communication,

and they certainly don't understand real interaction.

Consumers see advertising and marketing as unbelievable...

... and certainly undignified. Having worked around the world over many years you cannot help wondering if society is changing in ways that are more than economic. It would
appear that advertising and marketing is losing its legitimacy .
The myopic search for profit and short term advantages has created a
corporate oligarchy whose interests are largely inimical to the average
consumer. Smoke and mirrors have, for too long, been a substitute for good old
fashioned marketing. All the while the mythology of marketing and
advertising, as institutions of enterprise, of meritocracy and opportunity, as
somewhere that didn't work like anywhere else is being compromised. Meanwhile
we seem to be forgetting the convictions that made Marketing and Advertising
great.
The rot began when we chose never to take heed of Professor Ehrenberg's
statements on advertising effectiveness! Because nothing has changed despite all
the ballyhoo about Social Media, Facebook et al. Wherever ads appear,
especially on Social Media, Ehrenberg's resolute focus on the facts " what data
actually tells us " led him to challenge many a marketing bandwagon such as
˜loyalty. You may wish to improve the brand's performance by improving customer retention, he observed, but without a higher market penetration it just won't happen. His work on advertising effectiveness was equally challenging. He argued convincingly that there was no evidence that advertising persuades anybody to do anything; advertising can only ever be a ˜weak" force that improves brand recognition and/or jogs consumers memories. Ehrenberg's uncompromising insistence on staying only with the facts is probably why his work was so studiously ignored by so many sections of the marketing community. The consequences of this has been far more lasting than any recession could ever be.
Be brutally honest, do you have any idea how advertising works? How
advertising got itself into its present mess. No? Perhaps you console yourself
with the thought that it doesn't matter that you don't have a clue because there
are plenty of smart marketing people out there who do. Well, here's the tricky
part. Yes, those smart marketing people do indeed have a shrewd prescription on
how to steer the world out of marketing chaos. The bad news is, they're not
all the same prescription. In fact they are different prescriptions. Very
different.

Web Content...now called clutter!

The dismal record of online advertising has caused a minor crisis among the

thousands of agencies who make a living creating the stuff. It is getting

difficult for them to convince anyone that blogs or podcasts or YouTube videos

or "user generated content" or banners are the marketing miracles they were once

purported to be. No one is that stupid anymore. I mean, except the odd CMO.

So the folks who create all this web clutter have had to look for some new

magic to sell to today's ultra-cutting edge marketing prodigies. That miracle is

called content.Content isn't a new thing. But it is enjoying a new

life. You see, all the things that the web promoters promised us

would be magic have flopped. So they've resurrected "content" because it is

non-specific -- no one knows what the hell it is. And if you don't know

what it is, how can you criticize it? Like most people, when you hear

some geekazoid yapping about "content" you probably pretend to know what he's

talking about. But you don't. And here's the really cool thing -- neither does

he! What exactly is content, you ask? Well, it seems that as long

as you can upload it, and it's not an ad, it's "content." So all that

online detritus that no one pays any attention to -- the blogs and podcasts and

YouTube videos and Facebook pages and corporate manifestos -- have a new life.

They are now content. Previously they were just litter blowing unnoticed

through the dark, dusty corridors of the web. But now that they have been

promoted to "content" they are once again awesome.!!!

Using Interactive Communication, properly executed, is the real marketing miracle, anybody can use

it...with great success, contact Paul Ashby on (UK) 01934 620047 or paulashby40@yahoo.com

Advertising will fail for three reasons:

There are three problems with advertising in any form, whether broadcast or

Consumers do not trust advertising.

Dan Ariely has demonstrated that messages attributed to a commercial source have much lower

credibility and much lower impact on the perception of product quality than the same message

attributed to a rating service. Forrester Research has completed studies that show that

advertising and company sponsored blogs are the least-trusted source of

information on products and services, while recommendations from friends and

online reviews from customers are the highest.

Consumers do not want to view advertising. Think of watching network TV news and remember that

the commercials on all the major networks are as closely synchronized as possible.

Why? If network executives believed we all wanted to see the ads they would be staggered, so that

users could channel surf to view the ads; ads are synchronized so that users cannot

channel surf to avoid the ads. Consumers do not need advertising.

My own research suggests that consumers behave as if they

get much of their information about product offerings from the internet, through

independent professional rating sites or community content rating services like


www.ratebeer.com/" http://www.tripadvisor.com/"

˜Advertising is failure,"

˜Advertising is failure," says Jeff Jarvis, and he thinks' media only get in

the way of customer relationships. And indeed, how will you make more friends

at a party? Showing up with a big banner around your neck that says "I am a

great friend" or engaging in a handful of conversations with strangers,

listening to their stories and detecting affinities whilst accomplishing a sense

of privacy that gradually becomes intimate? Right. In the end, that's what we

should be doing as marketers to build real, sustainable brand equity creating

publicity through intimacy, loyalty through decency.

William McEwen, authour of "Married to the Brand" and "Inside the Mind of the

Chinese Consumer", writes: "Agencies must recognize that advertising is neither

the outcome nor the objective. Advertising's job is to set the stage for an

actual customer experience. Then, the company's performance, the quality and

consistency of its products, and its human brand ambassadors will determine the

company's sustainable growth and enduring success. There is absolutely no value

in making a brand promise, however memorable it might be, if a company cannot or

will not keep it.

If ad agencies want to regain their position as valued contributors to a

company's success, then they must also help their clients focus on promise

delivery. If agencies only care about making the promise and not about helping

ensure that the promise will be kept, then they are shirking their

brand-building job. It is, after all, the synergy between promise and

performance that represents ultimate success and that's true for the agency

and the client.

So is advertising dead/dying, or merely having temporary breathing problems?

Interested to hear what readers think.

Paul Ashby @ paulashby40@yahoo.com

Every day you're exposed to more than four hours of media.

Every day you're exposed to more than four hours of media. Most of it is

optimized to interrupt what you're doing. And it's getting increasingly harder

and harder to find a little peace and quiet. The ironic thing is that marketers

have responded to this problem with the single worst cure possible. To deal with

the clutter and the diminished effectiveness of Interruption Marketing, they're

interrupting us even more!

Interactive Communication, properly executed, changes all that, just one exposure to an Interactive "Event" is more effective and accountable that "Frequency" in Advertising terms!

What does advertising do and how well does it do it?

Aside from comforting purchasers by assuring them that they made the right choice,

aside from comforting CEOs and employees that their work is important, aside from certain

unpredictable, short term increases in consumption, most advertising does not perform as advertised!

Take away the tax deductions that corporations get from advertising, and most expenditures would dry up overnight!

Social media is killing Internet advertising

One of the great questions facing today's advertisers is how to reach consumers in a media environment where control of the content is not in the hands of a consolidated publisher, but distributed among the millions of individuals who collectively make up powerful online communities.
Social media is killing Internet advertising,the problem is, a few years ago, people started to become more interested in each other and less interested in the ads."

For most people working in the online advertising world, the question of whether social networks are a passing fad has perhaps been answered with the burgeoning popularity of communities such as Facebook and MySpace.

While the sites are here to stay, even the companies who have done the very best at turning Internet ads into cash machines have struggled when it comes to reaching their highly engaged users.
Use Shopper's Voice and solve all your Social Media Problems in one go.
Contact: paulashby40@yahoo.com or http://shoppers-voice.co.uk

Tip for local business owners:

Improve your online prominence by ensuring that your business is listed on all key local search engines (e.g. Google Places) and the leading online business directories (e.g. Yelp & Superpages).
You can check if your business is already listed on these directories by using a tool like Local SEO Check-Up (by BrightLocal) or www.AmIVisible.org.

Above all else, to cut through all the clutter simply use http://shoppers-voice.co.uk
Improve your online prominence with Shopper's Voice
Contact: paulashby40@yahoo.com or http://shoppers-voice.co.uk

SHOPPER'S VOICE

is about providing value in the life of the consumer: entertainment value, social value and belief value, actually letting the audience share ownership of your brand

Visit: http://shoppers-voice.co.uk

The truth about social-media sites

The truth about social-media sites is that they've never been particularly great environments for advertising. People immerse themselves in social media because they want to socialize.

Visit

contact paulashby40@yahoo.com or paul@shoppers-voice.co,uk

SHOPPERS' VOICE

Given the vastly altered economic landscape together with consumers' desire for value in their product choices, value is at the epicentre of the new culture of thrift. Through Shoppers' Voice your Brands will be judged as being relevant and worthy if they pass the test of fitting in with this new sensibility!

Contact: paul.ashby@yahoo.com

SOMEDAY ALL ADVERTISING WILL BE LKE THIS!

Towards understanding human behaviour

One thing they NEVER taught you whilst working in an advertising agency…or a marketing department for that matter…
And that’s the human desire for interaction. If this had been taught and the lesson put into everyday practise then billions of pounds and dollars would never have been poured down the black hole of television advertising!
Interaction is not technology, it is human behaviour!



Are you seeking more information on interactive communicaion? Please visit:
http://interactivetelevisionorinteractivetv.blogspot.com

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