• by Bill McCloskey , June 5, 2001

I’ve been reading a lot of books on advertising lately. Right now I’m absorbed with Max Sutherland’s “Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer: What Works, What Doesn’t and Why.” Like many of the books I’m reading that go deeply into the inner workings of advertising psychology, this book is strictly pre-Web. Published in 1993, it doesn’t even mention the Internet.

Same with “Disruption” published in 1996, written by TBWA/Chiat/Day’s new chief Jean-Marie Dru, or “Cutting Edge Advertising” by Jim Aitchison, which focuses completely on print advertising, published as recently 1999. The Internet is invisible in all of these fascinating books.

This is not to say that I don’t have books on Internet advertising on my shelves. I have a couple: both the leading books in their day, circa 1997. A quick check on Amazon reveals that one of my books hasn’t been updated at all and the other came out with a second edition around 1999.

And while those non-Internet advertising books delve deeply into the human psyche, the effects of subliminal advertising, visually-led vs. copy-led advertising, social interaction… in other words: deeply thought out ruminations and studies on the effects that advertising plays on our lives as living human creatures, my Internet advertising books talk about things like putting the words “Click Here” in a banner to increase click-through.

The fact is that the best, most creative thinking minds in advertising today just aren’t thinking about the Internet.

Why is this?

I mean, the Internet opens up possibilities for creativity that have never existed before. It is the fastest growing medium of all time. The ability to track, test, and target has never been greater. Rich media tools make it possible to combine the emotional impact of television and radio with the pulse accelerating game play of Quake. The potential to engage is unquestioned.

And yet for the last six years, the majority of advertising online has remained creatively stagnant. We are still “punching monkeys,” reminded that we have “one message” waiting for us.

This is not the way Internet advertising, even banner advertising, has to be. One look at the brilliant work being done by Freestyle Interactive, who swept the Cleo awards for online, can attest to that. Online advertising can be just as great as we, in the business, have always said it could be. And yet, Internet advertising has become the creative equivalent of the largest, most interactive supermarket pennysaver in existence.

Even many of the rich media campaigns suffer from this lack of creativity. Here’s a line from one of the texts I’m reading: advertising must be disruptive and engaging to work. Disruptive to catch your attention. Engaging to keep it. Most new rich media technologies have only mastered the first part of the equation.

That’s because that’s all they are: technologies; tools ready for the creative mind to use. Without creativity, rich media technologies are no more effective than the most mind numbing static gif.

I’m thinking about all this because this week I was very disheartened to hear that one of the pioneers of rich media email was shutting things down: Radical Communication (a company that literally invented a new way of marketing) while retaining a small staff as they look for a buyer for the technology and tools that took them years to develop, has stopped taking on new business.

There are a number of reasons for this, many of them good ones I’m sure: current market conditions, bad timing in having to search for that next round right now, not cutting staff quickly enough, too early to market, not enough time. And yet what Radical started, others will finish: companies that have had the good fortune of following in their footsteps to avoid the landmines that Radical jumped on for them.

A few weeks ago I visited a media buying firm that had just run a Radical campaign. They were disappointed because they had not noticed any lift in the response from their plain text campaign. “What was the creative, “ I asked.

“The company re-purposed a TV commercial,” I was told. In other words, no original creative thought was put into the campaign and yet it was supposed to succeed. Technology can only take you so far. It can disrupt. It can’t engage. It takes minds like the folks at Fallon in Minneapolis to do that. Take a look at the brilliant work they are doing for BMW with the BMWfilms.com site and ask yourself if BMW is concerned with “click-through”.

Now if we can only get Paul Shield, Fallon’s Managing Director of Interactive, to write a book!

- Bill McCloskey is Founder and CEO of Emerging Interest, an organization dedicated to educating the Internet advertising and marketing industry about rich media and other emerging technologies. He may be reached at bill@emerginginterest.com.