Re: The consumer is STILL not a moron

Mr. Hunt over at I Noticed This and I regularly have conversations about the upheaval currently happening in marketing. They're fun, and a great way for us to share what each of us has recently learned. WOM. Hmmm. Sounds familiar for some reason.

Inspired by a presentation I shared (see previous post), he has weighed into the debate with a post The consumer is STILL not a moron in the way he normally reserves for our conversations. Boo hoo.

He curiously drew a connection between a Guinness ad from the 60's and how he feels about that pour of Irish pride. Basically, do intelligent advertising, and people will think you have an intelligent brand. I know; he made me realise it's so blindly obvious that it's mystifying why there aren't far more ads like it.

But that led him to touch on something that is really important to understand. That brands need to be useful. And that on the internet, that should be easier than it was pre-internet.

But once brands do something useful, it ceases to be advertising. Doing something useful is a service. To be sure, most often that service is entertainment, but the are many examples of brands at least trying to do this.

I recently saw a presentation about a brand who, in their research, realised that very few of the blogs about their area of expertise were actually connected to each other. And rather than attempt being the expert source, they're developing a hub to which all the other blogs, theirs included, will connect to. They're not forcing people to only listen to them; they're actually helping people find the information they want, at other sources.

And this is the reason I love working in digital so much. Much of what we can do, in theory, at least, is not really marketing. It's not particularly creative, but we have the opportunity to use digital tools to actually help people.

Sadly, most clients still don't understand this about digital. They're still using the old ways of doing things (talking at people), and using them on this 'new' medium (which really isn't a medium). But people on the internet aren't paying attention to them. The old ways don't work. And I'm not just talking about finding new ways to advertise. I'm talking about completely re-thinking (on the internet), what it means to advertise.

On the TV, which is a passive medium, ads tell people things (though sometimes they can entertain), in DM, you can have a one-on-one conversation, though those seem to be disappearing, with people. In digital, you can, but really shouldn't, shout at people, you can have one-on-one conversations, but you can also do something else that earns you kudos from your customers. You can help them have a conversation, not with you, but with someone else. And that's where brands should be.

In a lot of ways, the internet isn't a channel, or a medium (it's LOADS of them in itself). It can't really be defined in any of our advertising-friendly ways, as David Cushman points out for one simple reason:

The internet doesn't do anything new. It's still about human interaction. The internet just makes that cheaper and easier.

Like Word of Mouth.

Post digital marketing

Is apparently very long. Stumbled across this presentation at crackunit. It is everything you ever wanted to know about digital marketing. Or at least where it is now. Rather overwhelming, but worth the investment. Especially if you are one of my clients. Or my mum trying to figure out what I do for a living.

Post Digital Marketing 2009

View more documents from Helge Tennø.

Out of touch

So this little episode actually happened last week during the debate on the climate change bill going through Congress. Seriously. Anyone who still adheres to this view has either not picked up a book, read a newspaper or looked outside anytime within the last 20 years, or has a powerful financial incentive.

He scares me, because he gets to vote on the bill. But what is perhaps even scarier is the people like this:



Glen Beck. He's scary because people actually listen to him. The climate change bill is Communist? Is that all he has? An old Cold War accusation? This isn't politics. This isn't reasoned debate. It's theatre. It's risking the future of humanity to chase short-term viewer ratings.

I find it ridiculous that I have to point out that I'm all for free speech before I say this next thing. What these guys are doing are borderline crimes against humanity. In fact, much of what the right-wing personalities currently say is either lies, distortions, or hate-mongering. They get away with it because of free speech. But someone really needs to hold them accountable for what they say.

At a time when the 'American values' party has lost a Governor and a Senator to sex scandles (Sanford, Ensign, Jon Stewart said they had conservative valuse but liberal penises. hehe), and one to vague ambition (Palin) watching clips like this makes it pretty obvious they have no moral compass, only a political one.

Which is a shame. There used to be things to admire about the Republican party. Or at least things you could understand why someone would believe in.

Now, now they're so out of touch as to be irrelevant. And that makes me proud to be a Liberal.