December 18, 2006

“there is no demand for messages”

5 Comments

From Doc Searls:

The bulk of adver­ti­sing — all $160 billion of it (which buys a lot of art) — is a con­ver­sa­tion bet­ween adver­ti­sers, media and agents for both. That con­ver­sa­tion has enor­mous flywheels that were for­ged in the Age of Industry, and carry assump­tions that are totally obso­lete in a new age when the human beings we’ve been calling “con­su­mers” are no lon­ger dumb tar­gets in a posi­tion only to absorb mes­sa­ges and dis­place cash.
Remem­ber this essay’s title? The main rea­son I got out of adver­ti­sing and PR was this epiphany:
THERE IS NO DEMAND FOR MESSAGES

I con­cur with Doc. That being said, though there may not be a demand for mes­sa­ges per se, there’s always going to be a demand for peo­ple who are bet­ter at selling your pro­duct [or idea] than you are.

And none of this is going to go away, no mat­ter how evol­ved “The Inten­tion Eco­nomy” becomes.

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5 Responses to ““there is no demand for messages””

  1. Tim Benjamin says:
    December 18, 2006 at 11:47 AM

    No demand for mes­sa­ges? Shouldn’t that read ‘No demand for irre­le­vant mes­sa­ges’? I love being mes­sa­ged about something — if it sol­ves a need I have.

  2. Paul Fabretti says:
    December 18, 2006 at 1:36 PM

    Ain’t that the truth. Great essay too. Very rele­vant and insightful.

  3. Doug Karr says:
    December 18, 2006 at 8:28 PM

    Ahhh, but there is a demand. The demand for mes­sa­ging comes from the peo­ple who write the movies, the tele­vi­sion shows, the music, the books… they are all asking for the mes­sage to be put out. The mes­sage? “Buy my stuff!”.
    The demand is coming from the sup­pliers and the peo­ple who bene­fit from the sale.
    There’s a huge demand for adver­ti­sing. Many indus­tries, inc­lu­ding the web, depend on it.
    The demand is just not coming from the con­su­mer. :)

  4. Joe Andrieu says:
    December 19, 2006 at 12:14 PM

    Hugh,
    With all res­pect, you and Doc are mis­sing the point. There is huge demand for the right mes­sa­ges.
    Case in point: peo­ple in the UK defi­ni­tely wan­ted to hear Thresher’s mes­sage about 40% off everything for a limi­ted time.
    The hard part is actually figu­ring out what the right mes­sage is.
    More at http://blog.joeandrieu.com/2006/12/19/demand-for-clarity/
    –joe

  5. Mack Collier says:
    December 20, 2006 at 5:41 PM

    Is it that there’s no demand for mes­sa­ges, or that Doc isn’t deman­ding mes­sa­ges that he doesn’t want to hear?
    Big dif­fe­rence, and the lat­ter shouldn’t be pro­jec­ted as being the same as the former.