by Flemming Funch
Terry Heaton:What happens when customers ultimately reject advertising? Well, it is a bit of a mystery why companies still throw that much into advertising. I can't remember the last time I bought anything based on an ad. There could be so much better ways for sellers to talk with buyers. It can only be a matter of time before somebody notices they're wasting their money, or, yes, that the customers get used to ways of completely avoiding the ads.
Doc Searls:Every time I watch TV I notice a strangely — even precipitously — high percentage of ads for automobiles. So I wonder, What would happen if all those advertisers suddenly decide (perhaps because they notice they're advertising mostly to maintain spending parity) to stop advertising on TV?
At some point the woeful inefficiency of spending large amounts of money to "reach" people who aren't watching (or don't care, or hate suffering annoying and irrelevant "messages") will make its own case against TV Advertising As We Know It.
At some point, mass market advertisers will start conversing with, and relating to, customers. Inevitably, they'll discover how much more leveraged that is than spraying "messages" at "consumers" through "channels" between "content" that viewers would rather watch without messages. Which would certainly be a good thing. But it requires drastic transformation of all media that are financed by those ads. Television, newspapers, many websites. They have to think of other ways of being in the loop.
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