Is buzz no more valuable than an ad?

What if the experts are wrong and ads are just as persuasive as buzz? This can't

be possible, can it? The experts have told us that there is a new breed of human

being out there who no longer wants to be marketed to. She pays no attention

to ads. She is immune to the "interruption model" and we need to get her

"permission" to market to her.

Not so fast, says David Michaelson Co., a New York-based company that

studies measurement of communications effectiveness,and has compared the

effect of publicity with traditional advertising in a controlled experiment. He

and a co-author presented research subjects with a faked ad for an invented

product, and a faked newspaper article about the same product. On a scale of 1

to 10, the article was a 10 "from the standpoint of a publicist's dream article,"

Dr. Michaelson says. Yet their study showed that the article was no more

effective than the ad in building brand awareness. Now here's something to

think about. I have no idea of the validity of this study. But if it's true that

people are not terribly moved by "buzz" in reputable media like newspapers,

how much power do you think buzz has in dopey social media like blogs, and

Twitter and Facebook?

Maybe buzz is exactly what it sounds like -- just a lot of mouths yapping.

"Clicking-toward-oblivion."

"What was once digital advertising's dirty little secret is now

its big, ugly problem. Online ad performance figures are dismal..."

Adweek

　

Any way you slice it, the key fact is that 15 years after its inception, I

cannot come up with the name of one major consumer-facing non-native

brand that has been built primarily by web advertising. It is encouraging,

however, to see some people within the web advertising community finally

coming out and admitting the shortcomings. Maybe if

more web advertising people would stand up and acknowledge the issues

they could help the web become what we all want it to be -- a more

effective advertising medium.

Want more information on Interactive Marketing Communication?

Contact Paul Ashby : paulashby40@yahoo.com or (UK Landline) 01934

620047.

Do you think that Advertising has become too parochial, too introspective, too convinced by its on hyperbole?

Two or three thousand, what would be described as, creative people, dominates advertising.
However, a major change is afoot and advertising, long regarded as the ultimate weapon in marketing – particularly the once mighty television commercial – is now seen as complacent and increasingly ineffective.

Consequently, the power of the creative is diminishing. And why is this a good thing for clients and their customers? Because, very often, these creatives have been the ‘barnacles on the bum of progress’.

It is amazing when you consider the many excellent marketing ideas that have been available, however the promoters of such ideas eventually gave up selling to advertising agencies because all advertising agencies wanted was to get their clients onto television.

That it might not be the ideal medium was totally ignored.
Our experience was typical; we developed the most potent, effective and accountable marketing communications programme – ever.
When we started the business we were introduced to Alvin Toffler who, when hearing of what we were doing simply said “Persevere but remember vested interests will be against you”.
Was he ever right!

Do you agree that Today, the ad industry is being overrun with people who have no idea what is universal and what is transient in our business?

?

They are not being taught principles, they are being taught tactics.To them,

Bernbach, Ogilvy and Riney are just names of old dead guys. They never heard

of Ally and Gargano or Scali, McCabe, Sloves. They have no idea what these

people and organizations did, or stood for, or taught us about advertising.

It's our own fault.

No one is willing to take the time to learn the history so he, or she, can

teach it. Our own industry organizations - particularly the I.P.A - are

prime culprits. By desperately trying to remain "relevant" they have sounded a

constant drumbeat about "digital changing everything" that is not only false, it

undermines the importance of young peoples' need to learn the history and

principles of our trade.

Are We becoming more and more distracted by the various media that continues to proliferate under advertising's largess?

As advertisers spend more, they extend media's restless tentacles, thus

distracting us to the point where marketers have to spend yet more to regain our

attention (if they ever had it in the first place!)

All the mounting evidence that advertising doesn't work goes totally ignored.

Recently it was written that most marketing (theory and practice) is wish

driven. The work on advertising effectiveness convincingly proves that there is

no evidence that advertising persuades anybody to do anything; advertising can

only be a 'weak' force.

The sad thing is that all this evidence is studiously ignored by many

sections of the marketing community, resulting in the terrible situation we are

witnessing to-day. Many goals set in marketing are unrealistic. They are

therefore doomed to failure from the start. Such romantic marketing dreams

include sustained growth, brand differentiation, persuasive advertising, and are

totally unrealistic!

Now, in addition, we have the craven-image of dotcom dementia 2.0

The problem is that the articles of faith among those who conquered their

fear, denial, blind faith and desperate attachments to the status quo

("Advertising works") now face the gathering reality of the chaos scenario! With

most advertising these days where is one iota of information which will

sell?

Mostly they don't tell consumers anything that matters, instead leaving that

heavy lifting to other, less sexy marketing efforts.

　

　

Do you agree with Mad Ave's 16-car pileup?

Clutter's not the only issue -- things like media multitasking and ad-skipping devices play roles. But it is the elephant in the room. Or maybe a more apt metaphor is a 16-car pileup that Madison Avenue's perfectly happy to rubberneck: pause just enough to recognise its existence without doing anything to fix it.

"We could discuss any topic in media and there would some room for debate," said Debbie Solomon, group research director at WPP Group's MindShare, and the author of the agency's annual study on increased commercial time in TV. "But not with clutter. Every study I've ever seen shows that it's a bad thing."

So if clutter's such a problem, why isn't there a clear, unified way of figuring out how to reduce it? A big reason is that clutter is usually viewed through the lenses of individual media, a way of looking that makes a bit of sense given that clutter affects each medium differently.

Research shows that a magazine reader looks at glossy ad pages rather favorably, as part of the editorial content, while a TV viewer is more likely to see 30-second spots as interruptions. Between those poles of acceptance and revulsion fall internet users, who are simultaneously hit with both scads of generic, untargeted ads and more finely tuned pitches that take into account behavior that gives some semblance of relevance to advertising.

Refocus on consumer, not media
A siloed way of thinking is fine if you're atop a media company or a trade association, but it falls short if managing a massive marketing budget is your bag. That lens effectively needs to be refocused not on media but on the consumer, who's cumulatively bludgeoned by commercial messages as he moves from medium to medium. "We just don't have a holistic approach yet," Mr. Barocci said.

Asked whether a more consumer-centric approach to clutter is needed, Bob Liodice, president-CEO at the Association of National Advertisers, said such an initiative "would have to be like what's going on with engagement," referring to a joint effort by his organization, the 4A's and the ARF to develop a new standard for measuring ad effectiveness. "That's something that seems to have universal support and intrigue. Ad clutter hasn't yet risen to that level. I don't want to dismiss it, though. The consumer is running away from some advertising."

Kate Sirkin, exec VP-global research director at Publicis Groupe's Starcom, said she's not counting on action from media companies, for whom clutter raises complicated questions of economics. "Media companies and associations won't look at it because they don't think in a multimedia way," she said. "It'll be up to advertisers to deal with."

Do you think that Media Pollution Is Worsening Despite Cleanup Efforts?

　

Somewhere between 254 and 5,000 is a number that represents just how many commercial messages an average consumer gets each day. Attempts to beat clutter only end up yielding more of it, a bitter irony bound to have dire consequences for a business already struggling with questions of relevance and effectiveness.
Attempts to beat clutter only end up yielding more of it, a bitter irony bound to have dire consequences for a business already struggling with questions of relevance and effectiveness.
There's no consensus on it, but just about everyone agrees on two things: It's way too high, and the industry's not doing anything to reduce its own overproduction.

That's our clutter problem -- and yours.

Shotgun blasts
Like a fly repeatedly bouncing off a closed window, the ad industry is trying to fix the problem by doing more of the same. That is, by creating more ads. What that absurdly cliched mission statement of "cutting through the clutter" has really yielded is an industry that shotgun blasts commercial messages into sexy new places as quick as it can identify them, whether it's emerging digital platforms or nooks and crannies in an increasingly buyable physical world -- dry-cleaning bags, coffee cups, door hangers and even houses. Yes, clutter is leading to more clutter.

But, you say, at least it's paring back on traditional media, right? Actually, TV commercial pods are fatter than they've ever been, and they're growing like a 14-year-old Xbox fan's waistline.

Attempts to beat clutter only end up yielding more of it, a bitter irony bound to have dire consequences for a business already struggling with questions of relevance and effectiveness. Put simply, the ad business is crushing itself under the weight of its own messaging, squeezing the effectiveness out of its product as consumers get more and more inured to the commercialisation of their culture and surroundings.

"At the end of the day, the ability of the average consumer to even remember advertising 24 hours later is at the lowest level in the history of our business," said Bob Barocci, president-CEO of the Advertising Research Foundation. "We know that something's happened and we know the contributors."

Do you think that The dangers facing advertising and marketing are many and complex?

,

however we have to stop and stand back and re-examine the whole process of commercial

communication for the practitioners have lost sight of what we are supposed to

do. It is true that Marketing inertia is causing so many problems, together with

the fact that they will not face up to the unpalatable truth that the whole

process is just not working these days. The situation is so bad that any attempt

to mount an argument for reform gets buried in the old narrative of "advertising

works"!

Well the fact is that the era of getting rid of big advertising agencies and cutting wasteful

expenditure is upon us. After all we've had years of ever increasing marketing budgets and

throwing huge amounts of money at media has resulted in clutter and unaccountability.

Advertising in its current form must come to an end, not just because the money has run out,

but it is also shown to have failed! Although it must be said that Advertising and Marketing

are not the only scenes of gross wastage and mismanagement.

One can liken the current Advertising scene to an unstable Ponzi scheme.

Advertising and Marketing departments promised higher benefits than were

justified by the money being allocated to pay for them as in the swindle known

as a Ponzi scheme. The fact that advertising doesn't work makes all this

expenditure unsustainable right now!

There is an urgent need, like "Right Now" to overcome the hostility to big

business generally, the normal cosy relationships must not be allowed to resume.

The flawed policy-making in Marketing departments, without a doubt the Saatchi

brothers are responsible for the over rated benefits on spending (wasting?) huge

amounts of money on advertising! They were the most incompetent advertising

people in the history of advertising! The Saatchi Brothers encouraged the

slavish adherence to rational expectations stemming from the Creative Process,

and yet all knew that slavish belief in Creativity alone is fatal!

Where should we go from here? A huge and daunting question. Advertising

Agencies must learn the theory of "communication" they must also try, in all

honesty, to become totally accountable, it can be done.

What do you think is lacking in the advertising world of to-day?

Mainly we appear to lack ideas, strong ideas, competing ideas, confident

philosophies, angry dissent. Advertising people used to have ideas &

policies; they jostled to present their ideas. But what is alarming is

the impassivity of our advertising people & the idleness of advertising

debate, as we wait. There is a sense of vacuum.

Where to-day is the bold advocacy, the impatience to persuade, the urgency of

argument? Where are the shouts of "here's how!"? Where are the leading

actors, the big voices, the great thoughts?

Headlines about "Twitter", the Internet, "Facebook" et al, are these now the

only images we have of a once great advertising industry?

But perhaps the problem is simpler but just as scary, in a headline " Lack of

experience affects business" the Institute of Advertising had this to say, "The

nature of the business is such that in order to be cost efficient process gets

dumbed down and farmed out to more junior people. There is a tendency to

commodity and that can lead to work being de-skilled".

So there you have it technology and a dumbing down are affecting all aspect

of advertising...it is time to change or else advertising will become like the

Zimbabwe bird flying around in ever decreasing circles until it disappears up

its own orifice!

　

Do you agree that the function of effective interactive communication is to accurately convey a particular message?

that is clear and comprehended by the receiver. Communication is used to express emotion, transfer information or provide direction. The function of effective interactive communication can be best seen in the business world. If a company is able to effectively communicate with its workers, the workers will feel empowered, informed and appreciated.

Interactive communication is divided into two forms: verbal and nonverbal. Verbal and nonverbal communication must agree or else it can lead to confusion or misunderstanding. For example, if a boss verbally communicates you're doing a good job and then fires you the next day, there's an obvious breakdown in the communication. Nonverbal communication is gestures, vocal tone and facial expressions.

The effects of effective interactive communication are understanding, education, empowerment and respect. Effective communication provides people with information they need to become educated and enlightened.

When people feel like they are in the know, they feel respected and empowered, and are motivated to perform at their best level of productivity and performance. The role that effective communication plays can have a positive or negative affect. For example, in politics if a politician doesn't explain himself or herself clearly, there can be a lot of room The primary misconception about effective interactive communication is that it is simply saying what a person feels.

Simply expressing ideas, thoughts and emotions does not make communication effective. Effective interactive communication can only be considered effective when the listener accurately understands the message the individual is attempting to communicate. The role of effective communication is commonly seen only as the messages being sent, while it is both the sending and receiving that matter.

The benefits of effective interactive communication are successful business, rich relationships and the ability to accurately and comprehensively express thoughts, feelings and ideas. Effective communication is at the foundation of every successful action. A great example of how the role of effective communication benefits people in interpersonal relationship is marriage. A marriage that possesses effective interactive communication fosters love, trust and respect.

Does Marketing Have a Heart of Darkness?

　


The orthodox advertising model takes no account of reality, hopefully the Financial Crisis should bring back some sanity One of the few benign consequences of last years financial crisis was the exposure of modern marketing as an emperor with no clothes. Now it is a fact that modern marketing/advertising has to be urgently reinvented.

This could lead to a flowering of original thinking in a profession whose creativity has been stifled by the intellectual monopoly of orthodox advertising and marketing bodies. The dirty little secret of modern advertising is that the models created by media and advertising agencies said almost nothing about accountability.

The defunct advertising and marketing bodies today are the people who took control of the subject in the 1960s, with theories about the effectiveness of advertising.

These theories, never really tested with reality, had a major flaw, if reality contradicts these theories it was reality that marketing & advertising professionals wanted to change. It is not surprising that the whole marketing edifice has come crashing down. To-days approach prevented marketing professionals from thinking about a world that is, by its very nature, unpredictable and inconsistent.

Why did Marketing fail to predict the crisis. It is said they failed because they all had a flawed view about markets! To gain some genuine understanding of unpredictable communications marketing and advertising people will, first of all, have to understand the real meaning of the word "communications." Perhaps they don't really want to!

The formula of reach and frequency is a thoroughly dishonest formula, based upon the need to rip as much money off Clients with complete disregard to accountability. There have been far more effective methods of marketing, however because these achieved startling results with a substantial reduction in advertising budgets they were dammed by faint praise and shuffled off out of sight before Clients could be woken up to the fact that they were being, simply put, ripped off!

Advertising has encouraged the growth of the sick & degrading culture of celebrity in the quite erroneous understanding that circulation is one of the key elements within the charade called advertising. In an article "Admen to tackle mistrust" the Advertising Association is to urge members to fight back against waning consumer trust in advertising, which is another example of the complete lack of understanding on the part of the Advertising Industry of the communications process and individuals complete lack of interest in advertising.

In a survey it was established that only 15% of adults "generally trust advertising" Frankly I am surprised that it is so high.

Consider this, the strength of newspapers to markedly affect the outcome of elections is severely doubted, if editorial strength support cannot markedly affect political outcome just how can we expect advertising to have any effect! Especially if adults "don't trust advertising", add to that fact that right now they also don't trust politicians and surely we could find a better way to spent the vast sums invested in political advertising!The fact is that in all walks of life the "system", despite the original intention and rules, always becomes corrupted by its users and lazy administrators, advertising has become so corrupted and is in the process of corrupting the New Media as they have corrupted the Old Media!

Of course there is a tacit agreement to keep the current inefficient system going for as long as possible. The vast sums of money spent on advertising go towards making a few people very rich indeed, in the past, Media Barons created media to gain power, nowadays the reason for creating new media, in whatever form, is no longer a route to power, it has become a route to vast riches and never mind the quality of media hence the "dumbing down of all media" in recent years.

Don't agree with what I'm saying? Well then consider this little shard of information. As much as 60% of all tracked advertising expenditure world-wide during 2008 failed to deliver results expected by marketers and can be considered wasted. $70bn alone is spent in the USA on advertising extrapolate that out to world-wide and that becomes a hell of a huge waste of money.

Do you agree that

The public is paying dearly for our cult of the worthless and personality?

It has become clear for many years that what one sees with advertising and media clutter is expressly not what one gets. And the fact of the matter, certainly with the case of Advertising and Marketing, is that generally there is just too much of it out there for anybody's good. We suppose that in our society commercial information (preferably truthful) is essential But since so much of what the advertising and marketing people tell us is only half the truth or, at times, none of the truth, some of us do start to wonder why we bother with it all. Hence the huge and growing waste...of money, after all huge sums of money are spent on totally meaningless advertising/marketing programmes! Waste of Media...so much so that we now live in an over-informed society surrounded by a glut of commercial clutter.

Unaccountable Marketing and Advertising is starting to smell like the banks who have bought us to rack and ruin by deceiving the public. And our countries are hanging on to solvency by their fingernails, and our country-folk, after the epic of deceit that was the Politicians and the Banks, at least they see now through these attempts at manipulation! They are tired of the whole wretched mess that our business people have created - they want simply to have effective corporations without all the unnecessary BS.

The injudiciousness of the Marketing world by still proceeding to produce all this utter banal advertising and marketing programmes at a time of stringency is unbelievable!

None of this utterly useless Advertising and Marketing leads to us to being any better off! It does not promote growth or recovery. It does not educate our children, in fact quite the contrary!

It has been clear for many years that what one sees with Corporations is expressly not what one gets! With their smooth grained advertising people together with their smooth grained spivs, the PR people, they do not help people live with any more dignity in fact they do not add one iota to the improvement of life because this pursuit of the superficial, these cynical acts of waste and charlatanry, nauseates the average customer more than almost anything else imaginable. They most certainly see the shallowness together with the worthlessness of the whole international Marketing and Advertising scene!

With their failure to work as evidenced by the very recent Financial Crisis shows that Marketing has no sense of convection about it at all.

It is time that the Advertising Agencies reinvented themselves, they must stop producing evidence that all they are self-regarding incompetents embarked upon huge and wasteful acts of profligacy - and with no accountability!

Yes, our countries are in a mess, they still are and all this Advertising, Marketing, Spin and Celebrity will not get us out of this mess.

　

　

　

　

　

The Future of Advertising is Interactive.

During all our research one constant shone through, that is that marketing is

conversations.

Current conventional mass media are weak conductors of knowledge and

comprehension. This is because of a number of factors, however the main reason

is; they are non-interactive communications vehicles, in other words

conversations cannot take place.

Communication research shows that interaction raises a communication

effectiveness.The one problem facing interactive advertising is the fact that it has become

a clich in recent years, without any very clear or consistent definition of

what the word means or how it is supposed to be executed, it has none of the woolly

theorising that lies behind the arguments about various forms of so-called interactive

communication using directmarketing and electronic media (most of which involves at best

the minimum of true interactivity).

It is also practical, down-to-earth, and uses a readily comprehensible and

verified mechanism to expand the relevance and salience of advertising and other

forms of marketing communications. It can be applied to all major media and to

various other forms of communication, including new media. There is no

theoretical reason why it should not also be applied to packaging designs or

product literature.

The basic elements of interactive communication are very simple, as all

communication should be. The target audience or any part of them are

provided with a Game, comprising a Quiz together with multiple choice answers.

This take the reader/viewer through the detail of a commercial or

advertisement (or both) and focuses their interest and attention on the product's selling

points. The questionnaire is (usually) presented as an exercise

in getting the public's opinions about the products. The effect is to combine

the techniques of programmed learning and game playing to

fix the advertising message in consumers minds, with startling results!

　

It appears that there is growing concern in AdLand about Google's...

...online dominance. This is all so strange, we are talking here about an

unproven medium, where any number of well respected people have voiced

opinions as to the appropriateness, or otherwise, as to using the Internet as an

(traditional) advertising medium.

Jerry Della Femina claims that most online advertising creates resentment,

working to shut down attention rather than elicit interest. Zergio Zyman feels

that banner ads are a joke, and Della Femina goes on to say "and figure out

different ways to reach people but we're not going to reach them by advertising

on the internet".

In Marketing Management, Philip Kotler had this to say, "To remain effective

and profitable, marketers must strike the delicate balance between the

ineffectiveness of trying to be all things to all people through mass marketing,

and the cost prohibitive extreme of completely customising a marketing mix to

each individual". Doesn't this logic admit that mass marketing is a thing of

the past?

And isn't the Internet a highly sophisticated form of mass marketing? You have

to remember that it is all being driven by the mass marketing mentalities of

AdLand and associates. All driven by data based technologies which invariably

boil down to marketing to a mass of niches, make no mistake about it, the

purportedly "Personalised" approaches to customers remain a form of mass

marketing.

What Top-Down-Management hasn't cottoned on to is the fact that the Internet

is a bottoms-up medium (if that is what you would call it!) and people are

connecting with each other and most certainly not with advertising. Only TV

commercials may create brand awareness, on the web they only create

annoyance! Meanwhile back at the ranch Online advertising remains a

relatively small part of the over-all advertising market, £2 billion out of a total

of £17 billion in the UK but it is growing rapidly by as much as 41% last year.

Meanwhile Top-Down-Management is doing its bit to help mediocrity

maintain its presence within the Advertising world, already it appears that they

are fiddling the books. Clients have already noticed discrepancies between the

number of clicks (per online ad) that Google has charged them for and the

number they reach by their own assessments! Nothing has changed in

AdLand, nothing at all! And the sad thing is that all of this need never

to have taken place, there is a substantially (and proven) more effective

method of communication available, which uses existing media. It is called

Interactive Marketing Communication, and it is available to you right now!

　

　

Nobody yet appears to have hit upon a solution to improving marketing, and thus advertising,

yet it has to happen because they have both become a dangerous

monster in need of harness. It has to be said that people don't seem to like big

business very much, we really don't like the power that companies have and we

certainly don't trust them to use them in our best interests! Advertising is

not about hope but expectations, marketing is not about dreams

but plans.

The false prophets of modern marketing have warped more than the

language of consumerism. The future is unknowable, what can be known,

commentary suggests, is that social media and the Internet is replicating the

same errors old advertising and marketing committed. Somebody needs to make a

move, unilaterally determining that Social Media et al are not excellent

marketing vehicles . merely more clutter!

Over the past two years, that evolution [the difficulty of "influencing

customers by relying solely on one-way, push advertising"] has only accelerated.

More and more consumers are using digitalrecorders to fast-forward through TV commercials and

are consuming video content on Web sites such as YouTube and on mobile devices. Billboards

alongside train lines and bus routes struggle to capture the attention of people absorbed

by the screens of their smart phones. Meanwhile, today's more empowered,

critical, demanding, and price-sensitive customers are turning in ever-growing

numbers to social networks, blogs, online review forums, and other channels to

quench their thirst for objective advice about products and to identify brands

that seem to care about forming relationships with them. Individuals even are

posting their own commercials on YouTube. In short, the avenues (or touch

points) customers use to interact with companies have continued to multiply.

The problem for many companies is that the very things that make push marketing

effective tight, relatively centralized operational control over a well-defined

set of channels and touch points hold it back in the era of engagement.

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.

Advertising and Marketing have to accept there is no way out of their decline.

Ehrenberg's resolute focus on the facts, what data actually tells us led him to challenge many a marketing bandwagon such as loyalty'.

 

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 effectivenesswas 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.

You Have Huge Amounts of Data…so Why are you Starved of Knowledge?

Despite spending hours on the 'phone or online your customers are just not connecting with you, resulting in angry customers hanging up and going elsewhere.                         

 We are becoming more and more divided by technology. Your customers' dread interactive voice-response, the on-hold  music that doubles the annoyance of queuing, the codes  are all barriers to effective communication.  The rage among your customers has reached an intensity, which is now causing great damage to your relationship with your customers. We are now dehumanising our customer relationships even more than conventional advertising ever did, the very objective of which  was to do the exact opposite! Your customers appear to be invisible to  you except as  computer generated stereotypes, while your organisation is viewed as remote and unreachable causing stress and suspicion rather than customer satisfaction.  According to a recent study by database software specialist Data Vantage. Fully eighty nine percent of service providers are failing to deliver the seamless service your customers want.  Causing damage to your brands, customers to defect, thus putting more pressure on sales. It would appear that most customer information in to days service organisations, expensively acquired, is wasted, and what does get through to Management is contaminated, diluted or otherwise unusable.  All this results in huge amounts of waste. Companies are drowning in data however, they are, oddly enough, starved of knowledge!  All resulting from a misunderstanding of that little word "Communication"! It would appear, understandably I hasten to add, that one of the main reasons this frustration and anger occurs, is when one of your customers calls your 'phone centre to complain about a bill. and then they receive a threatening reminder through the  post a week later!  In reality you and your customers are being divided  by technology, your relationship, conducted through computers has become so depersonalised as to be dangerous to the very well being of your brands and business.  And sad to say any new channel of communication simply increases management's' opportunity to repeat mistakes. For example if you send an email, your call centre will not have seen it!        As we said earlier, all resulting from a complete misunderstanding of  that word "communication". So let us examine that word ˜communication' a little more closely. The dictionary definition of communications is as follows:  Communication. n. 1. transmitting 2. A giving or exchange of information, etc.  by talk, writing b) the information so given 3. A means of communicating  4. The science of transmitting information. The interesting fact is the  expression 'the exchange of information' . Communication is not a one-way flow of information. Talking at or to someone does not imply successful communication. This only occurs when the receiver actually receives themessage, which the sender intended to send. Message rejection, misinterpretation and misunderstanding are the opposite of effective communication. However most marketing communication today depends on a single-step communications model. A message sender,  the message receiver. This basic model assumes that the sender is active, whilst the receiver is inactive or passive and the message is comprehended properly. In this case if  the message is creatively prepared and sent through the right medium and, if it cuts through all the other noise, and then if it is decoded correctly the messagehas done its job!  In closing please allow me to stress that we are, despite appearances, creating more problems than we realise, all this new technology is doing is alienating your customers more than ever before. With all the other problems, clutter, meaningless noise, mistrust, it is now vital that we rethink  our position on all commercial communication. The fact is that you, the Clients, can literally halve your colossal marketing budgets and, armed with a true interpretation and understanding of the word "communication" and be far morecost effectiveâ¦on all counts! 

The Attraction of Interactive Communication is that it is a return to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales!

Since the beginnings of any civilized society the market place was the hub of civilization, a place to which traders returned from remote lands with exotic spices, silks, monkeys, parrots, jewels - and fabulous stories. Interactive Communication, properly executed, more resembles an ancient bazaar than fits the business models companies try and impose upon it. 

People respond to interactive  opportunities because it seems to offer some intangible quality  long missing in action from modern life.  In sharp contrast to the alienation wrought by homogenized broadcast media, interactive opportunities provide a space in which the human voice would be rapidly rediscovered. Unlike the lockstep conformity imposed by television, advertising, and  corporate propaganda, interactive communication gives new legitimacy  and free rein  to play. People long for more connection between what we do for a living and what we genuinely care about.   We long for release from anonymity, to be seen as who we feel ourselves to be rather than the sum of abstract metrics and parameters.    We long to be part of a world that makes sense rather than accept the  accidental alienation imposed by market forces too large to grasp; to even contemplate. Remember the market place, of old. Caravans arrived across burning deserts dates and figs, snakes and parrots, monkeys, strange music and stranger tales.  The market place was the heart of the city, the kernel, the hub.Like the  past and the future it stood at the crossroads.   People worked early and went there for coffee and vegetables, eggs and wine, for pots and carpets.  They went there to look and listen and to marvel, to buy and to be amused.  But mostly they went to meet each other to talk and interact!  Markets are conversations.   So what went so horribly wrong? From the perspective of corporations, many of which by the twentieth century had become bigger and more powerful than ancient city-states, nothing went wrong. Things did change however. Commerce is a natural part of human life but is has become increasingly unnatural over the intervening centuries, gradually divorcing itself from the very people on whom it depends, whether workers or customers. The result has been to create a huge chasm between buyers and sellers. Advertising's failure! Conventional advertising has failed the natural human need for social  interaction. We have created a media society during the last 30 or 40 years where there is an extraordinary reduction in interaction because of the one-way and more passive form of information that exists.   People desire to be taken account of, to affect change, learn and personalize their relationships with their environment. These psychological and sociological factors are part of the  incentive to interact with advertising.  However, these tend to be minimized in the incentive direct response field, there are a phenomenal number of reasons which cause people to interact which go beyond just giving them things.

The lack of education about the communication process...

...means that millions are being poured down the black hole of ineffectiveness!   The problem is caused by advertising agencies, we all secretly feel that they are all a bunch of charlatans and yet! And yes, we have all met advertising people who were touchingly sincere and believed in what they were doing despite the lack of accountability! However the fact remains that most advertising people have minds so devoid of realism that they are still prepared to believe the mantra "advertising works!  

The science of communication is so mind-shatteringly elegant and inspiring that advertising, by its very nature, is demeaning and shallow and a total betrayal of what it is to actually communicate, especially when one considers what the human species has achieved in all else.  Perhaps the periodic swellings of emotion in the Western World over the past few years are, in actuality, the anguished pleas of a lonely and atomised populace dehumanised and depersonalised, and totally removed from any real social interaction, and desperate for company!  It is true to say that advertising is the enemy of rational thought, it encourages the victory of feeling over reason. Nevertheless there is a tremendous danger  to which big business appears to have succumbed in believing that advertising, in whatever form, is somehow invincible and all that we can do is debate alternatives within its framework.     Now advertising is dazzling us with the wonders of technology. It is  all so new, exciting and wonderfully opportune  and anyway if all that fails to excite us lets use cool sounding jargon!   The fact of the matter is  that Advertising is a grotesque manifestation of Top-Down-Management and has about as much intellectual rigour as Bambi! What is really foolish is that it clearly appeals to insecure political leaders who desperately want to be all things to all people!  In the current era of "The Market is always right", where have all the sceptics gone? There is no one to expose the bogus realities of much of advertising and marketing. Such is the grip of modern advertising that to question the omniscience of advertising is to bring down the wrath of God!  Which results in the Emperor still parading in his new birthday suit  and still totally unaccountable!  Advertisings' amazing benefits are simply an illusion conjured up by exotic advertising personalities of whom the biggest culprits were the Saatchi Brothers!  And boy did they lead the business world on a merry dance!  Advertising people refuse to learn from experience, and strive instead to discredit any new, superior methodof communication  denying us all of enlightenment and the benefits stemming from a superior method which, in turn, condemns them to repeat the past.  There is a far better way and it is proven accountable and very cost  effective!