Both sides in this debate, those in favor of "traditional" ads and those in favor or digital ad have a point but I think where things are going lies somewhere in the middle which will end up irking the zealots on either side.<p>The big egos of traditional advertising will be upset because not everyone on earth will have seen their latest "big idea." This is due in no small part to overall media fragmentation which digital (or the internet) but also cable have played big parts. When that Coke ad aired in 1971 how many channels were there? Maybe 6? Of course a large portion of the population was going to see your ad.<p>And on the digital side they'll have to accept that measurement isn't the be-all-end-all. Between crazy amounts of fraudulent data and the simple fact that creativity and "brand awareness" are really, really tough to quantify they'll have to concede that sometimes the traditional thinking around creative work and "big ideas" will need to win out over analytics.<p>Source: worked for several years in advertising on the creative side and then on the tech side (and part of the problem is that those two departments are, well, departments but that's a story for another time...)
Reading this article when the author says:<p><pre><code> “the most effective advertisements of all are those with little or no rational content”
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I thought of: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Isuzu" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Isuzu</a><p>Imagine that, ads I saw 30 years ago just popped into my head.<p>I have to admit I'm in adTech and when people ask me what the highest impact is to any campaign's success I don't talk about the next machine learning algorithm my data science team is working on. I talk about the creative, it's all about the creative (or message). I can find the perfect time, to show the perfectly matched advertisement to a single person, but if the creative doesn't connect with that person I'm just wasting the advertisers money and the person's time.
Digital advertising as we know it is just dying and most people know it, or has suspicions. It is slow but it is happening. Certain players are getting better at extracting what they can from it, but the system is moving in such a way that online "advertising" will be considered a really shady business in the long term. It's not just that people hate, and don't click banners; it's because it just doesn't do much for the big brands, and their budget is what moves the needle of what big Advertising companies do.<p>Apple's move towards blocking ads may help fasten it, but it's not about them. It's something that's bigger and already in motion.<p>Big brands are starting to understand that what they want is not to force someone into seeing their name, but to create something that people actually want to use. Be it an application, be it a service. And not force "INSTALL OUR APP!" into someone's screen. For a good example, Coke's new app that allows you to customize the drink you can get from their machine. Or Mountain Dew's fidelity program tracking app. Baby steps, but it's actually something <i>useful</i>. Regardless of what you think of soda or soda drinkers, those are a actual services that some people would find convenient, and would help tie them to the brand.<p>Traditional advertising is a one-way, in-your-face kind of deal, and it works for brand awareness, especially for new consumers (kids). But with the technology we have today, it makes little sense to move that online. We have learned to ignore it. Sure, the internet had to do it, and it helped it grow. But now people are tired. We grew used to it. Most brands are now understanding that there's more they can do with the medium, and finding their way out of that death spiral.<p>I've worked in advertising for ~17 years, nearly my whole career. Finally got out of it and couldn't be happier. Work was fine and my coworkers were great people (there ARE good advertising agencies out there). But it was easy to see it was a dead-end street.
Really good article, but what I found myself thinking was: didn't we already know all this?<p>It's been common advertising wisdom for years that the benefit of brand advertising is simply awareness. Person is in store, person doesn't know which thing to get and doesn't really care that much, brand name pops into their head because the ad had that catchy jingle or adorable cat in it, they pick up that one and go on with their lives.<p>Perhaps the great delusion was that most people care enough about their purchasing choices of mundane items to "engage" with brands. That's never been true and it's continued to not be true, despite the construction of a vast new internet advertising industry focused around nothing but brand engagement at all costs.
"People don't want to engage with brands"<p>I've said this for years, ever since I started seeing twitter and facebook logos on things like ketchup and cereal. Here's one I just saw: who wants to "engage" with C&H SUGAR of all things? <a href="https://instagram.com/p/9JVo-gpvQw/" rel="nofollow">https://instagram.com/p/9JVo-gpvQw/</a><p>The only companies that make money from plastering twitter and facebook logos on stuff are ... twitter and facebook.
I think the article has a point that brand advertising is more about inserting your brand into the culture than convincing people that your product is better.<p>It misses the fact, however, that there are more media than ever for inserting ideas - not just brands - into the culture. These are all competing for people's low-cognitive-load "buy" responses.<p>Most of these alternative media are digital, but some are also hybrid digital/word-of-mount campaigns that move through specific class subdivisions of society. As an example, I have never seen a Nespresso ad (I've heard they exist) but we are heavy users of that product.<p>Edit: more thoughts.<p>Another issue is that people have learned to be skeptical of traditional TV brand advertising because it is so broadly targeted. Especially for traditional brands that people often find passé.
<i>>Applying a statistical analysis to sales data, he demonstrates that the majority of any successful brand’s sales comes from “light buyers”: people who buy it relatively infrequently. Coca-Cola’s business is not built on a hardcore of Coke lovers who drink it daily, but on the millions of people who buy it once or twice a year. </i><p>Having not read the book referenced, I haven't seen the data. But this seems to go against the Pareto Principle AKA 80/20 Rule which suggests 80% of your sales come from 20% of your (heaviest) customers, and against my own anecdotal experience as a marketer.
So is digital marketing/online ads the bubble that SV is currently founded upon, not VC overvaluations? It seems like in the event of a recession, and companies not being able to spend as much as they have on ads, would have a huge resonance cascade on a lot of startup business models.
Maybe TV is an ideal medium for brand awareness campaigns, but it simply won't have a large enough audience at some point. It seems like these marketers jumped on digital during the hype phase, and were just ahead of the curve. Now they're in the "trough of disillusionment", but eventually the number of eyeballs on TV will go below the point of cost effectiveness and digital will be what they have to use out of necessity.
The issue isn't so much about which marketing channel works best (i.e. traditional vs digital) but about the psychological levers of persuassion. People don't like "conversing" and "engaging" with brands. That's why social media doesn't work. Social media is supposed to be social and not commercial.<p>As the article said, it's low cognitive involvement that works best, not brand loyalty. That's why advertisers are using the Low Attention Processing Model.[1] With this particular advertising strategy, brand information is 'acquired' at low and even zero attention levels using implicit learning.[2] Implicit learning cannot analyse or re-interpret anything. The information goes directly to the subconscious mind.<p>If so, then we are silently influenced by ambient images and messages around us. Advertisers could be affecting our decision making and even outlook on life in ways we can't perceive. This has been the driving inspiration for these posters I designed: <a href="http://subliminalzen.com" rel="nofollow">http://subliminalzen.com</a>.<p>Essentially, if anyone is going to advertise to my subconscious mind, it's going to be me. And I'd rather acquire positive habits and character traits than an emotional connection to a product.<p>[1] <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=364813&fileId=S0021849905050282" rel="nofollow">http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_learning" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_learning</a>