James Cramer’s TheStreet.com column a few weeks back struck a dissonant cord even with this web optimist. “Here’s a column that advertising agencies don’t want you to read,” he began. “Web advertising
works, IF you want people to go to the web. Television advertising does nothing for the web.”
Cramer went on to say, “radio works much better than television for the web because people who listen
to the radio—other than in their cars—are often on their computers. You have to turn your TV off to go to the computer, so the synergies there really suck. Radio works better than print, too, which
also has been a big waste of dot-com dollars.”
With all due respect, I disagree with almost every point. I can’t believe there are still people out there who can make a blanket statement like
“[insert name of medium here] doesn’t work” with a straight face, and—more importantly—get it printed and read. First of all, I’d like to think advertising clients deserve more respect than that. For
the most part, if they’re still in business, they know what they’re doing. But let’s take it a medium at a time.
Sure, if you gauge TV effectiveness by last year’s Super Bowl, TV is at a loss. But
we know better than that. The abundance of cross-media research out there clearly shows that no one turns off their TV to go to the computer, and the synergies there are actually pretty impressive,
considering the numbers of people who’ve followed some TV commercials’ calls to action and visited a particular site.
Does TV work for all dot-com advertisers? Of course not. No medium works for
everyone for every product or every audience. Does TV work for the select few who’ve figured out how to use the medium properly for their products? Of course it does.
And as for Cramer’s view of
print, I’ll grant him that many [start-up] companies recently threw millions of (venture) dollars away on print ads (and elsewhere), but that’s not because print doesn’t work, it’s because most of
these companies didn’t have a product worth advertising to begin with. And, as one of our readers pointed out, print doesn’t work for dot-coms because, for the most part, dot-coms do lousy print.
There’s no clear idea, positioning, and definitely no creative direction in the majority of the ads out there. Again, is print useless? No. Does it work for every dot-com? No. Has it worked wonders
for a select few? Certainly has and the same goes for every other medium out there—radio, out-of-home, direct, you name it.
“You need web advertising to generate traffic,” Cramer wrote. Yes you
do, but that’s not enough. The web, grand as it is, doesn’t yet have the market penetration to stand on its own, no matter what you hear. The most successful campaigns surround their target audience,
and take advantage of each medium’s unique benefits.
One of our readers put it best—”The best media mix ALWAYS depends—on the campaign objectives, the value proposition, the target audience, type
and level of competition, and a dozen other factors. Every medium has its particular set of strengths and weaknesses. The mix and the creative execution should leverage those strengths to deliver a
compelling call to action that works for the audience, that generates results. And, all of this must be supported by a quality product and an effective fulfillment/delivery system.”
Masha Geller
is the Editor-in-Chief of MediaPost. She may be reached at masha@mediapost.com.