Okay, So Advertising is Not Dead

Jake McKee, of Community Guy blog, wrote a comment to my post the other day about advertising not being needed.  I thought it was so good I should post about it today.  Here it is:

OK, I'm the first to admit and agree that advertising in the future will be something radically different than it's been in the past. But at the same time, there'll always be a place for it in some form.

Think about what "advertising" really means. At its heart it's about getting a core message out. While users are unquestioningly smart and companies are often dumb, that doesn't mean that turning the keys over to users actually works. Think about where digital music (and movies) would be without Apple's push (and advertising) of the iPod. Probably as far along as it was pre-iPod.

We need to stop thinking that advertising is gone. Even if push messaging disappears, then we'll need a collection method for all the ideas coming from consumers. We'll need a method of getting user and company involvement in selecting most popular ideas. Someone's going to have to tell others about those efforts. That's advertising.

But the funniest thing is that as we get more options, we tend to want less. Read the social customer manifesto - one of the points is that we don't want advertising/sales pitches....unless they're relevant and then we want them yesterday.

The question is not whether we'll have advertising, it's what will advertising look like.

He's so right - and I think advertising will morph into a service for people rather than the interruption it is now.  Saying advertising is dead is really my lazy way of getting attention  (of advertising my message).  I actually wrote a post called Advertising is Going Through Menopause a long time ago - and I still think  what I said is true.  Thanks Jake.

Comments

[Jake]

Happy to help! :)