In "The Chaos Scenario," Bob Garfield pleads with the advertising industry, and indirectly the media industry that relies on it, to wake up to the realities of the "post-advertising" age.
Ironically, his credibility starts with the fact that he is the advertising critic for the trade magazine, AdAge. So he has as much to lose as everyone.
To demonstrate that we are in the post-advertising era, he provides lots of negative trend data. And that's before Nielsen released the dismal first half 2009 results.
But will the industry listen or continue to hope that "this too will pass?" I wonder. Just as I wonder why no ad agency has re-launched itself as a the "Blah Blah" Marketing Agency, dropping the word "advertising" from its identity. That would be bold, wouldn't it?
Garfield offers several examples of the power of the consumer, arguing that future success will be "Listenomics." His campaign against Comcast forced them off the cliff to dive into using the internet for CRM. Jeff Jarvis's campaign against DELL also converted DELL into an internet CRM activist. A Lego user group helped to turn around the company. A passionate I-Pod user's viral video was seen by Millions. All of these examples have one thing in common: they were spontaneous, authentic engagements, initiated by consumers. Brands who responded were rewarded.
But among these success stories, there is not one example of a Media company. They are all examples of brands connecting directly with consumers without an intermediary. Hmm. What does that mean for the Media industry? As I've mentioned in other posts, P&G and others are diverting media dollars into custom digital publishing. Will this trend continue?
Probably not, if you learn from Garfield's discussion of brands which try to "contrive" or manipulate consumer engagement. The results aren't so good. He provides several examples that have failed or back-fired, driving established advertisers and agencies back into their risk-averse holes. Branded Widgets fragment information and audiences rather than aggregate it, Crowdsourcing, to generate consumer generated videos and designs, may deliver a gem in a pile of you know what, proving "you get what you pay for."
He also offers examples of consumer engagement that may not encourage Media companies. YouTube.com achieves awesome scale, but loses millions monthly. Citizen Journalism has helped Huffington Post (still in the red) and MSNBC (???) compete against FOX News, but both are wondering what to do when extremists dominate the conversation, silencing the center majority.
There is a tone of exasperation in his voice, which I certainly empathize with. He sees opportunity - for example he dedicates a chapter to telling Facebook how they could make money by mining all the data on participant pages - but frets about the "monkey see, monkey do" tendancy - mimicking rather than learning from success.
Reminds me once again that we are in a vicious cycle of demand for "silver bullets" which leads to "novelty ideas" which usually backfire. Makes me wonder when the tide will turn. As someone I read said recently (and I apologize for the lack of attribution and the paraphrase), "I see lots of great thinking but not a lot of demand for it."
As I've pointed out in other posts, for example "Opportunity is Knocking," thought leaders could do more to give media company confidence in the rewards of thoughtful yet bold innovation. Bob Garfield makes some strides in this direction with "The Chaos Scenario." (link to his blog)
