ADVERTISING: DEAD OR ALIVE?

Years ago, on my way to holidays in the Dominican Republic, I picked up a book at the airport titled “The End of Advertising as We Know It” by Sergio Zyman. I stopped, looked at the cover, and pondered for a moment. How could this be possible? Advertising is everywhere, on everything, and such a deep part of our culture. It just didn’t make sense that it might not exist someday. So, I quickly grabbed a copy and made my way to the departing flight. 

In the book, Mr. Zyman makes a convincing case that modern advertising has now become more like art and entertainment, and that it long ago left behind the reason for its existence— the selling of products to people. So, in a way it’s the end of the original type of advertising we all consumed in the past. It’s now morphed into a soft replacement for messages selling products and services and even outgrown the narrow platforms delivering the message. 

He warned marketers to get ready for dramatic changes in how advertising might be delivered in the future, the incredible number of delivery methods, and how propositions must become even simpler.

Will it Disappear?

I enjoyed the book, closed it, and was relieved to discover that all advertising was not going to disappear. That action would affect my livelihood in a dramatic way. Disaster averted. But only for a while, because as we marched ahead a few years, the end of some advertising channels is coming as predicted, albeit in a slightly different but similar dramatic fashion.

Today, people can now completely opt out of broadcast advertising by subscribing to an ad sponsored streamer. They subscribe with full knowledge that they will see ads for a reduced monthly fee. That’s the bargain. And the customers on these ad sponsored platforms are usually watching and listening to these ads. But for AdBlock style users that selectively choose where to go, they effectively keep most advertising at bay. Most, but not all.

The Challenge

The biggest challenge for an advertiser today is that audiences are increasingly fragmented with almost limitless options available. And even more are on the way. I had a back seat to the slow decline of print advertising as a primary promotion vehicle, as my wife was a successful print broker for 30 plus years. She used to print a lot of door hangers but saw that business dry up quickly once Groupon made the scene. Newspapers lost their main income stream to classified ads – and that business is not coming back. So, looking at the title again, the question it poses about whether advertising is dead or alive is once again being asked. The answer is that is still very much alive, but some of the delivery methods have been sent to a permanent place in the Advertising Hall of Fame. Like the Pony Express demise story, private messages are still being delivered– just not by exhausted cowboys.

Reach or Frequency?

A methodology that worked well with traditional media, was to focus more on frequency than reach. This means that it’s better to communicate with a smaller group numerous times (frequency) than to present to a large group once or twice (reach), hoping for a big memorable campaign that resonates with prospects. 

Today you can have the best of both worlds by obtaining a worldwide reach plus unlimited frequency at the same time. How does that work? Let’s look at YouTube. You can reach the entire planet on one platform, and your message is out there 24/365. In the past with traditional media, your ad was the start and the end of the offer. But YouTube can work for you over and over again in two ways. The first way is that people discover you there, and the second is that you send them there using other methods.  

Conventional Role

 So, what gets people there? Sometimes it’s conventional advertising. I heard something once that has stayed with me. It’s, “do you live in a world that doesn’t exist anymore?”

 It really caused me to pause because I do listen to older music. I read the newspaper and still watch some broadcast TV. But other generations have no interest in any of that. The reality is that there are many worlds to live in at the same time. The challenge is to see other worlds inhabited by others unlike us and then try to figure out the best way to get our advertising information to them. The way they want to consume it.

So, unless you discriminate about where your money comes from, you need all types of customers from all walks of life and that likely will still happen through advertising in some form. A friend of mine once told me he met someone who can’t figure out how to send an email, but he can make a cash wire transfer to buy the building he lives in. And new media is not likely the best way to reach him. You still might want his business, so old media will work a lot better here.

Yes, advertising is alive, but in different moving forms than some of us we’re used to. The upside? When consumers actively seek out the platforms they want for content, the appearance of advertising is less likely to be dismissed and be more tolerated. For advertisers, the answer  to staying ahead of the curve is to take the best of what traditional ads have to offer— storytelling, appeal to the senses, and relatability, and then tie it to new media strengths like trackability, lower costs and immediate execution. Now you have something powerful. In my next blog, I’ll outline hybrid marketing. That’s the key to advertising in the decade ahead.