Consumers are deaf to the babble of the advertising class.

It is true to say that all the advertising in the world won't bring the customers back!

Spending a huge fortune on TV advertising?

Rest assured these days your advertising slipped into the huge gulf of

mistrust, disbelief and total lack of interest that now separates the

Advertising Class from everybody else. This gulf is so full of disbelieved

advertising and ignored blogs,sales promotion gimmicks,direct marketing and

irrelevant banners/radio commercials.

The cynicism about advertising is so pervasive that it embraces almost all

marketing activity. Use a statistic? It's a lie. This cynicism extends to

the media, all advertising is seen as fiction inside an untruth wrapped in a piece

of spin! Most advertising proceeds as if there was still a reasonable degree

of trust. As if the message was still getting through, still be listened to,

still being weighed up. It must be hard to be in Advertising and to carry on if

the truth were faced.

For example, the rubbish that the food industry has fed people for decades,

along with its (literally) toxic products and the lies and omissions that it has

disseminated, well now is the time to challenge this concerted project of

misinformation, corruption and silence together with the programme to keep

people as ignorant as possible about factory farming. Myths trotted out

regularly.

The incredible plethora of choices consumers now possess has a downside, and

it's called exhaustion. An overwhelming number of possibilities complicates

every buying decision. Add to that all the other more baroque aspects of modern

life, such as two-income households, frequent divorce.

and remarriage and blending of increasing traffic,

shortening news cycles, and 100 channels of cable television, and you wind up

with a consumer group that feels very over loaded and harassed.

Stand back. Stop thinking like the operator and start thinking like a

customer. Better, talk to real customers. Or, better still, to real

non-customers. What do they want? What is missing for them? Customer focus is

important all the time, and is one of the main advantages that small firms enjoy

over their apparently stronger and more profitable larger rivals. In good

economic times, it's almost inevitable that, for big companies, the needs of

customers will drop down the list of corporate priorities, to some degree. This

creates an opportunity for small firms with a distinctive customer offering to

move in and clean up.

People Respect Bankers And Politicians More Than Marketers !



According to a study by Adobe and Edelman Berland, people think

both politicians and bankers are more respectable than marketers. Only 13 percent of

consumers think that marketing benefits society. In fact, only 35 percent of respondents who

work in marketing think that their profession is valuable.

But when asked if marketing benefits society, only 13% of consumers agreed.

And compared to other professions, the results were grim. Teachers -- despite

how little they are often compensated -- were valued at the top of the list,

followed by scientists and engineers. That's somewhat to be expected. But what

was more surprising was that advertising and marketing ranked below nearly every

other profession, including bankers (32%), lawyers (34%) and even politicians

(18%). Marketing and advertising was tied with the job of an actor or actress in

terms of its value.

There was only one profession that ranked lower in the survey, and even that

one is just a part of the marketing ecosystem: PR professionals. Only 11% said

PR is a valuable job. Meanwhile, the results weren't much better among

marketers; only 35% of people who were marketers themselves deemed it a valuable

profession in responding to the survey!

We live in a world of broken advertising and marketing models

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

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

Dead Air More Effective Than Facebook Ads

Dead Air More Effective Than Facebook Ads

The broadcast industry has a term called "dead air." It occurs when there's a

mistake or a technical glitch that results in no audio on radio, or no picture

on a TV screen. A blank TV screen is "dead air." In an absolutely

astounding experiment, the banner advertising equivalent of dead air -- a blank

display ad -- performed better than the average Facebook ad; twice as good as

the average "branding" display ad; and only one click in ten thousand worse than

the average of all display ads. Here are the details. AdAge this week has a piece called How Blank

 Display Ads Managed to Tot Up Some Impressive Numbers The article was written by Ted

 McConnell, exec VP-digital for the Advertising Research Foundation. Ted and a few friends (an

astrophysicist from an online analytics firm, a measurement expert from the Advertising Research

Foundation, and an ad-platform wizard from a buying and optimization company)

decided to do an experiment. The experiment was designed to discover how much

clicking of banner advertising was actual engagement with the ad, and how much

was just noise -- people clicking for no reason. To do this they created

a unique ad -- an ad with no message. A blank. According to McConnell...

"We created six blank ads in three IAB standard sizes, and two colors, white and orange. We

trafficked the ads via a demand-side platform (DSP) with a low bid. We started with run of

exchange, and in another phase trafficked to "named publishers" that would accept unaudited

copy." Here are the results:

The click-through rate on the blank ads was .08%. According to published

reports, the click-through rate on the average Facebook ad is about .05%. The

blank ad performed 60% better.

The click through rate for the blank ad was about double the average

click-through rate for a "branding" display ad (an ad without an offer.)

The click-through rate on the average banner ad is .09%. This means the

blank ad drew one click in ten thousand fewer than an average banner ad.

About .04% of the clicks were mistakes. Since the average click-through rate

for display ads is .09%, this indicates that it is possible that as much as 44%

of banner ad clicks are mistakes. The astounding thing is that with all

the data Facebook is collecting, all the geniuses we have analyzing display ad

results, all the space-age targeting we are constantly being beaten over the

head with, and all the young creative prodigies lecturing us on the magic of

online advertising, empty ads outperformed our online geniuses.

You simply cannot make this shit up.

Advertising will fail for three reasons:

There are three problems with advertising in any form, whether broadcast or

online:

Consumers do not trust advertising.

Dan Ariely has demonstrated that messages attributed to a commercial source have much lower

credibility and much lower impact on the perception of product quality than the same message

attributed to a rating service. Forrester Research has completed studies that show that

advertising and company sponsored blogs are the least-trusted source of

information on products and services, while recommendations from friends and

online reviews from customers are the highest.

Consumers do not want to view advertising. Think of watching network TV news and remember that

the commercials on all the major networks are as closely synchronized as possible.

Why? If network executives believed we all wanted to see the ads they would be staggered, so that

users could channel surf to view the ads; ads are synchronized so that users cannot

channel surf to avoid the ads. Consumers do not need advertising.

My own research suggests that consumers behave as if they

get much of their information about product offerings from the internet, through

independent professional rating sites or community content rating services like


www.ratebeer.com/" http://www.tripadvisor.com/"

Consumers Are Fed Up with Corporate Advertising & Manipulation

Consumers Are Fed Up with Corporate Advertising & Manipulation

Today, the New York Times reports on a new poll showing that a majority

of Americans are fed up with the hailstorm of advertising we all

suffer through. According to theYankelovich Partners poll:

* 65 percent said they believed that they "are constantly bombarded with

too much" advertising; * 61 percent agreed that the amount of advertising

and marketing to which they are exposed "is out of control"; * 60 percent

said their opinion of advertising "is much more negative than just a few

years ago"; * 54 percent of the survey respondents said they "avoid buying

products that overwhelm them with advertising and marketing";* 69 percent

said they "are interested in products and services that would help them skip

or block marketing;"





The Times story is below.

As the kingpins of Madison Avenue gather for a major annual meeting,

there is further evidence of the growing challenge they confront in seeking

to break through the cacophony of advertising that surrounds - and

increasingly annoys - consumers.

At the 2004 management conference of the American Association of

Advertising Agencies, which begins today in Miami, senior executives will

learn the results of a survey of consumers conducted on behalf of the

organization by Yankelovich Partners, the market research company. The

survey, to be presented tomorrow at the opening general session of the

conference, shows that the effectiveness of campaigns that agencies produce

for marketers is deteriorating, said J. Walker Smith, president at

Yankelovich, because

The survey findings are significant because industry executives

are frantically searching for ways to forge more emotional connections

with fractious, and fractionated, consumers that differ from conventional

methods like running 30-second television commercials and print

advertisements.

The risk posed by some of the new approaches, like placing sponsored

brand messages or products in the entertainment content of programs

or publications, is that consumers will consider such selling strategies

even more obnoxious.

"People have a love-hate relationship with advertising," said Mr. Smith,

who offered a preview of the survey in an interview before the conference

began. "But a far greater percentage are saying they have concerns,

primarily related to its growing obtrusiveness."

For instance, Mr. Smith said, 54 percent of the survey respondents said

they "avoid buying products that overwhelm them with advertising and

marketing"; 60 percent said their opinion of advertising "is much more

negative than just a few years ago"; 61 percent said they agreed that the

amount of advertising and marketing to which they are exposed "is out of

control."

Also, 65 percent said they believed that they "are constantly bombarded

with too much" advertising; and 69 percent said they "are interested in

products and services that would help them skip or block marketing."

How to market an antimarketing product to people surfeited with

marketing? Ah, there's the rub.

Even when fewer than a majority of the survey respondents agreed with

a statement, Mr. Smith said, the results offered little solace for

agencies. For example, what he called a "fairly significant" 45 percent of

respondents said the amount of advertising and marketing they were exposed to

"detracts from the experience of everyday life," while 33 percent said they

"would be willing to have a slightly lower standard of living to live in a

society without marketing and advertising."

The results also offer some suggestions, Mr. Smith said, to help narrow

what he described as "the growing gap between how consumers want to

be communicated with and the way advertisers communicate with them."

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

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

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

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

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

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

its advertising."

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

75 percent of all national advertising, recognizes it must address

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

agenda are any indication.

Among the subjects to be discussed at the conference, which

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

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

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

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

president of Anheuser-Busch.

Other topics are how agencies can create campaigns consumers will like

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

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

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

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

the chairman of the association for 2004-6.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

do."

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

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

Mr.
Berger said, "so what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

history."

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

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

optimistic or pessimistic agency executives are about prospects for the

industry.

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

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

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

at the 2002 conference.

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

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

largest member attendance since 1990," which is attendees minus

speakers, representatives of media companies and other organizations like

the Association of National Advertisers, spouses and reporters.

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

˜Advertising is failure,"

˜Advertising is failure," says Jeff Jarvis, and he thinks' media only get in

the way of customer relationships. And indeed, how will you make more friends

at a party? Showing up with a big banner around your neck that says "I am a

great friend" or engaging in a handful of conversations with strangers,

listening to their stories and detecting affinities whilst accomplishing a sense

of privacy that gradually becomes intimate? Right. In the end, that's what we

should be doing as marketers to build real, sustainable brand equity creating

publicity through intimacy, loyalty through decency.

William McEwen, authour of "Married to the Brand" and "Inside the Mind of the

Chinese Consumer", writes: "Agencies must recognize that advertising is neither

the outcome nor the objective. Advertising's job is to set the stage for an

actual customer experience. Then, the company's performance, the quality and

consistency of its products, and its human brand ambassadors will determine the

company's sustainable growth and enduring success. There is absolutely no value

in making a brand promise, however memorable it might be, if a company cannot or

will not keep it.

If ad agencies want to regain their position as valued contributors to a

company's success, then they must also help their clients focus on promise

delivery. If agencies only care about making the promise and not about helping

ensure that the promise will be kept, then they are shirking their

brand-building job. It is, after all, the synergy between promise and

performance that represents ultimate success and that's true for the agency

and the client.

So is advertising dead/dying, or merely having temporary breathing problems?

Interested to hear what readers think.

Paul Ashby @ paulashby40@yahoo.com

THE NEXT BIG THING...

...FLOGS

　

Be careful what you believe on the internet: there’s a growing chance that you re being hoaxed by a cynical PR firm. Just as the blogging explosion was teaching us about "vlogs" (video bloggs) and "moblogs" (mobile blogs), along comes yet another trend that is far more pernicious.

A "flog" is a fake weblog that purports to chronicle an ordinary consumer’s passion for a business or a product, typcally without the company behind it declaring an interest. It is a scandalously dishonest practice.

Take Laura and Jim, an ordinary couple who recently drove a camper van across America and stopped over for free each night at their nearest Wal-Mart car park. Their likeably amateurish travel journal, Wal-Marting across America, chronicled all the decent, hard working Wal-Mart employees they encountered during their stopovers, all of whom seemed to have been stories about the company.

Lo and behold, the couple turned out to be a professional paid by Wal-Mart’s PR firm, Edelman, and folksy Jim was revealed to be a professional Washington Post photographer. Last month, Laura used the blog to come clean, admitting that she "should have done a better job" telling her story.

Since then, Edelman’s fingerprints have been found all over other related flogs. Working Families For Wal-Mart claims to be a grassroots advocacy group focusing on "the positive contribution of Wal-Mart to working families"; the PaidCritics.com blog sets out to "expose" union employees paid to "smear" the retail chain. Typical postings attack activists for denying "working families" cheap Wal-Mart prescriptions of half-price baby food.

Use Interactive Marketing Communication and know exactly what your getting!

Current advertising is all about fraud!

Most advertising and marketing reporting is total BS!
A combination of wishful thinking, propaganda and deliberate deception.
And nobody seems to grasp the full scope & depth of the dishonesty in advertising as well as marketing...in business schools, in marketing, in advertising, in Government - in fact dishonesty is everywhere!