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1. Advertising After the End of Mass Media
by Glen Emerson Morris (from Advertising & Marketing Review 8/2004)

The biggest problem with the end of mass media is that there is nothing readily available for advertisers to replace it with. Direct mail has taken up some of the slack, as have a few other approaches, but they can't replace the attention mass media got with the public, for one key reason. The creative talent that attracted a mass audience is missing. top

For over seven decades, radio and TV acted as middlemen between advertisers and a talent pool of gifted pop musicians, film actors, directors and other creative talent. With radio and TV rapidly becoming obsolete, it's up to the advertisers to start developing a direct relationship with talent in a variety of media. After all, that was the way it was before mass media.

In the 1920's and 1930's it was not uncommon for companies to sponsor national tours of dance bands. This practice became so common that it was difficult for a band to book engagements if they didn't have a corporate sponsor. (To get around this Lawrence Welk invented a fictitious company sponsor to get his first bookings. Of course none of the dance hall booking agents had ever heard of the company sponsoring his band, but the mere fact that a company was apparently willing to sponsor his band meant they were good enough to play professionally.) top

It would be very easy for advertisers to try the talent sponsoring approach again, and given today's technology additional variations are possible. For instance, a company could sign up a band and carry live and archived feeds on their Website of each of the bands performances as they toured across the country. A business could also carry live and archive concerts from a local concert hall, or for that matter, a local bar or night club.

There is a very large musical talent pool to draw from. It has been estimated that non-signed bands are now producing and releasing twice the quantity of music that the recording industry is on a yearly basis.

To a limited extent, this talent pool is already being tapped by advertisers. It's not uncommon to hear background music on network TV commercials that was provided from up and coming bands that haven't been signed by recording companies. In the future, this will be happening on a much larger scale. top

Another approach advertisers could take would be to sponsor writers by publishing books, complete with ads, in Acrobat format online for free downloading from their company's Website. Over the past few decades, the publishing industry has created a large pool of unsigned writers by concentrating on grade A talent at the expense of grade B talent.

Like the recording industry, the publishing industry decided that it was much better to have one artist that sold 25 million copies of something rather than 25 artists that sold a million copies each. This made good economic sense, at least in the short term, but from the public's point of view it meant that there was far less variety available in books and music. It also meant there was less opportunity for grade B artists and writers to become grade A artists and writers. And, more importantly for advertisers, it also meant that a great talent pool was developing with no commercial market to support it.

Another approach possible in a few years will be for businesses to offer streaming media of older movies on their Websites, complete with their own commercials. There are many movies that are considered too old to be shown on network or cable TV that still have drawing power with the 50+ demographic segment. Just consider how seldom films are shown with Cary Grant, James Stewart, Gary Cooper or Bette Davis. top

Another talent pool advertisers could exploit is the new generation of movie producers who are making garage movies much like musicians are making records in their garage, Thanks to advances in digital video it's becoming possible to produce broadcast quality movies with just a few thousand dollars of equipment.

A good sample of independently produced films can be seen at the Website IFILM.com. In their words "IFILM's advanced streaming-media platform carries the most progressive branding and sponsorship opportunities available on the Web. Next generation advertising units and integrated sponsorship programs resonate with the IFILM audience. As the only place to find and watch movies on the Internet IFILM is uniquely positioned to tap into the power of a connected, influential and motivated group of consumers. top

Another option for advertisers not being exploited much is the creation of audio and video infomercials for their Websites. For decades advertisers have been limited to making their case in thirty or sixty seconds. These limits have gone the way of mass media. We are entering an era where half hour infomercials will be as common as 30 second spots used to be. If amateurs can make movies in their garages with almost no budget, companies should be able to produce cost effective infomercials about their products and post them on their Websites.

The only factor holding up widespread implementation of these alternatives to mass media is the relatively slow growth of broadband access in this country. In some countries access at 25 MB a second is available for $25.00 a month or less. In the US, access at 1.5 MB a second goes for around $45.00 a month. Until the US has a truly competitive Internet access market we can expect to lag behind the rest of the world in speed and pricing. top

Just as advertisers need to rethink advertising at a fundamental level, we also need to rethink our country's communications policies at a fundamental level. We can replace mass media with a solid mass communications infrastructure, but we're still a long way from having one. / http://www.admarketreview.com/blog//index.php?module=phpwsbb&PHPWSBB_MAN_OP=view&PHPWS_MAN_ITEMS=9

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2. The Future of Advertising is Here

From: Inc. Magazine, August 2005 | By: David H. Freedman

It's becoming increasingly possible to target "smart ads" specifically to people who want them. And best of all, you can do this for a fraction of the price of mass-market. top

The world is awash in advertising clutter. For decades marketers have been spending more and more to try to get their message out -- only to find their pitches drowned out in a sea of noise generated by countless other marketers trying to do the same thing. In effect, companies have been paying big bucks to be ignored. Etc…

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050801/future-of-advertising.html

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3. The Rise of the Consumer-Generated Media Machine (BY CABLE NEUHAUS / April 2005 issue)

If you buy the argument that the end of so-called "traditional media"is just around the bend, you need look no further than 30-year-old Rafat Ali to see the (minimally bearded) face of the new order.

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=28733

4. The End of Advertising and Media as We Have Known It (Why Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan Thinks Sir Martin Sorrell's Got it Wrong) top

By Dave Morgan, CEO of Tacoda / Published: July 10, 2006

 Sir Martin Sorrell, the CEO of WPP and certainly one of the luminaries of the advertising world, recently penned an opinion piece on the digital revolution for The (London) Times. In it, he tried to calm the fears of those in the traditional advertising business who are uncertain what the internet and the digitization of media will mean for them, their work and their jobs.

'Marketers are shifting away from advertising, which favors media, to direct marketing and promotion, which do not,' writes Dave Morgan. 'While this has been happening for decades, the digital revolution has helped accelerate the shift. This means less advertising in the future and less money for media -- all media. That's a reality.' | ALSO: Comment on this article in the 'Your Opinion' box below. top

Like television?
His thesis? The digital revolution we are experiencing today is not much different from what the advertising industry experienced 50 years ago with the introduction of television. To him, the Internet is just one more new medium -- like television was -- and while it might disrupt the advertising world and advertising agencies in the short term, the storm will subside, the essence of the advertising world will endure much as it is today, and the internet will settle in alongside other media, displacing none of them.

Certainly wrong
I hope Sir Martin doesn't take too much solace in his own words, and nor should others working in more traditional roles in the advertising industry, because he is certainly wrong. The digital revolution unfolding today is about much more than the introduction of a new medium into the advertising mix. The web as a medium in which to place ads is only part of the story. top

There is no question the internet as a medium is quite powerful -- you only need to have seen any one of the 20 or so cross-media measurement studies the Interactive Advertising Bureau has conducted to know that. There's also no question that it's quite pervasive -- you only need to have seen the new media-audience study from the Online Publishers Association, which shows that the reach of the web is now comparable to television, to know that. If this was all that was going on, Sir Martin's words might have proved correct over time.

Bigger storm coming
The world of advertising is in for a much bigger storm than most can even imagine. And almost certainly some of the media we know today will not continue forward. top

Consider, if you will:

Marketers are shifting away from advertising, which favors media, to direct marketing and promotion, which do not. While this has been happening for decades, the digital revolution has helped accelerate the shift. This means less advertising in the future and less money for media -- all media. That's a reality.

All media are going digital. The digital revolution is not just impacting the web; it's impacting television, radio, newspapers, magazines and outdoor. They're all becoming digital in part and will almost certainly be fully digital within a decade. This will fundamentally change how they operate. Is a digital magazine still a paper magazine? Or is it a website or an e-mailed copy? Definitions and traditional 'siloed' differentiations we use today, such as magazine or newspaper or television or direct mail, will become meaningless to most consumers. To them, it will just be news or information or entertainment or games or great offers. Most folks in traditional media are not prepared for this -- and they are powerless to stop it. top

Hyper-competition for all
Markets, media, advertising and marketing are all globalizing thanks to digital networks and communication. Not only does this mean many of the boundaries within which advertisers and advertising traditionally operated are falling away; it also means hyper-competition for everyone, from the media to the agencies to the clients themselves. Organizations that have protected their client relationships over the years with great account management -- though they claimed, of course, that it was great advertising -- will find themselves in pitched battles for business with more and more companies that have great teams, great ideas and great account management. Surviving and succeeding in service businesses like advertising will require lighter, faster, nimbler and more flexible approaches. Light, fast, nimble and flexible are terms not generally used to describe companies in traditional advertising media. Anyone with a heavy cost structure better watch out.

Capital markets and business enterprises are becoming more transparent and more accountable. There was a day when unaccountable advertising expenditures were taken for granted and no one cared who paid for the trips to Cannes. Those days are over. Over the past 30 years, technology has brought accountability to every division of the business enterprise with the exception of marketing. Finance is digitized. Manufacturing is digitized. The supply chain is digitized. Distribution and logistics are digitized. Even human-resource management is digitized. All of them are accountable in real time for costs and results. And now, as advertising and media are digitized, they are becoming accountable too. That means only advertising and media that work will be funded. And whether they 'work' will be decided by the accountants, not the chief marketing officers.

Foreign to today's editors
We're now in a consumer-centric world. To consumers, it's "all about me." This world makes traditional advertising and media very uncomfortable as they are used to talking to, or shouting at, consumers. Now, it's about having a conversation, in some cases with one consumer at a time. This is foreign to almost every editor and programmer and creative in the business, and is fundamentally different from how they operate today. Digitization of media and communication means real-time interactivity and response and conversation all are possible. Media and advertising that don't embrace this way of operating -- and for many it's actually physically impossible -- will go away. Consumers will leave them behind, and marketers will refuse to fund them.

Sir Martin, the digital revolution is about much more than a new medium. It is about the beginning of the end of advertising and media as we have known it. Why? Because that's what consumers and marketers want. top

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5. New-Think Marketing Effort Collides With Old-Think Media Types

(Philips' 'Simplicity' Campaign: A Brilliant Creative Standout ) By Jonah Bloom / Published: October 08, 2006 top

In a(nother) year that's been bereft of standout U.S. creative, Philips could quite reasonably claim to have run the best campaign of '06. Simplicity

I am not referring to the shave-your-gooseberries videos for the Philips Norelco Bodygroom (see shaveeverywhere.com), although they spread like wildfire, made us laugh and cleared the shelves of the natty little razor. Rather, I'm talking about the "Sense and Simplicity" brand campaign in which the creative excellence is not so much the message, but rather the way it's been delivered.

A lot of ink has already been spilled to explain what Philips has been doing, but allow me to briefly recap. In short the idea is to embody the simplicity message in the medium by using Philips' media bucks to improve the consumer experience. Translating to what? Well, first off, a $2 million sole sponsorship of CBS's "60 Minutes. "Then there was the $5 million deal with Time Inc., in which Philips paid to bring the contents panels in Fortune, Time, People and Business 2.0 to the first pages of those four magazines.

The consumer experience

There was also a deal with Gourmet to create a compact 102-page supplement featuring nothing but stories by well-known authors. Most recently, Philips has been footing the bill so that visitors to the Wall Street Journal and ESPN websites can access premium content for free.

Wouldn't it be great if every media owner applied "Philips thinking" to their brands, regardless of whether anyone was prepared to pay for it? Sounds like actually-really-care-about-the-consumer (see also "wishful") thinking. But since the biggest single problem faced by today's media owners is the finite number of hours in their audiences' days, it'd surely be a good exercise for all. top

Even more than that, however, what is fascinating about Philips' campaign is how difficult they found it to persuade media owners to take their money in return for the execution of some relatively simple concepts. Eric Plaskonos, director of brand communications at Philips and the brain behind this particular campaign, heaped praise on the few who could: "CBS, Time Inc., Hearst, Conde Nast were willing to do these types of initiatives," he said. "It says something about their perspective on the future of media and that they aren't afraid to try new things in an effort to bring the best possible product to their consumers."

Painful tales

But he also has painful tales of executions that were six months in the making, and of others that never saw the light of day, such as the company's effort to buy out pre-movie advertising time in theaters and use it to reduce the length of time theatergoers have to spend watching ads before they get what they just paid (handsomely) to come and see. Screenvision "didn't like the ads."

Along with his media agency, Carat, Plaskonos has been in a number of meetings with media owners in which executives from different departments were clearly meeting for the first time: "We've found there's nothing like the 'simplicity' initiative as a departmental icebreaker. Often sales and other departments just don't have a strong enough relationship to push through an idea."

He said the business models of many media owners simply aren't built for marketers who want to try different things. "Media companies are not as anxious to deliver ideas as they are their pages, spots and banners. Units are sold so far in advance that the possibility of turning something on its head by 'buying out space and/or time' is just not worth it for the economies of a media company." top

That's worrying because there's nary a marketer left who isn't looking for a bigger, better way to connect with those media-controlling consumers. I'm willing to bet that those that can't deliver them because of their silos, retrograde thinking or formulaic business models are going to find the next decade very long indeed.

6.Agencies Short on Real Ideas Should Check Out Edelman.com

Content-Rich Site Informs, Entertains and Sets PR Firm Apart (By Jonah Bloom / Published: September 24, 2006) top

Agencies complain about being commoditized, yet they do a lot to bring this get-paid-less parity upon themselves. It's not just their willingness to sell their work for a tuppence above cost -- although certainly that lubricates the slide toward sameness; it's the fact that they have marketed themselves (or not) into a homogenous blob.

A site from which ad agencies can learn a lot is Edelman.com, featuring a blog and podcast landing page full of content produced by employees. | ALSO: Comment on this column in the 'Your Opinion' box below. top

Indistinguishable

I'm often asked which agencies are the strongest right now, so I try to study up. Yet the more I listen to them or read about them, the harder it is to answer. Each makes the same capability claims, and they are all rapidly converging on the same in-demand hotspots: General-market agencies claim to be digital specialists, while the interactive specialists claim to be general-market agencies; direct shops hire creatives, creative shops want data analysts. Few pin their colors to one strength, process or discipline. Everyone is multiplatform, client-centric and brand-building -- even those that clearly aren't. top

Studying agency websites

Take a spin around a few agency websites and you'll soon see what I mean. They've come a long way in a few years in that most are actually professional-looking and have some depth to them. Leo Burnett's, in particular, is an original, slick and sticky triumph -- I challenge you not to get hooked playing with Leo's pencil. A handful even manage to highlight something that might distinguish their agency creators from the pack, McCann Worldgroup's Demand Chain being a notable example.

But taken together the content of the majority of these sites says: "We don't have a clue how to differentiate ourselves, so we're going to fall back on some fluffy concepts and jargon." The number of iterations of "we're the idea agency" is particularly depressing. Variously they declare their ability to deliver: "ideas," "big ideas," "catalytic ideas," "return on ideas," "brand ideas," "leading brand ideas," "ideas and ideas" and "ideas, ideas, ideas." top

OK, fair enough. So the business is about ideas. Maybe the sites differentiate the shops by actually showing those ideas? No such luck. I found no more than half a dozen examples of ideas worthy of the name. Several sites linked straight from the "idea" slug to ads. Ads aren't ideas. A couple did try to illustrate the nature of an idea they'd had for a marketer, but that led to embarrassments too -- such as the notion that telling consumers of a candy bar to "be great" somehow constituted a big brand idea. top

Edelman.com

So what to do? Well, one big idea for a website ad agencies could do worse than emulate can be seen at Edelman.com. The independent global PR shop has turned its site into a blog and podcast landing page full of content. All the content is produced by employees and the 17 hosted blogs run the gamut from CEO Richard Edelman's 6am to Micropersuasion musings from Steve Rubel (who also writes for Ad Age Digital), from the interesting PR Catalyst from Hoh Kim in Korea to a video blog shot with a cellphone.

The site, according to traffic research from Alexa.com, is attracting more than 250,000 visitors a month. That's more than any of the ad agencies' sites and is even beating up on some trade publications' online offerings.

Direct to consumer

We already know that today anyone can be in the content business and that traditional media owners have lost their lock on audience aggregation. A marketer or agency can, if it thinks it has the skills, go direct-to-consumer. And some agencies are getting that, the best of them clearly embracing a movement toward becoming producers of engaging content, not just commercials. Yet their sites don't reflect that. top

There's nothing to stop an agency from creating a destination site like Edelman's, a demonstration of content -- beyond the reel -- that shows it can find and engage people, increasingly the essence of the agency's function. Or, alternatively, they could all play it safe and stick to the almost indistinguishable pitch-talk that populates their pages today.

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7. Some Thoughts on Obsolete Business Models

And How Big Agencies Have Done Remarkably Little to Reinvent Themselves (By Jonah Bloom / Published: February 28, 2006)

Alex Bogusky and Lee Clow were chatting about the future of the business recently*, when the latter dropped this little bombshell: TBWA/Chiat/Day, he said, should see itself not as an ad agency, but rather as a media-arts company. 

Jonah Bloom, executive editor of Advertising Age.

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Also, Small Agency Blog:

WHY WE NEED GOOD IDEAS, NOT MORE AGENCY LAYERS

Maybe I'm jaded and I've spent too many of my years watching the higher ups call in the media agency 3 days before the big pitch... top

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Media arts company

In this ROI-obsessed world, a world in which technology is bringing us closer to the number-cruncher's holy grail of ads married directly to a consumer transaction, you have to wonder whether there is a sustainable business model for a company that creates media art.

It's not easily measurable, yet weaving brands into culture in such a way that we no longer know where art finishes and commerce begins can occasionally yield brilliant brand results -- and would differentiate an ad shop from its media, direct and interactive siblings, which are better prepared for the one-to-one, transaction-focused ad world.

But I didn't want to wax about Clow's proposal here -- I'm not privy to his thinking -- so much as point out that the guy responsible for many great "ads" was prepared to contemplate the reinvention of a large ad agency as something quite different. top

Fatally flawed

Despite an overwhelming mass of evidence that their business models are fatally flawed and their service offerings out of step with many marketers' demands, the biggest agencies have done remarkably little to substantially reinvent themselves. It doesn't seem to matter how many of their clients shift projects or even full-scale brand assignments to smaller, nimbler, flatter structured, less-30-second centric agencies, the biggest agencies seem reluctant to really blow up their model.

That's not to say there have been no moves at all. John Dooner's McCann Erickson has made smart use of Worldgroup to offer a multidisciplinary approach to marketers' problems; Andrew Robertson's BBDO has shown willingness to make personnel changes and is evolving from a 30-second-obsessed agency into a flexible organizer of collaborating Omnicom shops; and Ogilvy has shifted to a single P&L to eliminate financial barriers to collaboration among its disciplinary units.

Layers of bureaucracy

But all the big ad agencies still have layers and layers of bureaucracy, rampant job-title inflation and hundreds of people whose chief role seems to be managing up. Their product has barely changed (you could count the genuinely big ideas from the last 12 months on one hand), and I've heard at least three separate first-hand reports of people within those organizations who've had good non-TV ideas for a client being told that they'd have to be turned into TV commercials before they could be pitched. top

I've recently been rereading "Re-imagine!," management guru Tom Peters' brilliant look at the new business order, wrought in large part by the Internet and which, he says, requires every modern business to constantly destroy and reinvent itself to survive.

Fear incrementalism

He takes issue with organizations that tweak rather than reinvent: "MIT Media Lab boss Nicholas Negroponte said: 'Incrementalism is innovation's worst enemy.' Sad fact: Big organizations, by their very nature, are addicted to incrementalism ... they seldom make the changes necessary to deal with a discontinuous environment. ... Most big enterprises that survive a challenge from an upstart do so as shadows of their former selves. Still alive. Still big. But no longer the pathfinders."

Lee Clow sounds as if he still wants to be a pathfinder. How many others do, too? top

*Bogusky and Clow, the industry's pre-eminent creatives, had come together to interview each other as part of the upcoming celebration of Creativity magazine's 20th anniversary, and you'll be able to put Lee's remarks in a little more context when their one-on-one is screened on AdAge.com and Adcritic.com next month.

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8. Where are the Revolutionaries? / Published: October 09, 2006 top

Talk about a squandered opportunity: Titans of the media industry turned out to speak at Advertising Week-and had nothing to say.

There was an all-star lineup for many sessions that offered many worthwhile lessons and tidbits; Tom Schumacher even got the famously private John Wren to open up. But when push came to shove, about the most provocative comment made during the industry's recent confab was Martha Stewart's remark that her lawyer wanted her to waffle. top

It's a regrettable commentary on an industry supposedly on the bleeding edge of popular culture, one that gives a lot of lip service to calls for action and motivating the consumer. And it is by no means limited to Advertising Week; far too many of the usual conferences have served up smart speakers who stick to safe topics and warmed-over case studies.

Whatever happened to the industry's paradigm-shifters? The advertising world is in the throes of the biggest upheaval since the advent of TV, and the revolutionaries are nowhere to be found. Instead, there are predictable arguments from predictable sources: The old-media mavens espouse the importance of integrated solutions with new media, and new-media moguls chatter politely about spreading the wealth with network TV. Just once we'd like to hear a broadcast-booster bash the whole concept of broadband marketing or the other way around. At least it would get a decent debate going. top

Of course, it takes courage to be an agitator. And that's exactly what's needed to stimulate an industry on the brink of an entirely new, if you'll forgive us, advertising age.

At this writing, the Association of National Advertisers' meeting hasn't convened yet in Orlando-and it will be wrapped up by the time you're reading this. Without benefit of hindsight, we are hoping that the reinvention and innovation theme-and a roster including keynoter A.G. Lafley and big-thinking creative minds such as Russ Klein and James McDowell-will generate a much-needed provocative spark.

The industry most certainly needs one. / http://adage.com/article?article_id=112383

9. New Book Reports 37% of All Advertising Is Wasted

Five-Year Research Project Tracked $1 Billion in Spending by 36 Major Marketers

By Jack Neff  / Published: August 08, 2006

CINCINNATI (AdAge.com) -- A new book by marketing industry veterans Greg Stuart and Rex Briggs details a five year research project that tracked $1 billion in ad spending by 36 major marketers and concluded that 37% of all advertising spending is wasted. The study, overseen by the Advertising Research Foundation, is believed to be the largest one of its kind ever conducted. ... top

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10. But New-Think Marketing Effort Collides With Old-Think Media Types

(By Jonah Bloom  / Published: October 08, 2006)

In a(nother) year that's been bereft of standout U.S. creative, Philips could quite reasonably claim to have run the best campaign of '06.

Philips' director of brand communications, Eric Plaskonos, and a visual from a recent company 'Simplicity' event focused on the theme of 'glow.' | ALSO: Comment on this column in the 'Your Opinion' box below. top

Simplicity

I am not referring to the shave-your-gooseberries videos for the Philips Norelco Bodygroom (see shaveeverywhere.com), although they spread like wildfire, made us laugh and cleared the shelves of the natty little razor. Rather, I'm talking about the "Sense and Simplicity" brand campaign in which the creative excellence is not so much the message, but rather the way it's been delivered.

A lot of ink has already been spilled to explain what Philips has been doing, but allow me to briefly recap. In short the idea is to embody the simplicity message in the medium by using Philips' media bucks to improve the consumer experience. Translating to what? Well, first off, a $2 million sole sponsorship of CBS's "60 Minutes. "Then there was the $5 million deal with Time Inc., in which Philips paid to bring the contents panels in Fortune, Time, People and Business 2.0 to the first pages of those four magazines.

The consumer experience

There was also a deal with Gourmet to create a compact 102-page supplement featuring nothing but stories by well-known authors. Most recently, Philips has been footing the bill so that visitors to the Wall Street Journal and ESPN websites can access premium content for free.

Wouldn't it be great if every media owner applied "Philips thinking" to their brands, regardless of whether anyone was prepared to pay for it? Sounds like actually-really-care-about-the-consumer (see also "wishful") thinking. But since the biggest single problem faced by today's media owners is the finite number of hours in their audiences' days, it'd surely be a good exercise for all. top

Even more than that, however, what is fascinating about Philips' campaign is how difficult they found it to persuade media owners to take their money in return for the execution of some relatively simple concepts. Eric Plaskonos, director of brand communications at Philips and the brain behind this particular campaign, heaped praise on the few who could: "CBS, Time Inc., Hearst, Conde Nast were willing to do these types of initiatives," he said. "It says something about their perspective on the future of media and that they aren't afraid to try new things in an effort to bring the best possible product to their consumers."

Painful tales

But he also has painful tales of executions that were six months in the making, and of others that never saw the light of day, such as the company's effort to buy out pre-movie advertising time in theaters and use it to reduce the length of time theatergoers have to spend watching ads before they get what they just paid (handsomely) to come and see. Screenvision "didn't like the ads."

Along with his media agency, Carat, Plaskonos has been in a number of meetings with media owners in which executives from different departments were clearly meeting for the first time: "We've found there's nothing like the 'simplicity' initiative as a departmental icebreaker. Often sales and other departments just don't have a strong enough relationship to push through an idea."

He said the business models of many media owners simply aren't built for marketers who want to try different things. "Media companies are not as anxious to deliver ideas as they are their pages, spots and banners. Units are sold so far in advance that the possibility of turning something on its head by 'buying out space and/or time' is just not worth it for the economies of a media company." top

That's worrying because there's nary a marketer left who isn't looking for a bigger, better way to connect with those media-controlling consumers. I'm willing to bet that those that can't deliver them because of their silos, retrograde thinking or formulaic business models are going to find the next decade very long indeed.

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11. Though Ad Rules are Changing, You Still Have to be Consistent

(By Rance Crain / Published: May 01, 2006)

Could it be that not only is the media landscape undergoing fundamental changes but that the basic rules of advertising are also up for grabs?

I was brought up to think that advertising should implant one fundamental idea in people's minds (Volvo represents safety; BMW represents performance). But now some advertisers are saying different things to different buying segments, with no overall unifying theme.

Larry Light, the former marketing chief at McDonald's, startled the ad world a couple of years ago when he endorsed a ...

I was also raised to believe advertising's main job was to move the merchandise, but these days many advertisers seem to use it to maintain or achieve premium pricing.

Larry Light, the former marketing chief at McDonald's, startled the ad world a couple of years ago when he endorsed a "brand chronicle" concept that seeks to tell as many different stories in as many ways as it takes to reach McDonald's close to 50 million customers. "A brand is multidimensional. No one communication, no one message can tell a whole brand story," Mr. Light told our AdWatch conference in 2004. The "I'm lovin' it" theme is just a device that shows up at the end to identify the commercial as coming from McDonald's and isn't meant to be a statement about the brand. top

I had to travel to Dubai to hear a very articulate rationale for advertising's role in premium pricing. Mike Simon, senior VP-corporate communications at Emirates Group, said advertising for the airline plays a big role in profitability "because we believe that brand building is about sustaining price premiums. Sales volume is less a yardstick of advertising performance-our experience is that advertising influences price more than sales. And yield improvement goes straight to the bottom line." top

It's one thing for a high-priced airline to use ads to shore up prices and hence profits, but when high-volume brands like Coca-Cola start preaching from the same hymnal, maybe there's a trend. Coke's Chairman-CEO Neville Isdell told The Wall Street Journal that the company's game plan is to re-energize and modernize Coca-Cola by bringing out brands like Coke Blak that are high-revenue "but not necessarily high-volume. That is a different mind-set than where we have been before."

Volkswagen, in its new series of commercials, seems to be emulating the McDonald's strategy of appealing to different buyers with different, unrelated, messages. Whether VW will ever get back to a unifying theme, like "Drivers Wanted," I don't know, but I've been told it has lots of new models coming and ads will plug the new badges. top

The danger is that VW's disparate ads (or McDonald's, for that matter) could conflict with one another or turn off buyers who the ads weren't aimed at. top

A former VW exec is worried that the car company is spending big bucks to promote the GTI, which sells only about 20,000 units a year. (Maybe VW believes, like Emirates, that advertising influences price more than sales.)

Volkswagen's first GTI ad was titled "Make friends with your fast," and Bob Garfield contended that the spot's emphasis on speed was not responsible. VW's latest, for Jetta, shows in very graphic terms what happens when the Jetta is hit by another car