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$\"Gravatar\"$ You got to love humans that are still using their brains to question things, not just eat everything.

What was the Christian slogan? Believe and do not ask questions.

Back then, you pretty much had to believe whatever the priest told you, as literacy was scarce.

I find it unbelievable, though, that we just mindlessly accept theories, we love to learn quotes, when we bring arguments in a debate we bring slogans written by some famous guys.

We are using our brains less and less. We're becoming lazy, I guess.

It's the easy way.
Sebastiano | 06.09.09 - 4:36 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Every morning at 8:30am GMT I read your blog over my first cup of tea. It never fails to make me laugh, fill my belly with fire, or do both.

I love the simplicity and the message. The ebook is great thanks again
Robert Coyle | Homepage | 06.09.09 - 4:54 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ And when you're talking about golf and beer with your buddies on the several social networking sites that you're a member of do any of your buddies mention the new driver they just bought that adds ten yards to his long game or the new bag he just bought or this new course he discovered somewhere in Florida? How about what beer he enjoyed on holiday in the Bahamas? If he did he is in effect selling you these brands and those are the conversations most online gurus are talking about. You're not supposed to have conversations with the makers of the product but conversations about the product with your mates online. It's not something any marketer can control and that's why it scares most marketers. You can't control what some blogger says about your brand online.
Christian | 06.09.09 - 5:29 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ @Robert: Thanks

@Christian: No, my buddies never mention any of that.
ad contrarian | Homepage | 06.09.09 - 7:37 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ To your point #5 (and Christian's rejoinder), social media often generates an unintended consequence: If I do happen to hear a stranger extol the virtues of a brand in an open forum, my B.S. detector starts to go off.

I don't know if that person is legit or a shill, and I have no way of finding out. When I was shopping for a VOIP provider earlier this year, I immediately eliminated companies that I perceived as \"cloud seeding\" discussions. Their ruse had exactly the opposite of its intended effect.
Jake | Homepage | 06.09.09 - 7:47 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Nice summary of the last bunch of months topics. I see how some religion and marketing are similar with the self annointed gurus and high priests snubbing the basics and logic of simplicity. When I hear words like \"fanaticism,condemnation,suffering,piety and persecution\" they might actually be talking about a new online campaign that we the average just don't understand?
jeaves | 06.09.09 - 8:13 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ The biggest impact I see from the internet is that businesses who previously couldn't afford to hire big agencies or pay big media fees to promote themselves found a whole new way to do it. And millions of businesses that wouldn't have otherwise existed have sprung up to take advantage of this fact. Some of them have grown pretty large and have begun to threaten the existing power structure in the marketing world.

Most new businesses now grow up thinking internet first, because that's the easiest way they can do it. Once more of these million small businesses mature, the nature of marketing as we once knew it will have shifted dramatically. Just as the big three broadcast networks once owned the airwaves, the big advertisers owned the marketing channels.

NBC, CBS and ABC haven't gone away. But they sure have a lot of new company. As we watch old behemoths of the capitalist landscape, like GM fade away they are being replaced by new ones like Amazon, Google, etc. Granted, there aren't any online-centric makers of cars or deodorant yet. But it won't surprise me if it happens soon.

BTW- when you were busy discussing golf and beer and music online, you didn't by any chance happen to mention your favorite band, your favorite brew or your favorite Callaway driver, did you?
Jon P | Homepage | 06.09.09 - 8:43 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ With respect to customer behavior, you no doubt recall that Robert Louis Stevenson said that \"95% of human behaviour can be intuited.\"
Voila: we just saved millions in meaningless market research.
John Joss (real name) | 06.09.09 - 9:05 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ I get up, rush to work, work, rush home, pick up groceries, cook, call a friend or two, crash in front of the TV, and go to bed. When in the good lord's name do I have time to chit-chat with a brand?

Advertisers are eejits sometimes.
Teenie | Homepage | 06.09.09 - 9:14 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ I realize nuance is not very contrarianesque, but there are times when I wish TAC were less black-and-white, because:

1. Consumer behavior is the most obvious in hindsight. The \"better\", \"nicer\", \"more convenient\" or \"cheaper\" are not absolutes and are not reliable tools for forecasting future demand. People buy all kinds of stuff of questionable utility for a variety of irrational reasons.

2. Ask a newspaper publisher about how well \"mass marketing\" -- advertising, packaging, pricing as well as development -- of their product works for him.

3. There wouldn't have been a bottled water industry without the initial change of consumer attitude towards tap water.

4. Nothing has a definite \"future\", but it wouldn't be prudent not to consider likely scenarios. One of them includes online publishers offering ad formats that have effectiveness higher than the current 0.02% display CTR. If the math works out, then yes, more ad dollars will move online.

5. \"Conversations with brands\" include calls to customer support. Your overall perception of the product and probability of repeat business will be influenced by how well this conversation goes.
ivv | Homepage | 06.09.09 - 12:23 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ I am actually coming back to advocating more advertising to clients. I was a deep skeptic of it for a long time after it quit working as well as it used to - especially newspaper advertising. The internet as a whole is way too fragmented to be a primary driver, and social media is unscalable. The more I experience social media as an active user of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, the less impressed I am by its potential utility.
Patrick | Homepage | 06.09.09 - 5:40 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Myth #6 - Traditional advertising is consistently effective.

Effective at what? Awareness? Purchase intent? Favorability? Please!

It's too bad TAC, that your scratched LP keeps repeating. It's not that online adverting is taking over and will be the only method, it's that it is exposing the gross inefficiencies and ingrained silliness of previous methods.
Matt Mantey | Homepage | 06.09.09 - 11:43 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ #7) Believe in fancy lists that appear on advertising blogs

...
You really don't expect me to believe what you wrote in the post ? If we keep doing advertising the way we always did, then don't complain that the industry is f***ed up.
Armando Alves | Homepage | 06.10.09 - 7:41 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ To be fair TAC (and this is more a spot of light pendantry, rather than disagreement that 'conversations' are a panacea), when you talk about beer, sports and music (and sex... possibly), do you really never mention brands?
RB | 06.10.09 - 8:33 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ None of the things on your list are irresponsible and silly. Golf is dull, but that's another blog altogether
snox | 06.10.09 - 6:28 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Many of those clients comments also mean, \"we really don't have any money to spend\" Or the budgets you thought we had.
Papajohn | 06.11.09 - 2:45 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Genius

I wish more people thought like this
mattjacobs | 06.14.09 - 2:41 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ So true. I'm working with an agency, Global Media Minds, that knows this all to well and practices each of these with each client. They design my ads and bought my print media and directed the readers right to my website. I am currently running a 2.6 ROI on my media costs and couldn't be happier.
Designed2Design | 06.17.09 - 6:02 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ To RB and Jon. Let me speak from the perspective of your target audience here. I am 19 years old, I use the internet everyday, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I am a child of the internet generation. And while I have plenty of conversations over Facebook Chat about beer or clothes or cool places to spend my money, the \"brands\" mentioned in these conversations (if they are at all -- teenagers would much rather talk about who got a DUI or who puked all over Sherri's front porch on Friday night than about what kind of fabric softener Jared's mom uses) are \"prom king brands\". I might show my friend Val a cute Marc Jacobs sweater, but that's because he's my favorite designer (and that's not because I had any conversation with his brand, but because I like the shit his makes -- his product). Yeah, when I talk about beer I might say \"pick up a six pack of Anchor Steam\" again, because it's a beer (not a brand) that I enjoy. My question is, how in the world do you get people to talk about the shit they don't find immediately interesting. People don't talk about what kind of cat food is best, they go to Safeway and buy the cheapest shit, or the shit with the best the package. Why would people begin completely changing the way they look at the mundane things they buy just because they're on Facebook? Why would the internet stir up conversations that would never existed outside the cyber-realm? If anything, the web is about being succinct, not about getting into the intricacies of one's grocery list.
Lucy | 06.23.09 - 8:46 pm | #

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