Attention brands, business owners, advertising agencies, and media peeps!!!!
I have some bad news. And it’s not about the financial markets, the election, or your expanding waistline. Nope—it’s far, far worse.
Are you sitting down? Good. Here it comes…
TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING IS IN A DEATH SPIRAL.
That’s right. DEATH SPIRAL.
Now before you freak and jump out a window (or worse—post nasty anonymous comments in reply to this statement), allow me to explain. And yes, to propose a solution… I am a Genius, after all.
Traditional Advertising’s “Death Spiral” can be attributed to 3 recent phenomena:
1. Clutter
2. Trust
3. Social media
Let’s talk.
Clutter
I don’t know about you, but I hate clutter.
A little bit of nice, clean white space feels so much better.
If traditional ads were spaced like these last few paragraphs, they might actually WORK.
We might actually even ENJOY them.
But instead… most ads are more like this:
piledandsquishedrightontopofoneanothersothatwehardlyhaveachancetotakeabreath
letaloneprocessanyinformationordecodeanyoftheproductmysteriesorevaluatewhat
makesthembetterfastermoreeasiernewerDIFFERENTERorinanywaynecessarytoour
existenceonthisincreasinglyoverpopulatedplanet
GASPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!
Clear as mud? ☺
The worst part is that the Clutter Problem is escalating at a DEATH-SPIRAL-INDUCING rate.
Consider this:
In 1998 Google had an index of 25M pages. As of this summer, its index had hit the mind-blowing milestone of 1 TRILLION UNIQUE URLs.
A F**KING TRILLION!!!!!
Still more to consider:
There are >100,000,000 videos on YouTube.com—with >65k new ones being added DAILY.
In 2005 (most recent data I could find), there were roughly 40 BILLION product catalogs published. That’s equal to 134 catalogs for every man, woman & child in the US.
Yes, folks, the average person is exposed to some 3000 marketing messages per day… but the American Association of Advertising Agencies says we’re only able to absorb (at most!) 100.
And let’s face it, that’s probably an inflated number.
PS. 90% of people who can skip ads, do.
Yes, but most of those messages are crap. What matters is good creative. Killer copy. Pretty women with big boobs wiggling around to a HAWT soundtrack.
Ok… NO. Neither creative nor copy nor boobs—nor any combination of the three—are likely to solve the clutter problem. Besides… you’ve got 2 more hefty problems to solve.
Trust
“Lets talk about trust baby, let’s talk about you & me…”
People don’t trust advertisers. Period.
You know it. I know it. Let’s call a spade a spade and move on. But in case you’re still skeptical (or just plain crazy), here’s proof:
“In a 1998 Gallup poll rating honesty and ethical standards across a range of professions, advertising people ended up near the bottom, sandwiched between lawyers and car salesmen.”
SANDWICHED BETWEEN LAWYERS AND CAR SALESMEN, people!!!!! And perhaps, if we were to redo this poll today, they might change those to “Politicians and Pimps” (both of whom are better-dressed, frankly-speaking).
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is the trust that most consumers have in the opinions of other consumers.
“‘Word-of-mouth’ the most powerful selling tool…78% of consumers say they trust the recommendation of other consumers.” - Nielsen, Trust in Advertising, 2007 Global Consumer Survey Report.
And the trend is particularly true among younger consumers—namely, the ¼ of the US population (ONE F**KING FOURTH!) who are 14-24yo and were born wired.
Raised in a time where “SPAM” and “COOKIE” don’t automatically conjure images of food, today’s youth LIVES and BREATHES online:
- They spend >16 hours online/week (online > TV)
- 56% spend >1 hour daily sending instant messages
- ¼ prefer social networks to F2F time with friends
- Have an average of 53 online friends (vs. 11 “close” friends)
- 96% use a social network DAILY
And they don’t care about your ad, people. They care what their friends think.
Trust me. 
Social media
Ah… every traditional advertiser’s favorite topic! YAY! Let’s hug.
Seriously, now—it’s common knowledge that people don’t like intrusive, one-way conversations. What is traditional advertising but an intrusive, one-way conversation?
The paradigm is shifting. Fast. Hard.
Ahh… The Solution!
Should we make the logo bigger?
Craft a catchy new tag line?
More girls? Bigger boobs?
No, no, no, no, NO!
Traditional Advertising’s Terminal Illness (aka Death Spiral) shall not be cured by a larger helping of the Same Old Shi*t. You’re going to have think different. Act different. BE DIFFERENT.
REALLY DIFFERENT.
Start by shifting your focus more on branding and less on advertising. Yes, branding. That magical je ne sais quoi that ultimately results in the feelings/thoughts/attitudes that people have about your product/service/company.
You mean our tagline?
No.
Our logo?
No.
The killer copy on our website?
No.
…..Our tagline?
No.
Are you sure?
Yes.
Your brand isn’t what you say your company/product/service is. It’s what THEY say it is.
Branding isn’t advertising.
In fact, it’s more like… your child. You can’t control it (though it’s natural to want to try)… but you can [and should] certainly influence it, enable it, embrace it, and inspire it.
Start by listening. Really listening. No, REALLY listening.
There. Doesn’t that feel better already?
