Marketing & Advertising Have Drifted Towards Abstraction, Waffle & Theory
Monday, May 10th, 2010by Paul Ashby
To save ourselves we have to forget smooth talking, software and money manipulation – to restore advertising and marketing we have to understand the meaning of the word communication and then practice it!
The trouble with Britain is that the whole of the entrepreneurial society is in the City, despite the fact that skill is what built this country but nowadays it is treated with contempt. Young people are seduced by media, marketing & leisure studies.. The main reason there is little health in advertising & marketing these days is because the pinnacles of achievement are seen to be smooth talking, celebrity, gimmicky marketing, formulaic admin together with a complete lack of understanding of the communication process.
In the modern risk adverse society of to-day there is a mind-set problem, a national drift towards abstraction, virtuality, waffle and theory and it can only get worse. The Internet has made advertising ever more less practical, to-day people interact with flat screens and buttons which depersonalises and dehumanises the communication process even more than it was in the past!
The current financial crisis reveals the reality of the modern work place. Nowadays it is just impossible for a boss to continually know more than every employee does. Ignorance therefore, isn’t a failing of a particular individual but an in eliminable fact about any organisation.
In modern organisations their hierarchy is much the same as that of the first factories of the industrial revolution. However the conditions that made these hierarchy work back then is no longer present. That condition is that bosses know more than their workers. In the first factories bosses knew everything about production process, while the workers knew nothing. It was therefore sensible for information flow up the hierarchy and orders flow down.
To days knowledge is spread throughout the business what looks like bosses competence is in fact the skill and goodwill of their employees. Without these they are like one legged ducks. They might look calm and reassured on the surface but underneath they are paddling frantically without much idea where they are heading.
The crisis shows us that big organisations can’t always be run effectively even when managed by highly intelligent and diligent people, thus the new marketing language should be about waste, misadministration, extravagance, incompetence and drift. The new Marketing should be the need in hard times for rigour, severity and unsentimentally!
Recently Heinz went on record to say that “Traditional advertisers are flexing their muscles by seeking ‘Pay per Performance’ deals saying media pricing has to be more reflective of actual sales.”
Of course advertising has NEVER been able to provide effectiveness research of the kind to answer all the questions posed nowadays by Clients regarding accountability.
What is lacking in the advertising world of to-day?
Mainly we appear to lack ideas, strong ideas, competing ideas, confident philosophies, angry dissent. Advertising people used to have ideas & policies & they jostled to present their ideas.
But what is alarming is the impassivity of our advertising people & the idleness of advertising debate, as we wait. There is a sense of vacuum.
Where to-day is the bold advocacy, the impatience to persuade, the urgency of argument? Where are the shouts of “here’s how!”? Where are the leading actors, the big voices, the great thoughts?
Headlines about “Twitter”, the Internet, “Facebook” et al, are these now the only images we have of a once great advertising industry?
But perhaps the problem is simpler but just as scary, in a headline ” Lack of experience affects business” the Institute of Advertising had this to say, “The nature of the business is such that in order to be cost efficient process gets dumbed down and farmed out to more junior people. There is a tendency to commodity and that can lead to work being de-skilled”.
So there you have it technology and a dumbing down are affecting all aspect of advertising…it is time to change or else advertising will become like the Zimbabwe bird flying around in ever decreasing circles until it disappears up its own orifice!
A substantial research investment has proved conclusively that one exposure to an interactive “event” is far more effective in all key measurements, than traditional advertising. Interactive Communication, properly executed, can be totally accountable, unlike all other forms of advertising!
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You can contact Paul at: paul.ashby@yahoo.com. Discover more (including research) on http://interactivetelevisionorinteractivetv.blogspot.com His most recently published book “Television killed advertising” is now available @ Amazon Books UK. In the book I detail just how much more effective interactive communication is when compared to conventional advertising and details the results of a research investment in excess of £5 m. It also discusses where we went wrong in the past and where we are going to go wrong in the future unless we learn the real meaning of the word “communication.”
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