From the outside, the advertising world seems to be plugging along right into the new millennium. Ads saturate our environment and they’re contstantly coming up with innovative strategies to make them utterly unavoidable. To the consumer it might look like advertising is stronger than ever. But if you peak behind the curtain, it’s a very different reality. What we’re seeing isn’t a show of strength. It’s desperation. The old world of marketing is crashing down around their heads and they have no idea what to do about it.

Not convinced? You might want to take a look at the conference that marketing’s heavy-hitters will be attending this November: Chaos: New Agendas in Advertising

Here’s a line from the event description: “The fundamental concepts of creative dominance and media planning has been redefined with advent of consumer content and targeted delivery. Clearly, what once was radical is now commonplace.”

Also, have a look at this interview with Al Ries, one of the world’s most respected marketing strategists.  In it he talks about his book The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR.   My favorite example: “In eight years, General Motors [the nation’s largest corporate advertiser] spent $23 billion on advertising. What did they get for their money? They lost six percent of market share, that’s what they got.”  Why might that be?  Because,  as he points out, advertising has little to no credibility.

Amen, Brother Ries.

But you didn’t need a famous marketing strategiest to tell you that.  All of us, from the days of our youth, learned that trusting advertisers just leads to disappointment. And by “all of us,” I mean all of us,  including advertisers.  They are well aware that they have crediblity problems, but that doesn’t make for a good client pitch, so what do they do? As Mr. Ries points out, “advertising agencies…generally ignore the credibility issue and focus on creativity.”

Ok, let me get this straight.  So in those moments when we feel warm and fuzzy about the stay-at-home mom having an acid flashback about talking dough or we pause wonder why iguanas might like cheap beer, the sheer force of the advertiser’s creative genius is actually undermining our wills and compelling us to buy even though, EVEN THOUGH, we do not trust them and we’d rather not be paying attention to them at all.  That’s Comcastic!

Now here’s an idea to help them with their credibility issue!  All the ad agencies should band together to create thier own ad campaign.  You could have cute little marmosets — with glasses — bantering about how “ads are your credibility solution.”
But ad agencies NEVER advertise.  Huh. I wonder why.

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