The 60s! Ah that was a glittering time, advertising people ruled the business world...

 nobody was being at all difficult about their profession, nobody was

questioning the fact that advertising works, or does not, as the case may be.

There was a sense that the men were brilliant. The problem was that these

men of action wanted to act, but certainly they did not want to tell the Client

that the advertising job could not be done.

Men of action want to act. They are paid very generously to act, they have

entered advertising to act. But they couldn't tell anyone how difficult things

were, that advertising was not as simple as it appeared. So doubts were, and

still are, excluded, and the facts were altered to suit the theory.

Advertising men don't just become prisoners of their Clients. They also become

prisoners of their errors. Advertising and Marketing people never questioned

the fact thatadvertising and marketing never worked they just chased the

illusion that creativity was the answer to all their problems and just followed

one expensive creative person with another as logic took over from common

sense.

Make the buying of media more important; Make the production of TV

commercials more expensive; hire the current "hot" Hollywood Director; and

so it goes on.

Now the lunacy has spread to The Internet, and so it goes on. Never once

admitting that we have all been led up a one way street of no accountability.

And however independent the men may have started off, soon these men

became owners of an error they cannot admit to, advertising doesn't work. And

now even years later they cannot even in a fairly limited way admit to that.

Enhancing the theory that advertising works requires staggering amounts of

research with staggeringamounts of money, the life of the current advertising

world suggests that that is easier wished for than achieved. Because of the

failure of advertising to understand the process of communication they have

damaged a totally good "old media" whilst, at the same time, rushing onto the

Internet not understanding at all that the Internet is most certainly not an

advertising medium at all! And now Agencies are rushing onto Social Media

ignoring thefact that, as in the past, people don't want their advertising in

whatever form.

The difference here is that they can easily move away from advertising, you

have only to look at the experience of Second Life, that was to be advertising's

salvation. That's why the early adopters have moved on! And be warned, they

still don't know how to monitize the Internet..but we do!

　

Our marketing world balances on a sea of mediocrity!



There is a name for what advertising agencies do, " rubbish ", and our

predecessors appreciated much better than us its ultimate destination: ruin!

Almost all of what advertising agencies do is best summed up in one word

parasitical. By creating advertising out of thin air we have reduced the

purchasing power of more deserving members of society. What would happen if

everybody behaved just like advertising agencies?

Marketing and Advertising is a classic example of the term "the fallacy of

managerial expertise",an attempt by experts to blind us with science to

justify their overpaid existence.

The experts will tell us that the present advertising and marketing crisis

are simply the result of abuses and excesses in a system that is basically

sound. All that is required is for some faults to be corrected. Do not

believe them! The reality is that the problem is systemic and a little

tinkering here or there will achieve nothing in the long term.

What is needed is a root-and-branch re-evaluation of that most curious of

inventions, marketing and advertising, and how it can be used to serve the

interests of the community. To start with the experts must explain in the

simplest terms how advertising actually works together with supporting

evidence! The truth is that advertising and marketing have not suddenly

become useless but that they were never really useful in the first place!

Yet it is a fact that that the key to understanding how international

marketing and advertising operates and why the world is in such a mess is

discussed virtually nowhere in mainstream circles.

The picture has become a great deal more complicated, the huge problem of

clutter, otherwise known as meaningless noise. Together with the gibberish

that has become the new marketing speak, IT jargon...utterly meaningless and as

far away from communication than ever before. And still no one has produced

one iota of real evidence that advertising works at all!

The role of advertising has been diverted by new expertsto media buying,

sales promotion, computer speak, direct marketing but in essence they are mere

variations of the same basic three-card trick! With the advent of the PC all

sorts of marketing emerges, again devised by those same experts who did not

know what they were doing from the beginning. Moreover, the illusion becomes

self-reinforcing. Those involved in the process sitting behind their computer

screens, no longer control the beast they have created.

Advertising breeds more advertising and the only people who win, in fact the

only people who have ever won, are the media owners which is precisely why the

media owners desperately do not want the system to change! But the system

relies entirely, as do all Ponzi schemes, on two assumptions, 1) That

advertising works, and 2) the assumption of continued growth, hence its inherent

instability. Once that growth is threatened the whole edifice collapses.

Marketing...a very simple and devastatingly effective swindle, but largely

invisible because it has become so deeply embedded in our culture. The

consequences of that swindle, the desperate need for economic growth together

with the environmental and cultural despoliation it engenders require some

radical thinking that one encounters nowhere in any of our Business Schools...or

elsewhere for that matter!

OK, so some people have question my assumption (?) that advertising doesn't

work, fortunately there is enough evidence supporting my claims and I will

commence to detail that evidence in future articles. For example:June 2005

issue of Harvard Business Review reporting on the effectiveness of 500 various

consumer and B2B marketing programs: 84% resulted in less market share, not

more Most customer acquisition efforts did not break even Fewer than 10% of

new products succeeded Most sales promotions were unprofitable Advertising

ROI was below 4% Doubling advertising expenditures for established products

increased sales just 1% - 2%

The financial crisis has transformed the global marketing world...

and, at the same time, discredited many of the ideas regarding advertising,

marketing, consumers and society, that were taken for granted in the pre-crisis

decades. Here nobody appears to see the crisis as an opportunity to build a new

form of capitalism.

Nobody seems to see that the future can be, and most certainly should be,

better than the past. Without a doubt the institutions discredited by the

crisis can be replaced with something better, not merely patched up and

restored. Corporations see the crisis entirely as a threat to established ways

of life and modes of thinking. Nobody is presenting a vision, or even a credible

thought, about how the crisis could produce a better tomorrow. The best that

has been offered is a promise to clear up the mess created by previous

corporations. With the exception of interactive marketing

communication...simply the best ever!

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 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.

Free... As In Doughnuts

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!

We must dismiss the wretched word "Subliminal"

Can we please dismiss the meaningless word "Subliminal" from our advertising

jargon!

There was -- and still is -- little proof that these efforts to engineer action

through manipulation of the unconscious led to any behavioral changes

favorable to specific marketers. As for James Vicary's experiment in

subliminal advertising -- it was a hoax: Vicary later admitted that he

hadn't done what he'd claimed. Several subsequent studies of the

effectiveness of embedded messages have shown it to be virtually

impossible to use them to produce specific, predictable responses.

Still, faith in the power of the media to induce millions of people to

act contrary to their better judgment or conscious desires remains

profound. More than three quarters of the U.S. population currently

believes that marketers use subliminal messages to sell products or

services, according to the Journal of Advertising Research; consumers

themselves spend some $50 million annually on subliminal self-help

products, such as audiotapes that are supposed to teach one a foreign

language in one's sleep.

There is only one form of effective, accountable advertising and that is Interactive Marketing

Communication.

Consumers attitudes to digital advertising - a decline in response rates!

A new YouGov survey into the attitudes of consumers to digital advertising

has revealed some alarming trends around how the explosion of digital marketing

has jaded many consumers, and hinted that a shift in approach may be required by

digital marketers.

Marketing Tech contributor Marco Veremis is president at

UpStream, the digital response specialist that commissioned

the research, and a front runner in mobile and digital advertising for over a

decade. Speaking to him at the Mobile World Congress recently, we questioned him about the

interesting and alarming shift that's taken place over the last five years as

the numbers of digital ads being served every year rocketed from 150bn in 1996,

to a staggering five trillion today.

The effect, as one might expect, has been general desensitisation and a

decline in response rates. This is the worrying part,says Veremis.

Response used to be a healthy 7%, but today it's below 0.1%. And the

reaction of advertisers over the last five years has been, "well, my response

rates are declining, let's do more, more, more"

But more, more, more can be a risky strategy; not just because of the general

apathy and ad-blindness it lays on the average consumer. As fast as response

rates are declining, the number of consumers staying with a brand and not

actively opting out of communications is on the decline also.

Perhaps more worryingly, disgruntled consumers have the power to wreak havoc

and brand damage like never before. "If you asked asked people 40 years ago whether

they were getting too much advertising, the answer may well have been the same

as today, says Veremis. ,But today they have the ability to go online and be

vocally negative about that brand. So the negative impact is there, there is

such a thing as negative brand awareness.

On the face of it, running less advertising in a more targeted way would seem

the logical solution. A lot of companies have caught wind of this, but many

have fallen into another pitfall, personal data, says Veremis. How are you

targeting?

It's a pitfall elegantly demonstrated by the oft-cited case of the US teenage

girl, secretly searching Google for abortion information, whose family then

learns of her pregnancy through targeted pregnancy ads.

On the one hand you've got invasion of privacy, trying to be more targeted

and advertising less, says Veremis. On the other hand you've got massive

volume. Whereas the middle ground?

The interesting thing here is that none of these are traditional marketing

segmentation metrics that companies use.

Privacy has become more of an issue as people become more protective and

more vocal when it is violated, concludes Veremis. Targeting criteria should

change; one should look for the types of data that are perceived to be

non-intrusive.

However when you use interactive communication, properly executed, all your marketing becomes

totally unobtrusive and, at the same time, totally effective and accountable.

Guess who said this? "The advertising business is going down the drain...

                   ...It's being pulled down by the people who create it, who don't know how to sell anything, who have never sold anything in their lives , who despise selling, whose mission in life is to be clever show-offs and con clients into giving them money to display originality and genius."
Believe it or not, that quote comes from advertising icon David Ogilvy. And
that was before the World Wide Web was invented.
But remember, he wasn't talking about Interactive Communication!

˜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

Barriers to Great Advertising

Advertising testing could provide a reliable feedback loop and lead to much better advertising, but many obstacles stand in the way. The first great barrier to better advertising is self-delusion. Most of us believe, in our heart-of-hearts, that we know what good advertising is and that there is no need for any kind of independent, objective evaluation. Agencies and clients alike often think that they know how to create and judge good advertising. Besides, once agencies and clients start to fall in love with the new creative, they quickly lose interest in any objective evaluation. No need for advertising testing. Case closed.

Strangely, after 40 years of testing advertising, we cannot tell you if a commercial is any good or not, just by viewing it. Sure, we have opinions, but they are almost always wrong. In our experience, advertising agencies and their clients are just as inept at judging advertising as we are. It seems that none of us is smart enough to see advertising through the eyes of the target audience, based purely on our own judgment.

A second barrier to better advertising is the belief that sales performance will tell if the advertising is working. Unless the sales response to the advertising is immediate and overwhelming, it is almost impossible to use sales data to judge the effectiveness of the advertising. So many variables are beyond our control, as noted, that it’s impossible to isolate the effects of media advertising alone. Moreover, some advertising works in a few weeks, while other advertising might take many months to show positive effects, and this delayed response can confound our efforts to read the sales data. Also, advertising often has short-term effects that sales data might reflect, and long-term (years later) effects that most of us might easily overlook in subsequent sales data. Because of these limitations, sales data tends to be confusing and unreliable as an indicator of advertising effectiveness.

CONSUMERS AND ADVERTISING!

Consumers are quite aware that advertising is propaganda, and compensate for

that fact when assimilating its messages -- just as they compensate for the

perceived biases of the media to which they attend. The great socioeconomic

transformations of recent years -- the acceptance of Japanese cars, the advent

of the personal computer, the rise of VCRs -- were accomplished with little

advertising support. "Time and time again," James Norris wrote, nearly half a

century after Borden, "advertising has proven powerless to instigate, to sustain

or to reverse trends in public opinion or fashions of consumption."

TRUTH WILL OUT!

Majority of Britons do not want to engage with brands via social media

Six out of ten Britons (61%) do not want to engage with brands through social media, leading to companies creating “mountains of digital waste”, according to a global study!

Above all else, Shopper's Voice will solve all your on-line and digital problems visit: http://interactivetelevisionorinteractivetv.blogspot.com

Then they said "Build a better mousetrap…", and they still didn't come!

Well perhaps the most stupid of concepts "Word of mouth marketing" is regarded as a better mousetrap…for the life of me I cannot figure out why!

Recently one highly regarded member of the Ad.Community said…"as most other conventional media have lost authority and commercial effectiveness, word of mouth is re-emerging. Whose word do we trust? Each others"!

Whoops, here we go again, setting up the excuses for advertising's failure, this time it is the media, who's next I wonder?

Once upon a time it was the creative people who were at fault, then they woke up to the fact that creativity was not the answer to the problem, which makes one ponder, when will they ever learn?

And that's one of the many problems that face advertising, so many "experts" in different fields, resulting in so many reasons for advertising's' failure.

Now please visit http://interactivetelevisionorinteractivetv.blogspot.com

Advertising Agencies, having practically ruined

a nearly perfect marketing communications system,

… are now trying to lure their Clients onto a totally unproven communications system…the Web!

Advertising agencies have lost sight of their primary goal: to sell the product. Fortunes are wasted on hip; award-winning commercials that often fail to even communicate the brand.

The reality of business demands that advertising answer to the bottom line! Simply by adding interactive communication to your schedule you can reduce spend and make your existing advertising totally accountable.

Which will demonstrably affect your bottom line and, much to the great disgust of Advertising Agencies, Clients can substantially reduce their horrific marketing investment.

Terrestrial television can then breath a sign of relief and get on with what they are good at…producing good programming.

There is more information available as to the benefits of incorporating interactive "events" onto your scheduel, please visit: http://interactivetelevisionorinteractivetv.blogspot.com