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

idea 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.

We snigger at fortune-tellers yet continue to take seriously the word of advertising

and marketing people, professions definable as people who have found a way to retain professorial

tenure even when their predictions turn out to be entirely wrong. Read the rival

pronouncements of the world's top advertising people and you soon find yourself

agreeing that their guess is as good as anybody else's. Because in Marketing

and advertising nobody knows anything! Even more disturbing, the arguments

about Social Media and how to fix advertising that we hear today are but a

queasy echo of those we heard years ago regarding the introduction of Commercial

TV...and didn't that work out well? Similar arguments about involvement, The

Internet, Social Media et al are today being regurgitated over the current

crisis. So what should we be doing? I really don't know except that we should

really study the meaning of the word communication a little more urgently. My

only excuse is that the people we rely on to know don't have a common style either.

　

Wake Up Marketing - Face the 21st Century

　

　

　

Your innovation-averse culture must go!

Marketing and advertising are on the slide. When will these once great

businesses confront reality and fight back? Because at the moment both

Advertising and Marketing have become innovation-averse cultures! Both

professions are risk-averse, innovation-averse and antipathetic to new

ideas.

Worse than that they are totally lacking in accountability because those

given responsibility do not have the requisite authority and knowledge to

discharge it.

So what's behind the decline and fall? Most certainly a sclerotic marketing

system that doesn't have the power to re-examine the need for massive

re-evaluation of the process of advertising and marketing. It's antiquated,

early 19th Century concepts do not work, (if they ever did!) they still do not

have any true accountability.

It may be that the future scholar identifies Advertising's sclerotic, twisted

concepts of communication as the biggest business weakness of all.Simply put.

An early 19th century concept cobbled together by a small number of

opportunistic men cannot properly function for the Western world at the

beginning of the 21st century. The current system of Advertising &

Marketing is an anachronism.

Among business people cynicism about advertising ability to deliver grow, now

with the advent of the Internet, this can only increase this cynicism.

The twin challenges to advertisings' 60-year old hegemony are enormous. The

first is a total misunderstanding of the word "communication" and a misplaced

belief that "creativity" is the sole criteria for the success or otherwise of

advertisings ability to sell products and services. Secondly there is a broad

global trend towards the internet together with the frightening inability of

advertising to be totally accountable, in the case of the latter just how long

can this stupidity last? Just when does Marketing dare to balance the

budget?

It could well be that the future business scholar will identify marketings

sclerotic, twisted business decision-making system as the biggest weakness of

all. Put simply an early 19th century business concept cobbled together by a

small number of business men cannot properly function for the West as the

number one business method for the 21st century. To-day it can be said that

Advertising and Marketing are an anachronism which is why so many articles

abound as to the way advertising is going. Nowadays some senior executives call

trust the scarcest resource of all and marketing enhances such an attitude!

It has been said that Marketers are stuck in a world between the old rules

and the new rules. To deal with the new rules of changing media, technology and

consumer behaviour, many marketers delegate emerging marketing solutions to a

handful of external partners or internal 'experts'. In doing so, they have

enabled the rest of the organisation to behave much like it did ten years ago,

clinging to the old rules!

　

　

Lets Face it. There is no answer to the Advertising and Marketing Crisis!






Both Clients and advertising agencies are deluding themselves. Marketing has

to accept there is no way out of its decline.For one blood-curdling moment it

seemed that the marketing world had woken up to the fact that their preposterous

industry had finally been caught in the act.

Pepsi ,the world's leader in advocating and implementing new-age marketing

nonsense, and now paying the price for its foolish belief in the three-headed

marketing monsters: "branding," "engagement," and "conversation." (Here's a tip

for anyone left alive in the Pespi marketing department. There is one thing, and

one thing only, that advertising is about -- persuasion. All the rest is word

games and chit chat. Got it?

Last week it was reported that after years of fighting Coke for first place

in the soft drink category, Pepsi-Cola had fallen to third place.The L.A. Times

called it "...a stunning fall from grace."

Pepsi saw their U.S. sales volumes in 2010 fall sharply, by 4.8% and 5.2%, respectively... The

U.S. soft drink market is about 74 billion dollars. Therefore a 5% drop in Pepsi

market share (which is about 10%0 cost them well over $350 million on the Pepsi

brand alone!

The goal of advertising is to create a clear awareness of your company and

its Unique Selling Proposition. Unfortunately, most advertisers evaluate their

ads by the comments they hear from the people around them. The slickest,

clearest, funniest, most creative and most different ads are the ones most

likely to generate these comments. See the problem? When we confuse "response"

with "results" we create "attention getting ads" which say absolutely

nothing.

The business owner is uniquely unqualified to see his company or his product

objectively.He is on the inside, looking out, trying to describe himself to a

person on the outside looking in. It's hard to read the label when you're inside

the bottle. Too much product nowledge causes the business owner to answer

questions that no one is asking. This makes for extremely ineffective

advertising.

Marketing has to accept there is no way out of its decline. 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.

　

　

　

　


The desperate need to restructure advertising and marketing




Only interactive marketing communication will provide clients with the

necessary communicaion and feedback necessary for effective marketing to take place.

For too long, marketing functions have been vertically organised by media

type. This approach is mirrored on the agency side, with rewards based on

discipline-specific models. These must be torn down.

On the client-side Marketing and Brand Managers must involve and lead a

team of colleagues who have the responsibility, vision, understanding and

commitment to engage in a media-agnostic planning process. And this team of

enlightened marketers must be willing to let strategic goals -- not historic

patterns -- drive budget allocations.

Achieving strategic integration requires a top-to-bottom reinvention of the

marketing organisation. Holistic professionals who are system thinkers,

customer-centric believers, innovators and dreamers must lead this

transformation.

These individuals should be cross-trained to understand the entire marketing

spectrum and learn discipline-specific skill sets. And to specifically

understand the real meaning of the word "communication" Increasingly, these

leaders will need strong quantitative skills -- in order to analyse the

data-rich resources and leverage mathematical tools now available, especially if

they are to drive cross-disciplinary approaches that fuse disparate

consumer-engagement channels. Above all, they need to be superior team

leaders who have the insights, talent and passion to take marketing integration

to new heights.

Engaging in conversations with relevant markets (Interacting) will become an

important source of knowledge and innovation, the quality of this market

intelligence has already (and will do so more in the future) proven to be more

accurate than research and will determine market share.

　

　

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!

There is, and has been for some years,

a very simple solution to the ills that beset the marketing and advertising industries. In the past the advertising agencies have shunned the solution because it does not rely upon creativity, reach and frequency, the current model so beloved by the advertising industry.

It is interactive marketing communication, in one fell swoop Clients could solve all their problems and assist existing media to solve theirs at the same time.

Interactive advertising is richer than all other forms of marketing communication, and it is becoming increasingly clear that it is only a matter of time before Clients embrace the business saving life force of interaction!

Choose your own commercials anyone? Interactive TV will immediately halt the interruption model on which television is based, that is interactive marketing properly executed will make advertising on terrestrial TV become richer because of the very nature of Interactive Marketing Communication.
Existing terrestrial television need no new technology imposed upon it to create immediately highly successful, totally accountable advertising "Events"

Interaction and The Outdated Idea of Mass Marketing

Advertising together with Broadcast Media, finally bite the dust!

Because no longer is the Marketing message, "We want your money". To day the Marketing message has to be "We want your opinions".

Because the moment you put that into real practice you can have everything you've always wanted, sales, customer relationships and also Brand loyalty.

However replacing research with interaction changes all the opportunities to successful marketing. "Yes", you can say," "Interactive Events will create my new products"

However at the moment Big Business is not making the correct decisions regarding interaction. Maybe some people within these organisations know and understand what's happening out there in consumer land. But the dreadful fact is that giving their voice to such statements would, more probably, seriously damage their career growth!

These days I search everywhere for the headline "Interactive Communication is a winning combination for all…The Client…The Media…and last but by no means least…your customer"!

It never appears.

Interactive Communication finally allows the revolution to commence. The revolution against one-size fits all advertising; the bland all-knowing corporate voice, the lack lustre politicians busily furnishing their own nests…from our money.

The fact of the matter is your customers, you, me and everybody else, do not trust business. We find it highly insulting to be treated this way and we mistrust you in numbers far greater than you or your advertising/marketing people allow for.

Dialogue, two-way conversations, would start to change these hostile attitudes. You really do need to commence interactive events - right now. And you can do so in existing media.

Before I go on, I must emphasise that on no account let your Advertising Agency tempt you into spending big bucks on the Web. Already the Advertising-as-Usual crowd is pouring billions into the Web, however be warned, as they said in the "Cluetrain Manifesto", "So you advertise on the Internet…so what"? If you think you are wasting money on Advertising-as-Usual be very careful. The Internet, possibly is a bigger waste of money than Advertising-as-Usual, and, as we all know, right now that is one Mother of a huge waste of money!

"Why?" you may ask "has it all changed from the safe secure way of marketing in the past".

Simply put, Advertising-as-Usual, together with its handmaiden Broadcasting-as-Usual have treated us with too much contempt. According to a recent article in the Times, TV executives commonly think of viewers' phone revenue as "moron tax". And this attitude of utter contempt pervades the executives of advertising and Broadcast-as-Usual, and expresses itself in all the offerings of a rip-off culture, from government to TV companies.

And bear in mind that Advertising-as-Usual and Broadcast-as-Usual hold Clients in great contempt as well. They rejoice in removing large chunks of your Marketing Budgets, to then waste them in rip-off ventures that only worsen the publics' contempt for you…so in effect they are spending your money to get you into a ever worsening situation.

　

The suits come to Social Media. Now that’s the kiss of death!


Advertising Agencies, having all but destroyed a perfectly good Old Media are set to do the same with Social Media!
In the fickle world of online chatter, yesterday’s achingly fashionable meeting points are rapidly acquiring the appearance of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s’ headquarters.
Already Twitter, becoming bogged down with fake PR tweets as well as fake advertising tweets, so much so that already the kids dismiss it as tired! And are moving on.
As soon as the buzz of innovation starts to fade the "cool" but influential people move on quicker than you can send a tweet.
As witness by the Old Media experience, essentially Commercial Television, Advertising Agencies are loath to change a medium that was to them, a money-spinner. Despite the fact that it was non-accountable. Now they are deserting terrestrial TV without even realizing that they could have made it far more effective & accountable, but they didn't understand the word "communication".
And now Agencies are rushing onto Social Media ignoring the fact 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 in whatever guise, 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!

CHECK OUT THE AGENCY CREDENTIALS & MAKE SURE THAT THEY REALLY UNDERSTAND THE WORD "COMMUNICATION

　

　

It is refreshing to hear more discussion around the shortcomings...

of social media rather than the constant proselytizing of a still baby-fresh and

misunderstood communication channel. However, possibly a more constructive way

of thinking about those shortcomings is to consider the growing gap in

expectations of what social media can and should achieve for a brand.

The IBM Institute of Business Value just published a study

comparing the differing perceptions of business leaders and consumers regarding

social sites. The most interesting find from the study was the ironic business

misperception that consumer's would rank discounts and purchase opportunities at

the bottom of their list of reasons to engage with a company's social site. It

actually ranks at the top of their list.

Companies need to design experiences that deliver tangible value in return

for customers' time, attention, endorsement and data. -IBM Institute of

Business Value.

Time and attention really are the currencies of our customers. Those expenses

are precious for them and they want something in return for it. Simply providing

conversation's will never be enough. No brand is interesting enough to entice

just by being available. Although the social space is cheaper, quicker, and

ever-present, a brand still needs to provide those nuggets of material value to

drive significant engagement.

And Interactive Communication does all that...and more! To discover more contact:

Paul Ashby on (UK) 01934 620047 or paulashby40@yahoo.com. Cell 'phone 07586259605.

Consumers are seeking out the views of others....



...and looking for two-way conversations before they decide to purchase a product or service. A new AIDA model is beginning to emerge that takes this two-way conversation into consideration –€・Awareness, Interaction, Dialogue and Action. But how can this model be interpreted into the highly regulated pharmaceutical world?

Only by using interactive marketing communication, proven to be highly effective and totally measurable. Contact Paul Ashby on (UK) 01934 620047 or paulashby40@yahoo.com

　

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 desperate need to restructure advertising and marketing.

Only interactive marketing communication will provide clients with the

necessary communication and feedback necessary for effective marketing to take

place.

For too long, marketing functions have been vertically organised by media

type. This approach is mirrored on the agency side, with rewards based on

discipline-specific P&L models. These must be torn down.

On the client-side Marketing and Brand Managers must involve and lead a team

of colleagues who have the responsibility, vision, understanding and commitment

to engage in a media-agnostic planning process. And this team of enlightened

marketers must be willing to let strategic goals -- not historic patterns --

drive budget allocations.

Achieving strategic integration requires a top-to-bottom reinvention of the

marketing organisation. Holistic professionals who are system thinkers,

customer-centric believers, innovators and dreamers must lead this

transformation.

And Interactive Communication must lead the way in all your marketing communications

　

Talentless Advertising

The advertising management's silence over the constantly emerging evidence

that advertising does not work speaks far too loudly.

Glaciers are melting more speedily than the ability of advertising to become

accountable. What is surprising is that a global commercial organization such

as advertising can operate like this. Advertising agencies act as if it has

no need to answer to their Clients! Advertising Management has been tested and

found wanting. What all this is showing is that the Senior Management, those at

the top of the Agencies, are not working. There is a communications and

management failure within advertising agencies.

Everyone is saying it (or, to be more accurate, whining about it). The

advertising business is in a state of upheaval. Everyone is blaming it on

technology and the rapid rate of change it is causing. Hello -- it isn't the

technology, folks. The technological change is simply making it easier to

diagnose the real challenge. The one that has been around since the dawn of our

industry but that, thankfully, we've been able to side step.

The decline of moral responsibility has damaged the advertising and marketing

industry, it is the real flaw behind the advertising crisis. There has to be a

complete change of thinking and regulation of the world's marketing industry.

Certainly Clients cannot risk again the degree of unaccountability as have be

practiced up to now. Advertising agencies need to change their behavior, they

need to re-establish relations with their Clients and gain a better

understanding of the communication process...by using Interactive Marketing Communication,

properly executed!

Talentless Advertising!

　

　
The advertising management's silence over the constantly emerging evidence

that advertising does not work speaks far too loudly.

Glaciers are melting more speedily than the ability of advertising to become

accountable. What is surprising is that a global commercial organization such

as advertising can operate like this. Advertising agencies act as if it has

no need to answer to their Clients! Advertising Management has been tested and

found wanting. What all this is showing is that the Senior Management, those at

the top of the Agencies, are not working. There is a communications and

management failure within advertising agencies.

Everyone is saying it (or, to be more accurate, whining about it). The

advertising business is in a state of upheaval. Everyone is blaming it on

technology and the rapid rate of change it is causing. Hello -- it isn't the

technology, folks. The technological change is simply making it easier to

diagnose the real challenge. The one that has been around since the dawn of our

industry but that, thankfully, we've been able to side step.

The decline of moral responsibility has damaged the advertising and marketing

industry, it is the real flaw behind the advertising crisis. There has to be a

complete change of thinking and regulation of the world's marketing industry.

Certainly Clients cannot risk again the degree of unaccountability as have be

practiced up to now. Advertising agencies need to change their behavior, they

need to re-establish relations with their Clients and gain a better

understanding of the communication process...by using Interactive Marketing Communication,

properly executed!

We live in a world of broken advertising and marketing models.

　

We live in a world of broken advertising and marketing models. To understand why advertising and marketing leaders cannot easily fix the sputtering advertising and marketing systems , you have to realize that the economic models on which the United States, Europe and China relied are collapsing. The models differ, but the breakdowns are occurring simultaneously and feed on each other. The result is that the advertising and marketing recovery flags, while pessimism and uncertainty mount.

However you can solve most of your marketing and advertising needs by turning to interactive communication, properly executed, then, in one flash you can be highly successful again! Contact: Paul Ashby on (UK) 01934 620047 or paulashby40@yahoo.com

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!

NEED WE SAY MORE?

For every 10,000 ads they deliver, Facebook gets 5 clicks. What would you want to sell?

The web has turned us all into liars

We pretend the web has opened up huge new advertising opportunities when we secretly know

that it has mostly been a dismal failure as an advertising medium. We cling to the few big successes

and argue from the extreme. We pretend we know how to "do it all", but we don't. We

pretend to be "media neutral" but secretly are either broadcast-centric, print-centric or web-centric.

When will we discover the real meaning of the word "communication" and start practicing real

interactive communication? Because that's what it's all about!

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.

Consumers Are Fed Up with Corporate Advertising & Manipulation

Consumers Are Fed Up with Corporate Advertising & Manipulation

Today, the New York Times reports 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 2004 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."

For example, respondents said "there's an opportunity for advertising to

become a source of competitive advantage for a brand," Mr. Smith said, "if

it's focused on product features and services." "The marketing itself has

become part of how consumers view a brand," Mr. Smith said, "so if you have

two brands at parity with each other, more and more the one people are likely

to do business with is the one that does a better job in reaching them with

its advertising."

The association, which represents 1,196 agencies that place an estimated

75 percent of all national advertising, recognizes it must address

the consumers' changing attitudes, if some other topics on the conference

agenda are any indication.

Among the subjects to be discussed at the conference, which

continues through Friday at the Ritz-Carlton South Beach hotel, are

"advertising in the age of obesity," the title of a speech by Tommy G.

Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, and how agencies can

develop more effective campaigns, to be covered by August A. Busch IV,

president of Anheuser-Busch.

Other topics are how agencies can create campaigns consumers will like

more, or at least dislike less, to be discussed by Linda Kaplan Thaler,

chief executive and chief creative officer at the Kaplan Thaler Group in New

York, part of the Publicis Groupe, and how perceptions of the agency business

need to be improved, to be addressed by Ron Berger, elected last month as

the chairman of the association for 2004-6.

"Our industry must do a better job of talking about the tremendous value

we create for clients and the economy," said Mr. Berger, who is also

chief executive and chief creative officer at Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners in

New York, part of the Euro RSCG Worldwide division of Havas.

Although "the last few years for the industry have not been great

ones," said Mr. Berger, who offered a preview of his remarks in a recent

interview, "I just don't think other industries beat themselves up the way we

do."

Even if, as has been widely discussed, the traditional 30-second spot

has devolved into a much less effective way to sell goods and services,

Mr.
Berger said, "so what?"

"The great agencies don't say, The 30-second commercial is dead, so

we're dead. They understand that, and embrace that, and will reinvent

themselves and what they do to market brands and products."

"The idea that TiVo, remote controls, any technology, is fatal to

our business I find absurd," he said. "The opportunities of technology and

what it enables us to do are more exciting than at any time in our

history."

Mr. Berger's enthusiasm may be contagious, if judged by the

advance registration for the conference, typically a good gauge of how

optimistic or pessimistic agency executives are about prospects for the

industry.

Almost 330 people have registered ahead of the conference, said O.

Burtch Drake, president and chief executive of the association, known as the

Four A's, compared with the 257 who attended the 2003 conference and the 293

at the 2002 conference.

Although the anticipated attendance is lower than for the boom year of

2000, when 450 people attended, Mr. Drake said, "we're going to have the

largest member attendance since 1990," which is attendees minus

speakers, representatives of media companies and other organizations like

the Association of National Advertisers, spouses and reporters.

"I'm feeling really good about the meeting," Mr. Drake said, "finally."