Advertising is _________
August 22, 2005
"Slushy"
"Going Through Menopause"
"Dead"
...yet only 155 hits for "advertising is alive and well"
Why the recent Chicken Little bit?
Are brands not more integrated into peoples lives than ever? Is it not a fairly recent phenomenon that we express our individuality through diehard, sometimes religious brand loyalty? Don't you have a friend who is "a Mac guy" (who hates PCs), "a Coke guy" (who hates Pepsi), "a New Balance lady" who would never own Nike? What about the your friend that only drinks Anheuser Busch products? Or refuses to? Etc, etc, etc.
End of advertising?! We LOVE brands.
posted by drinkspiller | 7:05 AM
2 Comments:
End of advertising my arse. We in America love branding, love advertising, and love consuming. Advertising will not die, not in this country, at least.
Advertising may not be dying per se, but it has certainly passed the point of diminishing returns. Perhaps it is more accurate to suggest that "advertising as we know it" is dying. What is dying is the efficaciousness of the mass marketing vehicles qua marketing vehicles.
It is no longer enough to merely buy lots of media - one must actually be compelling to get noticed in the chaos of ubiquitous marketing in our information-rich lives. The Internet further reinforces this notion. If I hear about the hilarity of some ad, I can simply choose to watch it online of my own volition while happily TIVO-ing away any commercial messages on television.
Consumers are increasingly availed of more and more sophisticated technology and a greater gumption to make themselves the arbiters of their own personal interaction with the commercial world. Obviously in such a situation, advertising cannot simply announce the existence of a product or didactically lay out the case for said product – advertising must evolve into more of a storytelling – it must entertain, or amuse, or bemuse.
I have hope it will be a change for the better.
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