subject: Yes, most definitely Advertising and Marketing is simply not fit for purpose! [print this page] Yes, most definitely Advertising and Marketing is simply not fit for purpose!
It would appear that when politicians have "big ideas" they are immediately positioned as just "a marketing device", signifying nothing. That's how far Advertising & Marketing have fallen!
The dangers facing advertising and marketing are many and complex, however we have to stop and stand back and re-examine the whole process of commercial communication for the practitioners have lost sight of what we are supposed to do. It is true that Marketing inertia is causing so many problems, together with the fact that they will not face up to the unpalatable truth that the whole process is just not working these days. The situation is so bad that any attempt to mount an argument for reform gets buried in the old narrative of "advertising works"! Well the fact is that the era of getting rid of big advertising agencies and cutting wasteful expenditure is upon us. After all we've had years of ever increasing marketing budgets and throwing huge amounts of money at media has resulted in clutter and unaccountability. Advertising in its current form must come to an end, not just because the money has run out, but it is also shown to have failed! Although it must be said that Advertising and Marketing are not the only scenes of gross wastage and mismanagement.
One can liken the current Advertising scene to an unstable Ponzi scheme. Advertising and Marketing departments promised higher benefits than were justified by the money being allocated to pay for them as in the swindle known as a Ponzi scheme. The fact that advertising doesn't work makes all this expenditure unsustainable right now!
There is an urgent need like "Right Now" to overcome the hostility to big business generally, the normal cosy relationships must not be allowed to resume. The flawed policy-making in Marketing departments, without a doubt the Saatchi brothers are responsible for the over rated benefits on spending (wasting?) huge amounts of money on advertising! They were the most incompetent advertising people in the history of advertising! The Saatchi Brothers encouraged the slavish adherence to rational expectations stemming from the Creative Process, and yet all knew that slavish belief in Creativity alone is fatal!
Where should we go from here? A huge and daunting question. Advertising Agencies must learn the theory of "communication" they must also try, in all honesty, to become totally accountable, it can be done.
However at the very moment they are rushing towards the over-hyped expectations of the Internet totally ignoring the fact that the Internet is NOT an advertising medium, people get onto the internet to go somewhere else, not to watch time consuming adverts!
Advertising is much less powerful than advertisers and critics of advertising claim, and advertising agencies are stabbing in the dark much more than they are practising precision microsurgery on the public Consciousness.
One of the more striking examples concerns television advertising for the Olympics and the Superbowl. The nave observer must assume that businesses reap extraordinary rewards for their elaborate and expensive sponsorship of these events. But, it turns out, no one really knows if they do.
Video Storyboard Tests, Inc., a market-research firm, found that Olympics advertising was not cost-effective. Leading Olympics advertisers paid $62 for every 1,000 retained impressions" (consumers who report that they remember an ad or have retained impressions" of the ad) compared to the $27 they normally spend for the same result through other media such as magazines. As for the Super-bowl, some firms were pleased to advertise. Soloflex, a mail-order exercise firm, advertised because, as the firm's president put it, "Look, it's the Superbowl [Advertising ~on the game] gives the company more credibility; it's a statement that we have arrived." In actuality, the most commonly held beliefs about advertising, including its ability to influence sales by causing consumers to think a certain way about a product, are open to question.
With most Americans most of the time, this notion about consumer choice explains scarcely anything about why consumers buy what they do. Nevertheless, there may be ways that advertisements indirectly affect consumer buying decisions.
Its effects on product sales may be questionable, but where advertising succeeds is in selling consumers on the purchase of happiness.
If business people think ads affect consumers directly, their belief serves as a spur to an advertising program.
