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.

Maximum profit seeking has increasingly taken precedence over long-term accountability

together with a complete misunderstanding, and implementation, of the communications process!

Markets work best when consumers are well informed about the products they are

purchasing and companies are genuinely incentivised to compete for new business

on the basis of transparent products that perform in the marketplace. Sadly,

this hasn't been the case with the current Marketing and Advertising available

because of a number of factors, clutter, lack of interaction, no accountability,

no exchange of information etc etc. Radical reforms are needed to build an

accountable commercial commercial programme with consumers interests at its very

heart. The bubbles that always exist in every market. One of the most

famous bubbles in the advertising world is the Saatchi & Saatchi bubble

which nearly convinced every one that they, and they alone, were responsible for

the election win of Margaret Thatcher, they were not. Nevertheless they had

Clients flocking to them in the quite mistaken belief that they, the Saatchi

brothers, could increase their sales. Now, along comes another bubble, The

Martin Lindstrom bubble. Lindstrom is the so called guru of Neuro-marketing

which makes the whole process of selling sound so simple. Utter rubbish yet

more Clients will be persuaded to part with millions of dollars before they too

will see this as nothing but another bubble. His very existence proves yet

again that our current methods of marketing are inaccurate and very very

questionable. The article on Lindstrom is headlined "Now the buyer must

beware". The sad fact is that "the buyer" has always been aware, they are

turning away from the clutter, and meaningless chatter of current advertising in

their millions, a very similar bubble occurred a few years ago, this particular

bubble was called "subliminal advertising" and was a complete farce and hoax!

Neuro-marketing is an even bigger bubble and hoax.

Brands need to take notice of the amazing opportunities available to them




right now, opportunities that have laid dormant because of the strangle hold

ad agencies have had on the marketing communications process until very recently.

All advertising is a form of learning, education and game playing should

become the new promotion.

Consumers have a huge desire for brand knowledge and learning, and far prefer

facts and storytelling, this mean more to them than a celebrity spokesperson or

a catchy tag line.

This allows your customer to exercise their own "personal discovery" on their

chosen brand.

Another problem facing Brands is the fact that marketers tend to overestimate

the value of what they already have and have, as a result, become loss averse,

this makes them overestimate the value of what they have and support the status

quo together with stability! So marketers need to sharpen their act, check their

egos, open their minds and embrace new ways of marketing communication it will

be well worthwhile.

Internet Advertising will rapidly lose its value and its impact, for easily understood reasons. Pushing

a message at a potential customer when it has not been requested and when the customer is in

the middle of something else on the Net, will never work as a major source of revenue for most

internet sites.

The Internet is participatory, like exchanging stories around a camp fire.

The problem is not the medium, the problem is the message and the fact that

it is not trusted, not wanted, and not needed. There are vast amounts of

literature to support this.

Customers do not trust advertising. Research has shown that messages

attributed to a commercial source have a much lower impact. Research has also

show that advertising is the least-trusted source of information on products and

services. The fact is consumers do not want to view advertising, and mostly

consumers do not need advertising.

The internet is all about freedom. A free population will not be held captive

and forced to watch ads. Marketing must take its share of blame for the economic

crisis. Management's greatest concern should be what a company stands for, not

adding more services to sell to consumers.

Why are so many of our major industries in trouble, beyond the current

economic meltdown? And why is marketing not being blamed for its share of the

problem.

If you read the business press, you probably noticed the absence of any

discussion of marketing and marketing strategy as it relates to the economic crisis.

HERE'S HOW TO INCREASE YOUR MARKETING

R.O.I.

BY AS MUCH AS 50%

　

　

　

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As the founders and pioneers of interactive marketing communications we have developed "Products" to help you create totally accountable advertising. We have an extensive range of interactive products to meet all of your marketing communications requirements

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Our programmes are media neutral and highly effective, with over £5 million invested in independent research. All we want is half-an-hour of your time to demonstrate how Interactive Marketing Communication can work effectively for you.

What on Earth are they teaching these days at our Business

 

Schools?

Because it certainly does not include honesty! It can be said with certainty that

the current global financial crisis was created by the utter dishonesty of the

banks. The reputations of the largest corporations in the world are being

questioned more and more as a tsunami of evidence emerges as to the utter

indifference of Top-down-Management to their customers needs and

expectations. And the weasel words used by Marketing and Advertising

agencies to justify spending (and thus wasting) more

and more ineffectual advertising on new and old media are examples of

creatively brilliant lying! Traditional TV advertising is under further threat as

the take-up of personal video recorders (PVRS) soars, and still they

recommend advertising on TV, where no research evidence has ever emerged

as to its efficiency and accountability.

Just how dishonest is the Advertising Industry? For thirty years at least there

has been a well researched, well documented communications technique that

proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that interactive communication, properly

executed, is far more cost effective than traditional advertising. However given

the method of remuneration enjoyed by the Advertising Agencies/Media

Agencies they have chosen to ignore this far superior method of

communication. Here in England, the Home Office has admitted spending tens

of millions of pounds on TV advertising. £20 million was spent on TV adverts

rather than the hiring of more police! A spokesperson said "People will be

appalled that so many millions are being wasted on spin at a time of economic

hardship. People want more police on the streets, not more PR on the TV. It is,

to say the least disgraceful , that at a time of economic hardship, the Home

Office chooses to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers money on

propaganda."

Interaction and The Outdated Idea of Mass Marketing

Advertising together with Broadcast Media, finally bite the dust!

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

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

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

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

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

It never appears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Customers said they would feel closer to your brand...

...if you listened to their opinions and responded to questions or comments.

Yours brands should throw out ideas or topics amongst customers in which

they can start their own discussions, which don't necessarily have to be about

your brand, and could involve negative comments.

Negative comments need to be answered, not ignored, and

comments kept up, not removed, as an exercise in transparency. Your

conversation with consumers has to be of interest to them, such as giving them

something to engage with, rather than directly asking for feedback on a project.

Your brand, by listening to friends or fans points of view and concerns,

and accepting criticism while giving users honest information, allows a deeper

relationship to be formed, thus increasing brand loyalty, and especially

increasing sales Further findings reveal that social network users become

largely irritated and tend to ignore promotions from brands and a

majority of users would not remain a fan, or friend of a brand, that regularly

sent them promotions.

　

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.

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


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

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

The role of advertising has been diverted by new experts

to media buying, sales promotion, computer speak, direct marketing but in essence they are mere

variations of the same basic three-card trick! With the advent of the PC all

sorts of marketing emerges, again devised by those same experts who did not

know what they were doing from the beginning. Moreover, the illusion becomes

self-reinforcing. Those involved in the process sitting behind their computer

screens, no longer control the beast they have created.

Advertising breeds more advertising and the only people who win, in fact the

only people who have ever won, are the media owners which is precisely why the

media owners desperately do not want the system to change! But the system

relies entirely, as do all Ponzi schemes, on two assumptions, 1) That

advertising works, and 2) the assumption of continued growth, hence its inherent

instability. Once that growth is threatened the whole edifice collapses.

Marketing...a very simple and devastatingly effective swindle, but largely

invisible because it has become so deeply embedded in our culture. The

consequences of that swindle, the desperate need for economic growth together

with the environmental and cultural despoliation it engenders require some

radical thinking that one encounters nowhere in any of our Business Schools...or

elsewhere for that matter!

OK, so some people have question my assumption (?) that advertising doesn't

work, fortunately there is enough evidence supporting my claims and I will

commence to detail that evidence in future articles.For example:June 2005

issue of Harvard Business Review reporting on the effectiveness of 500 various

consumer and B2B marketing programs: 84% resulted in less market share, not

more Most customer acquisition efforts did not break even Fewer than 10% of

new products succeeded Most sales promotions were unprofitable Advertising

ROI was below 4% Doubling advertising expenditures for established products

increased sales just 1% - 2%

Showing the results of just one exposure to an interactive "Event" against the reach and frequency model of traditional advertiing.




Client: Reckitt & Colman.

Brand: Setamol 500

Category: Analgesic.

Research: AGB

"Findings from this Post Event Survey shows 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: Warner Lambert.

Brand: Listerine.

Product Category: Mouthwash

Research: Market Intelligence Corporation.

　

"Gains in all key measurements were recorded among consumers exposed to the newspaper interactive event, versus those not exposed. These gains were: Unaided Awareness 39%, Aided 11%, Past-Four-Week-Purchase 55% and Next-Purchase 97%. This translates in total market gain of 8% for Unaided-Awareness; 2% gain in Aided-Awareness; 11% increase in Past-Four-Weeks-Purchase and 19% in Brand-Next-Purchase."

　

　

Client: Warner Lambert.

Brand: Listerine.

In-Store Sampling Programme.

Research: Market Intelligence Corporation.

Research Protocol: Interactive Sampling was conducted in 6 stores with other 6 matched stores used as a control group where sampling was conducted without the interactive elements. Additionally, other stores that had no sampling programme at all were monitored. Purchase behaviour was monitored for three months. Actual inventory and cases sold were monitored.

"For the month of November (time of sampling and commencement of survey) an increase of 129% in actual purchase was obtained in those stores where the interactive sampling programme took place versus those (control) stores where the interactive sampling did not take place.

The average for the three month programme, November, December, January was a gain of 36% in purchase, versus those stores where the interactive programme was not held."

　

Client: Nestle.

Brand: Nescafe Excella Coffee.

Product: Instant Coffee.

Research: Market Intelligence Corporation.

"Substantial gains in all key measurements were recorded among those readers who were exposed to the interactive event versus those who were not. Unaided Awareness of the brand increased 19%; Aided-Awareness increased 10%; Past-Four-Week-Purchase increased 33% and Brand-Next-Likely increased 31%. In the total market these increases translated to a 4% increase in Unaided-Awareness; 2% increase in Aided-Awareness; 8% increase in Past-Four-Week Purchase and 8% increase in Future Purchase-Intent.

Follow-up programme in same publications seven months after above programme.

As a result of the feedback from the above programme, the creative was strengthened to focus on a secondary feature of the above. OpinionGram responses from this programme event suggested this repositioning.

"Increases in all key measurements were recorded: Unaided-Awareness + 60%; Aided-Awareness +8%; Past-Four-Week-Purchase +70% and Next-Brand-Purchase +54%.

The effect on the total market among those exposed versus not exposed was in the magnitude of: Unaided-Awareness +12%; Aided-Awareness +2%; Past-Four-Week-Purchase +15% and Brand-Will-Buy-Next =11%."

Showing the results of just one exposure to an interactive "Event" against the reach and frequency model of traditional advertiing.




Client: Reckitt & Colman.

Brand: Setamol 500

Category: Analgesic.

Research: AGB

"Findings from this Post Event Survey shows 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: Warner Lambert.

Brand: Listerine.

Product Category: Mouthwash

Research: Market Intelligence Corporation.

　

"Gains in all key measurements were recorded among consumers exposed to the newspaper interactive event, versus those not exposed. These gains were: Unaided Awareness 39%, Aided 11%, Past-Four-Week-Purchase 55% and Next-Purchase 97%. This translates in total market gain of 8% for Unaided-Awareness; 2% gain in Aided-Awareness; 11% increase in Past-Four-Weeks-Purchase and 19% in Brand-Next-Purchase."

　

　

Client: Warner Lambert.

Brand: Listerine.

In-Store Sampling Programme.

Research: Market Intelligence Corporation.

Research Protocol: Interactive Sampling was conducted in 6 stores with other 6 matched stores used as a control group where sampling was conducted without the interactive elements. Additionally, other stores that had no sampling programme at all were monitored. Purchase behaviour was monitored for three months. Actual inventory and cases sold were monitored.

"For the month of November (time of sampling and commencement of survey) an increase of 129% in actual purchase was obtained in those stores where the interactive sampling programme took place versus those (control) stores where the interactive sampling did not take place.

The average for the three month programme, November, December, January was a gain of 36% in purchase, versus those stores where the interactive programme was not held."

　

Client: Nestle.

Brand: Nescafe Excella Coffee.

Product: Instant Coffee.

Research: Market Intelligence Corporation.

"Substantial gains in all key measurements were recorded among those readers who were exposed to the interactive event versus those who were not. Unaided Awareness of the brand increased 19%; Aided-Awareness increased 10%; Past-Four-Week-Purchase increased 33% and Brand-Next-Likely increased 31%. In the total market these increases translated to a 4% increase in Unaided-Awareness; 2% increase in Aided-Awareness; 8% increase in Past-Four-Week Purchase and 8% increase in Future Purchase-Intent.

Follow-up programme in same publications seven months after above programme.

As a result of the feedback from the above programme, the creative was strengthened to focus on a secondary feature of the above. OpinionGram responses from this programme event suggested this repositioning.

"Increases in all key measurements were recorded: Unaided-Awareness + 60%; Aided-Awareness +8%; Past-Four-Week-Purchase +70% and Next-Brand-Purchase +54%.

The effect on the total market among those exposed versus not exposed was in the magnitude of: Unaided-Awareness +12%; Aided-Awareness +2%; Past-Four-Week-Purchase +15% and Brand-Will-Buy-Next =11%."

The financial crisis has transformed the global marketing world...

and, at the same time, discredited many of the ideas regarding advertising,

marketing, consumers and society, that were taken for granted in the pre-crisis

decades. Here nobody appears to see the crisis as an opportunity to build a new

form of capitalism.

Nobody seems to see that the future can be, and most certainly should be,

better than the past. Without a doubt the institutions discredited by the

crisis can be replaced with something better, not merely patched up and

restored. Corporations see the crisis entirely as a threat to established ways

of life and modes of thinking. Nobody is presenting a vision, or even a credible

thought, about how the crisis could produce a better tomorrow. The best that

has been offered is a promise to clear up the mess created by previous

corporations. With the exception of interactive marketing

communication...simply the best ever!

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.

Talentless Advertising

The advertising management's silence over the constantly emerging evidence

that advertising does not work speaks far too loudly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

management failure within advertising agencies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The decline of moral responsibility has damaged the advertising and marketing

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

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

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

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

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

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

properly executed!

Go for an arresting Claim

Remember the Wizard of Oz? When the great curtains of the Emerald City

were finally pulled back, Dorothy and her friends found...nothing. Just a small

anxious figure who had until then been able to project a big confident illusion.

Well, advertising people have been hiding a dreadful secret, they have nothing

to hide, nothing to propose, and, worse still, nothing to support their

bombastic illusions! Listen to an ad man speak and you would not gain the

impression of a master strategist, towering intellect, communications colossus

and business titan whom we underestimate at our peril. Advertising

agencies have, for years, been past masters of making an arresting claim

whenever they are hazy about facts or logic, which happens to be most of the

time! The world, the media and our own country have for too long indulged

advertising by never responding to their abstractions that advertising works and

that has suited advertising beautifully. Now as more and more evidence of the

failure of advertising emerges one is forced to admit that advertising is a

total business disaster and has been so for many a year!

There is a niggling, small-scale dishonesty in the way they use words facts and

figures. There is, in advertising people, a paralyzing failure of intellectual

confidence together with a yawning absence of true creativity. Take for

example the intellectual nonsense of accountant turned ad man, Sir Martin

Sorrell. He recently said London and New York are

no longer the creative centers of the world. Absolute stuff and nonsense, if

he, accountant turned ad man Sorrell knew anything about the process of

communication he would appreciate the fact that creativity is no longer, if it

ever has been, the sole criterion for the success or otherwise of an advertising

campaign!He goes on to talk about the most financially efficient advertising

again, complete stuff and nonsense there is no such thing as accountability in

advertising so nobody knows a dam thing about financially efficient

advertising. See what I mean about niggling small-scale dishonesty in the

way they use words?

It would appear that advertising and marketing is losing its legitimacy

... and is regarded as certainly undignified. Having worked around the world over many years you cannot help
wondering if society is changing in ways that are more than economic. It would
appear that advertising and marketing is losing its legitimacy .
The myopic search for profit and short term advantages has created a
corporate oligarchy whose interests are largely inimical to the average
consumer. Smoke and mirrors have, for too long, been a substitute for good old
fashioned marketing. All the while the mythology of marketing and
advertising, as institutions of enterprise, of meritocracy and opportunity, as
somewhere that didn't work like anywhere else is being compromised. Meanwhile
we seem to be forgetting the convictions that made Marketing and Advertising
great.
The rot began when we chose never to take heed of Professor Ehrenberg's
statements on advertising effectiveness! Because nothing has changed despite all
the ballyhoo about Social Media, Facebook et al. Wherever ads appear,
especially on Social Media, Ehrenberg's resolute focus on the facts " what data
actually tells us " led him to challenge many a marketing bandwagon such as
˜loyalty. You may wish to improve the brand's performance by improving customer retention, he observed, but without a higher market penetration it just won't happen. His work on advertising effectiveness was equally challenging. He argued convincingly that there was no evidence that advertising persuades anybody to do anything; advertising can only ever be a ˜weak" force that improves brand recognition and/or jogs consumers memories. Ehrenberg's uncompromising insistence on staying only with the facts is probably why his work was so studiously ignored by so many sections of the marketing community. The consequences of this has been far more lasting than any recession could ever be.
Be brutally honest, do you have any idea how advertising works? How
advertising got itself into its present mess. No? Perhaps you console yourself
with the thought that it doesn't matter that you don't have a clue because there
are plenty of smart marketing people out there who do. Well, here's the tricky
part. Yes, those smart marketing people do indeed have a shrewd prescription on
how to steer the world out of marketing chaos. The bad news is, they're not
all the same prescription. In fact they are different prescriptions. Very
different.

Finally, The True Value Of A Facebook Fan!

　

　

Finally, The True Value Of A

Facebook Fan

In days of yore, people were consumed by questions about the existence of God,

or the nature of the universe, or the fate of mankind. Today, however, we face a

problem that is apparently even more vexing: What the heck is the value of a

Facebook fan? Based on the alarming amount of literature on the topic,

this seems to be very nettlesome to today's highly sensitive marketing

professionals. I've been studying the methods of our industry's new

oracles -- the data analysts -- and trying to apply their methods and their

logic to the problem. And, good news. I think I've got the answer!

Here's what I've done. I've used real-world numbers, based on a real-world

case history and come up with what I believe is an unassailable value for a

Facebook fan. I have tried to keep this mainstream by using one of the

most famous brands in the world, and a very famous Facebook initiative to derive

my value. The formula I've used is a simple one highly favored by our

data wizards. I've taken the total change in dollar sales since the Facebook

program in question began, and I've divided it by the total number of Facebook

fans that were acquired. That should give us a dollar value for each Facebook

fan. The case history I'm going to use is the Pepsi

Refresh Project. According to Pepsi's marketing director " the

success has been overwhelming" so no one can accuse me of skewing the

data. The Pepsi Facebook page has acquired about 3.5 million fans as a

result of the Refresh project. In the most recent year, during which the Refresh

Project was ongoing, Pepsi sales dropped by about 350 million dollars.

Doing the math, we find that each Pepsi Facebook fan was worth about 100

dollars.

To Coke.

The techno-crowd in both education and advertising....

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 fashionable-yet

-bankrupt "engagement" argument.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.

Free... As In Doughnuts

I know a guy who spends hours looking for illegal MP3s to avoid paying $.99

on iTunes. Some people are likely to prefer watching ads to paying for content

despite all the drawbacks. The point is not that advertising is

bad for everyone in every situation. But it is unfortunate that advertising is

so often seen as the best or only way to make money from digital wares.

It's worth remembering that ad-financed television came to the fore at a time

when no alternative would have been feasible. The technical challenges of the

day involved getting a decent picture on a 17" CRT without standing next to the set holding the

 antenna all evening. Subscription or pay-per-view models were not in the cards. Now we have the

technology to meter and charge for content in many new ways, but we've gotten into the habit of

 expecting TV shows to be free.

One of the quirks of human psychology is that, once we get used to free doughnuts, we are enraged

by the idea that we might have to pay for them.

If we succumb willingly to disfigured television shows, psychological

manipulation and higher prices on SUVs and shampoo so that we can avoid paying a

few dollars for entertainment and internet services, we have no one to blame but

ourselves. When the most frightening hoax imaginable is that Facebook

will start charging users, we can hardly blame them for slathering more and

more lucrative ads onto their website. It would be fantastic if creative types

were to look for less intrusive ways of financing their work. But that is

unlikely to happen until consumers start to realize that free is sometimes the

most expensive price of all. And best told by interactive communication!