DISQUS

Mark Devlin · 3 years ago

Scott,

I first started reading your blog because you were a voice of calm who recognised the values in Web 1.0 were applicable to Web 2.0. Now it seems you have caught some kind of "bubble fever" which has the unfortunate symptom that you feel compelled to declare that anything 1.0 is dead, dying or unecessary :( Please get well soon.

Advertising prices are going up because demand is high, not because it is declining. Demand is higher because advertisers now realise that they can advertise online effectively. The market is growing, it's the nature of the spend that is changing. Whether a company spends money on ads, direct mail, or in-house marketing it's still money spent on promotion.

As I mentioned recently in my post Social networks are (Demographic) Search Engines, much of the future of advertising on the web is personalised direct marketing. Companies, particularly those in food service, have always used direct marketing to reach their customers; it's just that the tools to do so on the web have not been that great so far.

You have overestimated the ability for humans and corporations to effectively to do their own marketing. Just as a blogger is not a media company, a burger company is not a media company. It is unrealistic to think they can, or should, be able to deliver the kind of results that are required to consistently gain attention in the market. Ad agencies and media companies are simply better at collecting potential customers. Note that all the campaigns you mentioned were created and promoted (using PR and advertising) by intermediary ad agencies, using the clients' advertising and promotions budget.

Sally · 3 years ago

Yes, but to back up Scott's point, Dunkin' Donuts is just cutting out one middleman-- they still hire professional marketing people to create their media experience, branding, etc. They're just bypassing 'networks', be they internet, television, radio, etc.

There's no reason to think that a large proportion of the smarter people who work at NBC, TNT, ad agencies, marketing firms, etc. etc. won't still have jobs and be making money in the future, as you need something to attach your brand to, because Dunkin Donuts is just not that interesting all on its own. There is no reason for 99% of people to ever have anything to do with Dunkin Donuts outside of their retail operations unless they create a reason for you to do so. And it's not going to be done in-house because retail coffee is a tough business in and of itself; creating and managing an in-house creative team nimble enough to respond to changes in customer behavior, etc. is just too much trouble.

Marketers, creatives, people who can make interesting stuff will always have jobs because our system allows (and indeed depends on having) many choices of similar products, and an emotional response needs to be imparted into those products to give them resonance in the consumer's mind. There will always be a group of people who are able to synthesize an appropriate emotional response that will create long-term value, and those people will always be in demand-- it's just that artificial networks which depend only on very basic brand-attachement (advertising in blocks betweek content) will not be as cost effective in the future as personal choice keeps expanding, and bottom-up networks define what people consume.

Tom · 3 years ago

My personal favourite has to be My Dog Blog. Large fonted, user created blogs - Real web 2.0 pedigree.

Brian Turner · 3 years ago

Advertising almost certainly isn't in a "death spiral" - it's just evolving with the internet.

As to corporates creating their own communities - IMO this is never going to work for a lot of markets. People simply don't want to be "owned" by a brand unless it's a helluva brand, and offers something real in return.

2c.

Stu · 3 years ago

For these corporate sites to prosper, they need a lot of eyeballs.

Yupper, a great site experience and word of mouth/mouse can get you some eyeballs, but it will take a lot more promotion for these companies to get sufficient enough traffic for their website traffic to impact their success.

The game just changes. Sure, you no longer need to do what P&G did, by producing the soap operas, on somebody elses network. But you still need an audience for what ever content you put up on your site.

That is bubblish speak, indeed.

So, it's fun for us all to figure out the new creative solutions. But, definitely an overstatement, to call this a free-falling spiral.

Chris Zaharias · 3 years ago

The reason firms like Dunkin' Donuts and McDonalds are doing promotional stuff like you mentioned is that no one is searching for 'cheeseburgers' or 'donuts' online. That's less an indictment of targeted online marketing and moreso an affirmation of the fragmentation of media consumption (which is bad for brand marketers).

My own opinion is that the economy *is* going to get really, really bad soon & for 5-15 years, and that a large general downturn in the economy will hurt the advertising industry. Within that, though, online marketing will fare much better because it's more measure and still under-utilized relative to traditional media. Also, keep in mind that advertisers will improve their conversion rates & that will allow them to continue to spend more on online advertising; likewise consumers will get their online purchase behaviors worked out so that they convert more often themselves.