July 26, 2006
“whatever marketing becomes will start, I believe, as a technology trend.”
I totallly agree with Doc’s recent comment:
Whatever marketing becomes will start, I believe, as a technology trend.
Brilliant. [Doc’s blog is here.]
As I’m fond of saying, when people in the advertising business ask me where my disaffection with that industry comes from, I tell them to do the math:
The Cuetrain wasn’t written by a Leo Burnett employee.
Movable Type wasn’t invented by McCann’s.
RSS wasn’t invented by JWT.
Robert Scoble doesn’t work for Fallon.
Techmeme wasn’t invented by Saatchi’s.
Advertising people are supposed to be in “the idea business”. But none of the ideas that have excited me in the last 5 years or so have come from Madison Avenue. Not one. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Why do you think that is?
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Big ideas tend to come from individuals and people who have little to lose by taking a big risk. Madison Avenue has a lot to lose if they try something new… power to the people, long live the little man with the big idea, and mad props to the crackpot who will become a hero tomorrow.
I hope that I always fall squarely into the crackpot category.
thnx Hugh
i think it’s very telling that ALL of those companies you linked to had websites that made extensive use of flash (actually, 4 out of 5 had full flash interfaces)
Everything starts as a technology trend — it always has done and always will do.
I think if you are a techy-type those are the type of trends YOU will notice first. I’m not knocking you or anyone else…we all have our focus.
Great post.
Why do I think that is? Because, although the future may be built on the shoulders of the past, the future doesn’t necessarily grow out of a linear channel. And these days, channels are perhaps more ephemeral than ever.
So if you want to know where the next good radio show will come from, dont necessarily go asking radio folks. Ask someone who can realize alot of influences around them, and who happens to decide on radio as a channel.
Because you are ontologically indisposed to Madison Avenue…
Dennis nailed it.
Big ideas tend to come from individuals and people who have little to lose by taking a big risk. Madison Avenue has a lot to lose if they try something new… power to the people, long live the little man with the big idea, and mad props to the crackpot who will become a hero tomorrow.
I hope that I always fall squarely into the crackpot category.
thnx Hugh
Speaking of “borrow,” I ran across a fascinating concept in beta at http://www.borrowme.com.
The next ebay – extended, this will the platform that will grow my business…
Advertising agencies and the people that work for them have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of the mass media method of marketing.
They spend their idea cycles there.
They spend their idea cycles on how to make their rather large marketing budget clients happy.
They spend their idea cycles on winning meaningless awards.
They dislike accountability.
They are not really interested in growing the business.
They think advertising is marketing.
They think marketing starts at the end when it really starts at the beginning.
when was advertising responsible for creating RSS, Moveable Type or Scobble?
I’m not defending advertising, i agree advertising needs better work these days…but within the context of its means.
As an example, does an agency create RSS or does an agency figure out how to use the new RSS as a channel to reach/engage/talk/awareness for product to a consumer?
what are the “ideas” you think ad agencies are responsibile for?
Lance,
You seem to know a lot about advertising, or the world of advertising as depicted on this site.
I like accountability, I like growing a business, and never once have I thought advertising and marketing are the same thing.
Perhaps there’s yet another generalization that puts aberrant admen like me in their proper place.
Matthew — best cartoon about Flash ever.
What ideas HAVE they been responsible for?
Besides novel ad-placement..
The initial link doesn’t work but I’ve followed through to Doc’s place. Sorry mate — a crock of shit — nothing new here at all. No innovation. I’ll post on this at my place later today but I fail to see the argumenrt and what it means for business. (Yes I know — clueless accountant type)
Your Madison Ave argument is disconnected to my (feeble) mind but I’ll figure that one in the hours to come.
PS — tis about time we had a ‘discussion’ n’est pa?
Oh dear. Hard to know where to start the education of one who has so little understanding of marketing.
Do you have a favorite TV program Hugh? Sure you do. Advertising money allows the network to make that program. No-one’s going to stop watching their favorite program — or the ads in it — anytime soon. Globally, more than 3bn people watch TV. There are fewer than 100,000 ACTIVE (weekly posts or more) bloggers. Do the math. And realise that you’re a little, well, slow to grasp some fundamentals. Your site is full of empty rhetoric — I for one followed a blind lead, and I won’t be back.
What’s your problem, Dennis? I just told you how I felt. Are you telling me I’m feeling something else?
Hey Riddle, if you know so much about marketing, why don’t you show us how it’s done? Start a blog. Dazzle us with your insights and personal case studies.
But I’m guessing you can’t. Because of your job. Can’t afford to get fired and all that. Whatever.
I always thought advertising was just about selling things. I’ve never got the impression that advertisers want to invent or create a big idea to change the world, they just talk about new ideas to sell things. Single mission — do something just new enough or different enough (or with some clients, just the same enough) to convince the client that this agency is the one that can help improve sales.
Hi Hugh: I don’t have a problem but do take issue with people who present the obvious as ‘new.’ Not you — Doc in this case. But I will confess to being in ‘curmudgeon mode’ at the moment
Ad agencies didn’t invent the printing press, nor
the television either.
What is scary is that ad agencies didn’t invent “sponsored” web sites either. Why didn’t Nikes’ ad agency suggest that Nike build and maintain a sports statistics web site free for all visitors?
Why don’t car company ad agencies build and maintain car information sites.
No, all they can manage is “viral ads” whose effectiveness is impossible to measure and may never reach people who are buying.
Hehe. I’m retired, Hugh. No job to worry about. I retired at 38, after my partners and I sold our company to Omnicom. I mostly spend time getting to be a better underwater photographer diving off Makunufushi in the Maldives. it’s a lot more rewarding than hustling cheap wine to scrape a hard buck, brother. You think you’re the future, but you’re already history. Rupe will own your ass before you know it.
Can I say I agree? Not saying that PR is doing a phenomenal job in the blogosphere, but look at when marketing and advertising try to work in social media. It tends to be those two disciplines that get it wrong.
Riddle, congrats on your success. Good luck with your photos.
Still, if we’re on the subject of “rewarding”, if what you’re doing [and have done] is as rewarding as you say it is, I have the feeling that you would have phrased your two preceding comments differently. Just a hunch.
Nor would you be wasting precious time with some soon-to-be-history blogger. Again, just a hunch.
But yeah, it sure sounds good on paper. Welcome to Madison Avenue.
Criticising advertising for not coming up with RSS is as silly as criticising Hollywood for not making better burgers.
Ads people are in the business of the creative presentation of concepts and products, not in the business of making new technologies. They are affected by new technologies — RSS now, television in the 50’s — but they don’t make them.
A better comparison would be how advertising compares with TV programme makers.
Your hunches are as wrong-headed as your “analysis”. I visited your site after a conversation with an ex-colleague, where we discussed what happens to people who can’t cut it in adland. He said: “They become pathologically embittered. Like THIS guy”. And forwarded me your site URL. (yes, it’s someone you know). But I digress. To the original point: “blogging” is a media channel, and a minority one at best. Most blogs are the equivalent of a self-important adolescent’s diary. Most will wither on the vine. People don’t have conversations in bars about a great blog, the way they have conversations about that amazing Guinness ad. The few blogs that have a valid commercial focus (not yours, incidentally) will be assimilated by the News Corps of this world. And you, my friend, will start no revolution, change no marketing paradigms — because you confuse the channel or delivery system, with the content, or message. I’ve wasted too much time with you already, because your kind will never understand.
Saw a titan triggerfish today. Beautiful species.
“Most will wither on the vine. People don’t have conversations in bars about a great blog, the way they have conversations about that amazing Guinness ad.“
This exlains why Omnicom paid you the big bucks [so you say, nudge-nudge wink-wink, underwater photography nudge-nudge]. Too funny.
Secondly, I’m not sure if I’m the embittered one ’round here. Hopefully the fishies [nudge-nudge] will cheer you up a wee bit. Good luck with it.
Should we not also cricicise the advertising industry for not inventing sliced bread, the space shuttle, penicillin, the printing press… and in fact any useful invention? Bad, bad ad people. How lazy. Shame on them for not being in the business of technology invention, and not… advertising.
agree, but:
a decade ago, 4 letters: HHCL