is advertising as we know it dead?
5.25.2009 | blog
Most of today’s advertising students has abandoned the traditional way of selling a product or branding a brand. Most of us are looking in another direction trying to sell products or brands by using a totally different approach for reaching the target audience. Reaching them by infiltrating them. Giving them the message and make sure they communicate your message for you. Making them consumer evangelists. Not unlike Jesus once did giving his disciples the ability to speak different languages to communicate Jesus message to a broader audience and making them his evangelists, and his legacy is still being told to the masses 2000 years later. That’s advertising, and its damn good. So the idea is not new, its pretty old and its common sense. Its the old way of getting your products to the people who wants your product. Make a product people want to talk about, and they sure are going to tell there friends about how great your product is. Until one day there simply was to much products out there (the industrialisation). People didn’t understand why they needed a new product when the old one was still going strong. So the factory’s was in need of help to sell the products. That’s the birth of advertising and mass consumption. So what Seth Godin and a lot of other people are rambling about now is get back to basic.
But what about the good “old” advertising? Is it dead?
It would be naive to say that a billboard or a TV commercial isn’t working. It is working damn well. I feel it myself. I want to run out of the coach to buy some of the stuff I see advertised on the TV screen. The question is: Is this the right way to communicate my message? What do I owe my consumers? Can I justify to make a crappy product and lure people to buy it because I’m screaming out the brands name?
The old media is a powerful medium. But it is an interrupting medium which don’t enhances the product sold but informs me of the product. The power of new media aka Internet if used in the right way is the ability to enhance the product and give it new abilities trough marketing (think of McDonalds The Lost Ring vs a McDonalds TV commercial). That’s powerful.
Use whats suites you.
What do you think?
5.25.2009
The traditional way of advertising is not dead, as we go into a time where (in norway atleast) alot of people will retire, and have lots of money. This means lots of conspumption, and the way to reach them…… Yes, with traditional channels.
BUT – nowadays, most people between 45 and 10 use the internet every day. We want to connect with the brands we like. And that challenges the very concept of advertising – which actually means “to say something many times”. Now you have to make something good – something worth talking about – something worth spreading. Just pointing your finger and saying a pay-off doesn’t do the trick anymore. You MUST connect with you audience, you must engage them, and I also think it cannot feel like advertising.
Our industry is changing – we are now inventors.
5.25.2009
And that makes us so excited, and we just cant hide it.
Im about to lose control, but I think I like IT.
5.25.2009
You are sure right Morten. I like to think of the audience as a bank I have to invest in to get profit. The investment could be anything as long as its something the target audience benefits from.