• by Bob Rose , September 14, 2009

Newspapers are folding faster than Superman at the laundromat. Television commercials are being gobbled up by DVRs quicker than Joe Biden can eat his words. Radio ratings are lower than Rush Limbaugh on Election Day. If Facebook users were a country, it would be bigger than the United Kingdom, yet marketers invest in it as if it were Iceland.

Put them all together and one conclusion that many marketing people draw is patently false: Marketing communications are somehow less effective than they used to be. Great marketing communications programs continue to be the best way to build and nurture enduring brands. What is true: Finding the optimal communications mix requires more strategic focus and elbow grease than ever.

Part of what makes the task of today's communications planner so difficult is separating true media value from hype. The business is subject to as many irrational swings of perception as any industry.

Trouble With Bubbles

Take something of value, add hyperactive press coverage targeted to a population fearful of not being on the front wave of a trend, and you have the makings of a good old-fashioned "bubble." In early 2000, many will recall, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan famously described the dramatic stock market escalation as "irrational exuberance." There was a bandwagon effect for stocks that hyped demand way beyond a sensible financial value standpoint. First the market shot up in value, and then, without warning, it just blew up.

Obviously, these kinds of bubbles are an underlying cause of current economic mess. The momentum of buzz distorted reality: housing, oil prices and the financial markets all swing more on hype than on rational value.

The advertising business is particularly susceptible to Bubbles. That's why social network sites are the talk of the town, yet no one has really cracked the code in making them a consistent marketing force.

Their hype is way out in front of their current utility to marketers. Sorry to all you digital yackers: Facebook, Twitter, Digg and the others are just not, at the moment, a marketing home run. Google was a game changer because it brought great utility to both end-users and marketers. Social networks are great for end users, while marketers scratch their heads on the outside looking in.

Bubbles in buyer perceptions have been the hallmark of the television upfront buying season for decades. That's why network television rate increases have nearly always outpaced general inflation going back to Ed Sullivan. This year's marketplace has come to earth a little, in the same way that the air was let out of the online display ads balloon. (Let's see if the bubble swings negatively for network television, such that the momentum of negative perception weighs down its value beyond what is logical.)

Another bubble that is currently inflating past rational thinking is the idea that print is dying.

Print is certainly in a state of retrenchment, but the best brands will outlive your grandchildren. These brands, like The New York Times, Time magazine, The New Yorker and hundreds more, will endure on screens -- and paper. Why? Like Google, they offer great end-user benefit and great marketer utility. Brands of the printed word will always command credibility, relevance and a value that end users will pay for. Smart advertisers will follow engaged audiences as they always have.

This is not to say that the business of print doesn't have issues (sorry). Publishers are scrambling to figure out how to monetize their products more effectively online, but the depth of their problems is made particularly daunting in the current environment where stalwart ad categories, like automotive, financial and pharmaceutical, have pared back to nearly nil. These advertiser categories, and new ones, will come back (gradually) and a new natural level of print products will be buoyed to a balanced level of supply, demand and profitability.

Recessions are rough on the advertising business -- good media venues will suffer in this especially nasty downturn. But rough times do provide a valuable opportunity to thin the herd of weaker media.

In the long run, the media survivors are by nature more interesting and more useful platforms for their audiences, and so will be better partners for our marketing communications. We're in a media re-set, and when it settles, the properties, the audiences and we marketers will all be better off.