As an advertising medium....

....the web is like communism. It's never very good right now, but it's always going to be great some day."

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.

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.

　

　

　

Game Playing and Marketing Games Offer you a Unique Way to Entertain...

-- and sell at the same time!

Whilst experimenting with social networks, user-generated content and on line video,

marketers appear content to view games as little more than another

class advertising platform. The untapped potential of game

playing lies in their ability to tell stories, thereby more closely linking

brand benefits with game play and blurring the lines between brand and

entertainment. Games, properly structured, fundamentally alter the customers

perception to the presentation and content of your marketing messages thus

making the advertisements themselves a source of meaningful information. Games allow Brands to

become engaging, and entertaining -- thereby providing something of value in exchange for

attention.

Brands such as Persil, Birds Eye and Quaker Oats have relied on game playing to create

narratives that consumers want to be a part of. In the process, they've done

more than just break through the clutter, or better position themselves in

consumer's minds. Games remain one of the biggest untapped

opportunities for marketers, for the simple fact that they are, indeed, engaging

interactive and entertaining. Well-conceived games require users' active

attention and enable them to drive the story line as they experience a world

that can be entirely of a brand's making. Games represent a unique opportunity

for brands to be the entertainment rather than just sponsor it.

So what do original games get you? If you're Quaker Oats,

you get year-over-year double-digit sales growth, as well as a

marketing program that has generated significant

revenue. So what does this mean for marketers? It

demonstrates that there's a burgeoning mainstream audience increasingly

receptive to branded entertainment in the form of original episodic games and

willing to grant brands their attention in exchange for enjoyable

experiences. Games need to be implemented strategically.

As with any marketing approach, objectives and performance expectations for

game-based marketing need to be considered upfront. Here are some things to keep

in mind: A game tends to work best as a component of an integrated campaign

rather than an afterthought. Original episodic games can

counteract this imbalance by delivering a high level of play and replay value to

consumers while putting the brand at the center of the experience.

So does a brand need to be interesting or provocative in order to make a

good game? Absolutely not. All our examples show that basic games deployed and

used well were effective at making a low-involvement category more interesting

and engaging. And implemented properly, games could address many of the

challenges facing financial-services companies -- building involvement,

generating a prospect , creating a sense of community, even delivering a positive brand halo.

　

　

　

　

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!

HOW MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE IS INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATION?

　

Professor E.L. Roberto, PhD, Coca-Cola Foundation Professor of International Marketing reviewed the £5 million of independent research conducted on behalf of Interactive "Events" and provided this summary as to the techniques cost efficiency:


"The "Event" participating advertisements generated recall scores that are more than 50% productive than normal advertising.

The effect on purchase intention is just as impressive if not much more.

All these productivity increments are attainable at a reasonably inexpensive budget. One Shopper’s Voice Client revealed that for its participating brand, its quarter television expenditure was $5.7 million as compared to its Interactive budget of $0.5 million.

This 1:10 ratio has been obtained in Shopper’s Voice experience in other countries."

Source: AGB: Gallup: Martyn Research: Bourke: NOP. City Insights & more.

　

　

So Many Clicks, So Few Sales

Pay-per-click advertising seems like a dream. But up to 35% of

all the clicks you pay for may be fraudulent.

It didn't make any sense. Kevin Steele, co-owner of Karaoke Star, a Phoenix

retailer of karaoke equipment, noticed that the number of people clicking on his

paid search-engine ads had shot from 200 to 800 a day. But despite the apparent

jump in traffic, sales hadn't budged. Steele and his partner, Diana Frerick, had

built their business on Internet advertising, and more clicks almost always

meant more revenueâ€"which the pair had invested in a new office, more inventory, and a call center to field technical questions.

Steele thought he had pay-per-click advertising down to a science. Karaoke

Star spent about $2,000 a day on search-engine ads at Google and Overture, a

subsidiary of Yahoo focusing on keywords like "karaoke","karaoke player,"

"karaoke song"to generate about $6,000 a day in sales. Suddenly, it had to

budget the same amount just to get $3,000. With each keyword costing

anywhere between 40 cents and $3 a click, Karaoke Star found itself being

nickel-and-dimed to death. "One day we were doing great, says Steele, "and

the next it was as if someone had turned off the lights."

The problem was click fraud, which occurs when people click on paid search

ads with no intention of buying anything. In some cases, the clicker is a

competitor that wants to force a rival to burn through cash. Other times it's

someone from an affiliate site that hosts search-engine ads and receives a small

commission for every click. It could be a team of users clicking repeatedly on

an ad. Or, most commonly, the fraudulent clicks are automated by "hitbot"

software.

Experts estimate that 20% to 35% of all ad clicks may be bogus. Whatever the

number, it's as if thousands of people are charging you for window-shopping.

Steele says the fraudulent clicking has cost Karaoke Star nearly $400,000 over

the past two and a half years.

The paid search ad market is essentially a grand auction. Advertisers bid on

specific keywords; the terms with the highest demand fetch the highest prices,

and the advertisers that pay the most get the highest placement on the search

engine's webpage. Because affiliate sites earn commissions based on how many

clicks the ads receive, there's a lot of incentive to claim as many clicks as

possible. Paid online search is a nearly $3 billion business and it's easy to

see why. Popular keywords can get very expensive very fast.

The major search engines all acknowledge that click fraud is a problem. In a

recent SEC filing, for example, Google warned investors that "if fraudulent

clicks are not detected, the affected advertisers may experience a reduced

return on their investment which could lead to loss of advertisers and

revenue.

What's an advertiser to do? If you think you've been charged for bogus

clicks, you might be able to convince a search engine to credit your account.

The problem is, getting a search engine to hand over a record of your

advertising activity is no easy feat. Search engines treat such data as

proprietary and are loath to share it. Karaoke Star's Steele and Frerick, for

example, expressed their suspicions to Overture and were given some "token

refunds, Steele says. But Overture steadfastly refused to tell them who was

behind the bogus clicks. Nor would it give Karaoke Star the data it needed to

figure it out itself.

Fortunately, Karaoke Star as well as a number of other online karaoke

stores received an anonymous e-mail tip from someone claiming to be a former

employee of Ace Karaoke, a competitor in City of Industry, Calif. Attached to

the e-mail, according to Steele, was a video that showed an automated click

fraud program employed by Ace Karaoke to target the stores. Frerick and Steele

retained a lawyer who has contacted Ace Karaoke, as well as Google and Overture,

and informed them of his intention to sue. Why target the search engines?

"Because Google and Overture make the most money from click fraud and have

the least amount of incentive for taking simple precautions to prevent the fraud,

says C. Tab Turner, a plaintiffs' attorney in North Little Rock, Ark., who

represents Karaoke Star. Overture and Google declined to comment on the matter.

Ace Karaoke's owner, David Su, denies the charges. "At this stage, there is

no way for advertisers to prevent fraudulent clicks from being billed to their

accounts.

Unlike Karaoke Star, many advertisers are reluctant to complain out of fear

that the search engines, which provide most of their traffic, could blacklist

them. "At this stage, there is no way for advertisers to prevent fraudulent

clicks from being billed to their accounts,says Jessie Stricchiola, president

of Alchemist Media, a click fraud auditing firm in Hollywood.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to taking legal action. There are a

number of click fraud auditing tools available including Click Lab, Click

Defense, and Click Detective that are designed to alert you to suspicious

clicks. The cost can range from $29.95 to several thousand dollars a month,

depending on the amount of traffic your site receives. Or you could hire a

consultant like Stricchiola to analyze your traffic and broker a deal with the

search engines. But Stricchiola, who charges between $250 and $450 an hour,

warns that it often costs more in time and money to identify the problem than is

actually lost to click fraud. There are also alternative search engines, such as

Brooklyn-based BlowSearch, which guarantees that its advertisers will not

receive any automated clicks on their ads or they'll get their money back. Of

course, BlowSearch gets only a tiny fraction of the traffic of the big search

engines and offers less bang for the advertising buck.

In the end, you may have little option but to accept fraudulent clicks as a

cost of doing business and recalculate your expected advertising ROI

accordingly. That's what Karaoke Star is doing. Of course, it's also reserving

the right to sue.

Unequivocal Proof That No One Has Ever Clicked On A Web Ad

We sometimes enjoy role playing. Not the French maid kind of role playing, the business kind. Not that we have anything against French maids...Today, I am going to role play. I am going to pretend I am a web data analyst and use the mathematics and logic of web analysis to prove to you that no one has ever clicked on a web ad intentionally. Sound like fun? Here we go. Recently, several trade publications reported on a study by Webtrends that claims that click-through rates on Facebook ads have dropped to .05%. To those of you who were not math majors, this means that for every 10,000 ads served on Facebook, 5 get clicked on.

This is described by Adweek "abysmal." It is worse than abysmal. It is mind-blowingly, incomprehensibly, abysmally abysmal. But that's not the end of it. According to a Facebook insider, the 5-clicks-in-10,000 number is actually a gross exaggeration. This person says that the true number is actually less than half that -- 2 clicks per 10,000.  You're probably not as unstable as I am, but maybe you've noticed something. Every now and then, as you're wasting your life away on the web, you accidentally click on something that you didn't intend to click on. I call this Unintended Click Syndrome. In my case, at least half the time I find myself facing a display ad, I had no intention of clicking on it. I got there as the result of being a victim of Unintended Click Syndrome.

According to Google,  the number of these invalid clicks" may be as high as 10% of all clicks (they define "invalid" clicks as those that are either unintended or fraudulent.)Let's be generous here and say that only 5% of clicks are unintended. Now let's do a little math.

If the Facebook click-through rate is 5 in 10,000 (let's be generous again and use Webtrend's number) , and the invalid click rate is 5%, then of 500 clicks in 10,000 are invalid. It is, therefore, quite possible that all  the clicks on Facebook ads are invalid and the actual click-through rate for Facebook ads is zero. But this is not just true of Facebook. The  click-through rate for all web ads is 1 in a thousand. If the rate of  unintended clicks is 50 in a thousand (5%) then, once again, it is possible that the rate of intended clicks on all web ads is zero.My conclusion -- no one has ever intentionally clicked on a web ad.

　

　

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.

Online advertising has of course become a multi-million...

,

...if not billion, dollar enterprise what with the entire world online at one point or another at any

given time of the day. Surely if you're a brand manager or brand marketer you

know the value of online advertising as part of an overall integrated

marketing campaign.

But what if the most powerful brand ambassadors in the world are not the

least bit interested in your online advertising? What would you do then?

Well you may want to go back to the proverbial drawing board Mr. & Mrs.

Brand Manager because based on a recent survey, the most powerful brand

ambassadors are indeed not the least bit interested in your online

advertising, at least a large majority of them.

And in just in case there were any doubts as to whom the most powerful brand

ambassadors are, when you factor in that women account for 85% of all consumer purchases

including everything from autos to health care, it only stands to reason that

the most powerful ambassador a brand can have is a woman.

As to the aforementioned survey, the folks at Ask Your Target Market or AYTM recently

surveyed consumers on their likes and dislikes when it came

to online advertising. Overall, the results showed that when asked how likely

they were to click on an online ad, 65% indicated they were either not very

likely or not likely at all to click on an online ad! Only Interactive Marketing Communication can

attract your target market to your advertising...and be effective as well!

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.

　

Nobody In Advertising Appeared To Notice




When it was reported that 65% of all marketing spend had no effect on

consumers! Despite the fact that working in Advertising is not rocket

science, accountability is not a strong factor, creativity is! As more and

more evidence emerges as to the failure of advertising to do what it says it

does. Sell products/services, there are some errors that advertising people

commonly make. One is a complete failure to learn from experience. The other is

the advertising ego. Advertising people hate facing up to information like 65%

of all marketing spend had no effect because that forces us to acknowledge that

they aren't as clever as they make themselves out to be! These

unpalatable truths contribute to the increasing problems facing advertising,

like the meaningless noise syndrome. Together with a total lack of

understanding as to the true meaning of the word accountability, or, for that

matter communication. This declining effectiveness is due, in part, to

an earlier perception that over-estimated advertising's power. In the

industry's days of dominance, peopled believed it could change the ways

consumers think and behave, not just influence them to favour one brand in a

category they were already considering. In earlier days there was a

faith than when there was little objective difference among products, an

emotion-laden image is always used as a motivator. Much of this sense of

advertising's enormous power and the almost inevitable effectiveness of image

advertising grew as mass advertising followed mass manufacturing in the 50s'

and 60s. Mass manufacturing led to one-size-fits-all products. Local,

individualised, and speciality products disappeared, and mass consumerism was

achieved, yet strangely the recent statements on Advertising is a no win situation,

appears to trouble the Advertising Community not at all! Perhaps that is

because their bosses do not see through the fudges. The division of

labour that makes companies efficient in so far as they are is also a division

of knowledgeso why keep a dog and bark yourself? And who really wants (or

cares) to discover what communication really is? Frankly it shows us that

organisations can't always be run effectively, even when managed by highly

intelligent people. So why should advertising people pretend that that is not

also true of Advertising Agencies? The idea of advertising progress is

as enduring as any. Beyond the occasional doubt, advertising people do need to

believe that everything is all right in the world of make believe. So

the message of technological innovation, the computer, the Internet or Web 2.0,

the Mobile Telephone et al is received readily. Certainly with regard to

effective communication this perception of technological progress is mistaken.

The poor old customer, or in advertising speak, Consumer, does not want

to take delivery of even more messages, after all they do not appear to be

taking much notice of the messages that exist already! Perhaps we should

practice what Virgil preached, advertising should consist of always going

forward backwards!

　

Forget all the talk of post-recession rebuilding.

We are still advertising with no accountability and must now reduce our expectations. The

coming nonsense is that when this recession is over, countries such as America & Britain

should seek and find our salvation in (in what will become a buzz phrase of 2009-10) a "new

Marketing model".

Wrong. Actually we're just stuffed. Marketing & Advertising hit a

tree. There is no replacement advertising model for us to drive off in. We must

bash out the dents, clear the broken glass, remove the bumper from the front

wheel, and limp on as best we can. We should accommodate ourselves to that

prospect. Instead, as our prosperity sinks, the Marketing gurus rhetoric will

go skyward. "New challenges", "a new vision", "post-millennial economy",

"thinking outside the box" ... "new technology" how wearisome this inspirational

PowerPoint pap becomes.

Already I can hear the so-called great and the good of

the (failed) Marketing and Advertising community boasting of the next

generation of marketing thrust. Melancholy will be the spectacle of a range

of middle-aged-to-elderly marketing & advertising throwbacks burbling about

life changes and sea changes and gear changes and step changes for American

& British Marketing. "Post-recession Britain ... new age ... new marketing

dispensation ... recalibrate ... re-balance ... blah, blah, blah." Oh boy, is

this nonsense going to sound wise. The riff will be that Western Marketing, like

America & Britain's must reinvent themselves.Behind the curve, and

banging the table as ever, they all have not yet latched on to the rhetoric of

the "new economic model". They are still trying to kick life back into the old

one. So the talk until recently has been about "kick-starting" the old

economy. This mindless attempt to return to routine is an indication either of

the absence of imagination, or of panic. But as it becomes apparent even to the

Marketing & Advertising community that there is to be no return to that

golden decade of no hard choices and uninterrupted growth together with Top Down

Management techniques that have failed miserably.

Although (the argument will concede) the old rust-belt industries of the 20th century had to

go, the West turned its back on industry rather too readily. We were bedazzled by

Marketing services, fool's gold from Mad Ave ; Soho.We need (wait for it) a

new Marketing model. First, we must (argh) "rebalance" our economy.

Media Agencies must seek out (key words) "a new generation" of shiny new media

strengths, a second-wave advertising renaissance. What, then, are these

strengths? Our talent (runs the argument) for (key word) "innovation"; an "IT"

(key word) generation; the potential of our existing (key word) "creative"

agencies and (key words) "high added-value" marketing activity; and our (key

words) "genius for invention". Vital to all this will be (key words) "skills",

"training" and "education". We should remind ourselves, too, of that inestimable

resource to our economy: English as a (key words) "world language". And it will all be

just so much hot air. What is it, precisely, that we do so much better than any

other country, althought I must admit that all the trade magazines say at one

time or another that " American British Advertising is the best in the

world". Whatever that means!

Supposedly we live in an age when it is easier to communicate

than ever before. The sad fact is that due to the fact that we live in an over informed society, we

are now turning away from the downpour of information that is vainly trying to

attract our attention. The problem is so huge, so vast, that it is

difficult to know where to start. However, let's look at just one small area, an area that affects us all,

Customer Services. When it comes to complaining you

must first bypass "Customer Services" - a service which is actually a cunning

modern day ploy NOT to serve customers! Nowadays if you have the

audacity to attempt 'phone contact with almost

any organisation, you will, undoubtedly, be put through to the hell of "Customer

Services". New technology, new legislation, together with new

management styles, are the weapons in this new age of

customer alienation. I wonder what on earth they are teaching these days

at the Business Management

Schools The new age of alienation is practised most effectively

by the larger organisations - banks, utility companies, Local Councils and etc.

To me all this new technology, even in this great age of easier

communication, allows those who couldn't really be bothered an easier opportunity to be just

that, not really be bothered with you, the customer! And most of what

passes for marketing looks as if the practitioners of advertising really couldn't be bothered -

advertising has run out of inspiration. And this is despite the fact that

advertising is the main cause of all that information

clutter out there! Advertising has always had a bad name, nowadays it

appears to be getting worse.It has been brought lower and lower by the

execrable standards of television, especially "reality" TV, and by liars, the

'phone scams and hucksters parading across our T.V screens. Perhaps,

just perhaps, you might think that this is too strong a condemnation, well then

please consider this. It embarrassing to have to say this however the Government

is being urged to repay VAT earned from phone-in scandals. That just how low the

hucksters of TV have brought the TV Industry!

We really need a more ethical advertising, and our whole concept of marketing practice needs to change

.

We must recognise that advertising has real responsibilities and that marketing is not just about

making money. 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!

This marketing crisis is an opportunity to call advertising to account.

The professional role of Marketing and Advertising Management has been

undermined by the total lack of true accountability and other problems that link

this management to the short-term interests of the advertising agencies

themselves. Maximum profit seeking has increasingly taken precedence over

long-term accountability together with a complete understanding, and

implementation, of the communications process!

Are we at all surprised that the current advertising crisis has come this far? Let's be honest: the

warning voices have been around for a long time, the fact that these warnings were consistently

ignored has now brought about the near collapse of the system.We live in a

schizophrenic world and we will be held accountable for our sins.The reasons

why the writing on the wall was ignored has to do with the denying of

inconvenient truths and also because nobody really felt responsible or capable

of action. The advertising/marketing bodies either lacked the authority or

the competency to deal with the challenges of a global advertising system that

has gone horribly wrong! Furthermore, individual advertising agencies have

not shown the initiative to address a fundamentally flawed and restrictive

process of communication together with a total lack of accountability.

Additionally none of the advertising agencies and the media have shown any

evidence of long term vision. Additionally the regulatory functions, such as

they are have been abused by many within the industry, consciously or

unconsciously to the great detriment of Clients and their Customers. The

professional role of Marketing and Advertising Management has been undermined by

the total lack of true accountability and other problems that link this

management to the short-term interests of the advertising agencies

themselves.

It can be said with confidence that Interactive Communication,

properly executed, will emerge as the New Advertising and is proven to be far more effective. It allows Clients to save huge amounts of money, it will also allow Clients to make very accurate decisions upon where to position their brand(s) in fact it will allow Clients to emerge highly successful and arguably healthier than ever before!

Interactive is a bold call for a new Advertising. The phrase "In the Clients interest" so out of fashion for a long time has returned and Clients can only benefit from it!

It also frees the best marketing people to abandon their claim that "We have the best creativity" Interactive Communication proves to Clients the utter banality of that claim, Creativity has never been the sole criterion for the success, or otherwise, of marketing communication.

Advertising-as-usual is long on self-promotion and back stabbing and very short on talent & personal responsibility. Advertising-as-usual is so conservative that it lacks entrepreneurial talent and it will only be through new ideas and new companies that marketing will pull through from from their travails.

However that does not mean that you should rush onto Social Media - all things in moderation wont hurt you, Social Media, properly executed, belongs in the media mix! However the problem is that we are in this evolutionary period, nothing is factually based, it's all new with the sole exception of interactive communication!

　

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!

　

More accountability: Being the results of one exposure to an interactive programme vs traditional (frequency and reach) advertising.




　

Client: S.J. Johnson & Sons.

Brand: Raid Cockroach Control System.

Research: AGB.

"The rate of increase in the level of awareness of Raid Cockroach Control System was dramatic (61.8%) among those who saw the Event. Seeing the Raid page within the Event dramatically increased scores for Past-Four-Week-Purchase (100%), scores among people who claimed to see the page increased Future-Purchase-Intent (DWB) by 60%. Advertising Awareness increased 83.4% among main grocery buyers."

　

Client: Reckitt & Colman.

Brand: Setamol 500 analgesic.

Research: AGB.

"Findings from this Post Event Survey show impressive increases in scores for those who saw the Event in comparison for those who did not. Results are consistently superior in all three key market measures; Prompted-Brand-Awareness +92.6%, Past-Four-Week-Purchase +47% and Definitely-Will-Buy +47%."

　

Client: Duracell.

Brand: Duracell Batteries.

Research: Martyn Research.

"Unaided-Awareness (Brand-First-Mentioned) of Duracell increased by 50% for readers who saw the interactive Event. Advertising-Awareness increased 200%, correct recognition of advertising message increased 19% and purchase increased 29%."

　

Client: Roche.

Brand: Rennie Duo.

Research: City Insights.

City Insights report "A very large increase in spontaneous awareness – Control 0%, Test 10%. They also report that "Rennie Duo is a small brand BUT it has encouraging purchasing in both % Last bought & % Most often brand bought, in both cases 4% for Test & 0% for Control, additionally there was an increase in intention to definitely buy – from 0% to 6%.

　

Client: Pfizer.

Brand: Plax Dental Rinse.

Research: AGB.

"Post-Event Survey results shows that the results of Pfizer’s participation with its PLAX Dental Rinse product has raised scores on key measurements of Awareness and Purchase for the brand ranging from 73+% to 200+%."

　

Client: Colgate Palmolive.

Brand: CP Anti-Dandruff Shampoo.

Research: AGB.

"The value of the Interactive Technique has again been evidenced in the findings of this Post-Event Survey.

Substantial increases in scores for the product on key market measurements of Prompted-Brand-Awareness, Past-Four-Weeks-Purchase and Future-Purchase-Intent (DWB) have been achieved amongst main grocery buyers with ranges from 42.6% for Brand-Awareness; 200+% for Past-Four-Weeks-Purchase and DWB 600+%."

　

Client: Kraft Foods.

Brand: Philadelphia Cream Cheese.

Research: AGB.

"The Pre-Event scores on this measure (Prompted-Brand-Awareness) remained static amongst those who who did not see the Event at around 82%. This percentage rose by 12.2% to reach 92.6% amongst main grocery buyers who saw the event, additionally there was a substantial rise of 69.3% on Past-Four-Week-Purchase and 42.9% increase in Future-Purchase-Intention (DWB)."

　

Client: Leggo’s.

Brand: Plumrose Leg Ham (Canned).

Research: Martyn Research.

"Unpromted-Brand-Awareness increased +14% amongst main grocery buyers who saw the Event, Bought Plumrose Leg Ham-In-Past-28 Days increased 60%, and Future-Purchase-Intent increased 64% (DWB). Among those who saw the Event Advertising Awareness increased by 400%."

　

Client: Stuart Alexander.

Brand: Moccona Coffee.

Research: AGB.

"Prompted-Brand-Product-Awareness among all main grocery buyers for Moccona Espresso’s was increased by 36% as a result of participation within the Interactive Technique Event. A net growth of 14.3% on the Past-Four-Week-Purchase – and Next-Four-Week-Purchase-Intent was also recorded. Further, the main claim made for the brand has shown to be more persuasive to potential purchase when it is presented in the Interactive format."

　

Client: Bush’s.

Brand: Bush’s Dog Food (Canned).

Research: AGB.

"Amongst those who saw the Bush’s presentation in this latest Event, growth over those who did not see the Event was in the order of 47% for all main grocery buyers. Once again, as following previous participation by Bush’s Dog Food, there was significant growth in Past-Four-Week-Purchase +22% and growth of 25% was recorded for Next-Purchase-Intent (DWB)."

　

Client: P&O Stena.

Brand: Cross Channel Ferries.

Research: City Insights.

"City Insights report a 21% increase in the spontaneous awareness of P&O Stena. Additionally there has been a positive shift in the usage of P&O Stena +12%. Additionally there was a substantial increase in preferance for P&O Stena from 37% to 67%. There was a positive uplift in intention to use P&O Stena in the future (DNT) from 32% to 67%."

The repetitious cry and certain belief that "creativity" is the answer to all marketing problems -


– it isn't and frankly never really has been.

It's a given that all human knowledge is provisional but it is also incremental, the sum of what we know to day is far greater than thirty years ago – with, possibly, the sole exception of marketing/advertising. Nothing new has been added to the armory of advertising…no debate is taking place as to where to go next! Perhaps that is because there is no place else to go!

However to day it is still an article of faith among advertising people that advertising will not change because "it works"!

Facing the painful truth is the first essential step in devising a sensible strategy for the perpetuation of advertising. And the painful truth is "Advertising no longer works"!

Is it because that, for financial reasons, you do not want to address the problem of clutter…because it is a huge and growing problem which contributes to the declining effectiveness of all advertising.
The poor old customer, or in advertising speak, Consumer, does not want to take delivery of even more messages, after all they do not appear to be taking much notice of the messages that exist already!
The advertising world has dehumanized and depersonalized the process of communication and very little evidence of consideration of the consumer exists!