Why I No Longer Believe In Advertising
– by Jaffer Ali

The end of the year is always a good time to reflect on
the past. The older we get, the farther we travel. The
road to our present business has been one of buying,
owning and selling media of just about every type. Follow-
ing is a short list of media that we have bought and/or
sold over the years:

Billboards Radio Newspapers
Television Magazines Catalogs
Online E-zines Banners Online video
Subway Posters Local Cable National Cable

I’m sure the above list is not complete, but you get the
point: when it comes to media buying and selling, we’ve
pretty much tried them all, been there and done that.
You’d think after all these years of buying and selling
media across so many different channels that I’d find a
softer place in my heart for advertising. But in fact,
I’ve reached the conclusion in recent months that
advertising has outlived its usefulness as an effective
tool to influence people. Influence is not a pass-fail
issue, rather one that like most everything else rides
a continuum.

There is a point at which a quantitative loss or gain
ushers in a qualitative change or ‘leap.’ Start pulling
out your hairs one at a time and eventually you become
bald (high-minded theory aside, my own scalp crossed
that threshold some years ago).

Over the past several years, the advertising industry has
suffered a huge loss in “influence” and now has so few
hairs left that the model looks like the top of Mr. Clean’s
head.

If, however, you don’t believe advertising effectiveness
is declining then you should stop reading this article
immediately. Reason will not make you see. Only continued
pain might awaken you from the nightmare of a failed model
and misplaced sympathies.

So what are marketers, brands and, yes, even politicians
doing to counter this metaphorical hair loss? Their first
reaction is to “double down” and increase impressions.
After all, if what you’re doing doesn’t work anymore, it
only makes sense to do more of it, right? If shampooing
twice a week with doesn’t stimulate hair growth, imagine
if you used it every day!

It is “magical thinking” that doing more of what doesn’t
work suddenly works. We experience this “magical thinking”
with our economic policies that solves our debt problem by
piling on more debt. So it is not surprising that magical
or delusional thinking is gripping our advertising industry.

But there are some folks confronting reality and dealing
with a transition that eschews traditional advertising and
uses content instead of commercials to build and deliver
audiences. And they’re doing it in different ways: product
placement and content curation are just two ways of using
content instead of traditional advertising to build and
deliver audiences.

Now entering its third generation, the digital era has
precipitated two powerful truisms:

1. no one wants more advertising,
2. everyone wants more high-quality content

Perhaps not surprisingly, the above are the same truisms
encountered by print, radio and TV as well. Yet marketers
across all media insist on investing in more ways to
deliver advertising messages that a) no one wants, and
b) that everyone is now equipped to avoid.

Do you require proof that content works better to build and
deliver audiences than advertising? Consider how the Bush
team perfected the use of content to nudge a nation toward
war, despite the fact that no one can recall a specific
marketing message to that effect. What we saw instead was
a $250,000-richer Armstrong Williams on network cable
touting the Bush company line. What we read instead was the
NY Times’ Judith Miller presenting Pentagon views on WMDs.
Was she also paid for her “reporting”? And how about those
150 retired generals flown to Washington DC, briefed with
talking points and dispatched as “expert sources” to
newspapers, television and cable news outlets? Heck, you
don’t expect these guys to work for free, do you?

$1.6 billion in expenditures by the Bush administration to
“sell” or “influence” a nation into war… without a single
ad! At this very moment, the Obama administration is
invoking these same lessons as they condition the public
to support the Afghan surge. Governments and propagandists
the world over have long understood the powerful sway of
content. So why is the advertising ecosystem still trying
to cover its bald pate with such a lousy toupee?

No one watches TV, listens to the radio, reads a magazine
or surfs the web for the advertising. That era started
winding down the moment the TV remote control eliminated
the need to get up from the couch to change the channel.
Advertising has been in a perpetual state of declining
performance ever since, as each new digital device
designed to facilitate more media consumption also
equipped consumers with the additional technology to
avoid more ads.

I will end with an invitation for a dialog. If you want
to discuss how you can not just build audiences, but
deliver them utilizing content, give me a call. My direct
line is 708-478-4500 ext. 105.

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End of MEDIA PERSPECTIVES
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