Of advertising agencies' penchant for jumping on the latest trend and playing buzzword bingo, Bob Hoffman writes, "Every agency also becomes expert in this new miracle, and starts up a department to specialize in it. They 'brand' it (i.e., give it a stupid name) and develop a pseudo-proprietary flavor of this miracle. Although what they do is exactly the same as what every other agency does, their flavor usually contains some kind of highly-evolved methodology with circles and arrows and dotted lines and feedback loops. In other words, it’s a muy grande bullshit burrito." And this is exactly what happened when agencies adopted account planning, when they jumped into social media and when they hijacked the "muy grande bullshit" du jour, big data. But the important thing, and the point Bob drives home is that the only thing that matters is, wait for it...the Big Idea. He writes, "The only real miracle we have in our bag of tricks is the creative one. It’s the only one we’ve ever had." Is he right?
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Gleefully jumping on the Owned, Earned, Paid media bandwagon and giving us an example of the aforementioned propensity for
agencies to jump on the latest trend and play buzzword bingo, New York-based Jun Group has announced the launch of its "owned advertising" product; a sponsored content ad unit called Overdrive. Yeah,
they're calling, incorrectly, the practice of sponsored content (which is actually paid media), Overdrive. In fact, they also refer to the new unit as a form of native advertising which, by
definition, is paid advertising. A press release screams, "For the first time, brands can promote their owned-media properties without having to use display or worry about being in non-premium
environments." Obviously they haven't heard of OneSpot. Or Outbrain. Or Sharethrough. Or Nativo. Granted, every offering is a bit different but an ad unit that looks like editorial that clicks through
to branded (and owned) content is nothing new.
So people get hired, fired or promoted all day long. It isn't really news although it is nice to read about where our industry mates
have landed. But what's even more interesting is to read what their new bosses have to say about the hire. Get a load of this quote from Ketchum CEO Rob Flaherty who just promoted Paul M. Rand to
chief digital officer. Flaherty said, "The enhancement and consistent delivery of digital and related services at a world-class level are an essential element in reinforcing Ketchum as a go-to
resource for sophisticated, effective, trend-setting campaigns across the increasingly important 'PESO' spectrum of paid, earned, shared and owned channels." OK, really? PESO? Seriously? Um, shared is
the same as earned but we suppose Ketchum needed to add shared so they could tout their ridiculous PESO acronym. Who comes up with this crap?
Here's one the women will love. At The
Three Percent Conference, a conference which aims to change the fact that just 3% of creative directors are women, a panel made up of men to discuss how they helped mentor women with their advertising
careers got cat-called as they walked on stage. Adrants, which is on the ground covering the conference, tweeted, "All male panels
gets cat-called at #3percentageconf Hilarious!" Hilarious, indeed and probably about time after years and years.and years of demeaning women in this same manner.
Add this one to the burrito pile.
I just Reinvented Advertising. Now I need Your Help To Challenge Madison Avenue.
Way back in 2006 A.G. Lafley the Chairman of Proctor & Gamble stated before an audience of decision-makers in a AAAA conference, “The marketing model is broken. We all need to fix it right away.” Apparently no one was listening. How do I know?
According to Insight Express, consumer trust in advertising has plunged 41% over the past three years and only 10% of consumers say they trust ads today. In the varied world of todays media, the consumer is increasingly in control. A recent study by Yankelovich, Inc. revealed that nearly 70% of consumers were actively looking for ways to block, opt-out, or eliminate advertising. Over a seven year span since the wake-up call from the world’s largest advertiser, has it come down to this?
Our company, Smart Communications, Inc has been working on this problem for the past five years. We believe we have a workable alternative to advertising as usual. We call it NeoAdvertising and you can find out more about it at. http://NeoAdvertising.org.
In our online testing activities NeoAdvertising executions have blown the doors of traditional advertising executions in categories like persuasion, retention, awareness and brand preference. But now that we have proven the concept, we have the formidable task of bringing it to market. That is where we need your help.
Morgan Chase has a $250,000 grant program that we can qualify for. But, they want to know if we have industry support. That means I have to convince 250 people to vote for our company’s proposal. Morgan Chase wants to confirm the identity of each voter through an active Facebook account, to avoid more than one vote per individual. (This is a $250,000 grant, after all). The information Morgan Chase collects on voter’s FB “friends” is what is publically available on your Facebook profile (the total number of FB friends of each of the voters) to allow them to estimate the network outreach potential of the 250 votes of each grant applicant. I have been assured that it will not stored by them or used for marketing purposes.
Please visit http://NeoAdvertising.org. and judge for yourself. If you think our new form of advertising is worthy of your support and your vote, then please go to bit.ly/1exhSso and give us your vote.
If you are really excited about what we are doing, ask your friends and others in your Facebook network to vote for us as well.
As co-creator of the longest running advertising campaign in history (“Stuck On Band-Aid Brand) it was not easy for me to come to the realization that advertising is severely broken. With your vote we may be able to fix it.
Harry Webber