Simon Clift, Chief Marketing Officer for Unilever, spoke at the Advertising Age for Digital Conference recently about how large companies like Unilever need to adjust their thinking and marketing efforts to reach the digital consumer through interactions.
My favorite part of this article comes in the first comment, posted by Paul Ashby, author of Television Killed Advertising:
“One thing they NEVER taught you whilst working in an advertising agency…or a marketing department for that matter… the human desire for interaction. If this had been taught and the lesson put into everyday practise then billions of pounds and dollars would never have been poured down the black hole of television advertising!”
Now if that’s not a case for why every author, every business owner, every person with a product, should be active in social media, I don’t know what is.
Today consumers don’t like ad infested terrestrial TV what they do like is the opportunity to express an opinion, they like, in other words, voice.
Due to a lack of understanding of the communication process we have created a media society during the past 40 or 50 years, where the whole process has been de-humanised.
There has been an extraordinary reduction in interaction because conventional advertising and marketing have become a one-way practice whereby information is disseminated in a passive form. Thankfully that is changing.
We must always remember that people still have this desire to be taken account of. To affect change, to learn and personalise their relationship with their environment. There are a phenomenal number of reasons that cause people to interact, going far beyond just giving them things.
When people agree to participate in truly interactive marketing programmes they are told that their efforts and feedback are of positive help to the advertisers.
Consequently, because they are being involved in the process of developing the product or service, it starts to re- personalise their relationship with the advertiser and their products.
This takes the consumer through the barrier of not wanting to address change and takes that compromise, the anxiety and worry that perhaps the decision was not the best or the right one, out of the equation. In other words, there is no reason why they should not change from their usual brand in favour of this alternative that they have now learned, fulfils their needs better.
All of this is discussed in my book “Television Killed Advertising” which also includes the results of $10m of independent research on the effectiveness of just one exposure to Social Advertising Media (SAM). Want to discuss this further please contact me on paul.ashby@yahoo.com
However there is a huge problem with conventional advertising and Social Media and that is:
“Just what is the problem with Social Media?
Once “The Ad Man” gatecrashes the party and corporate marketers are inevitably a long way down the adoption curve – the kudos rapidly evaporates.
This explains why the assumed valuations of social media companies are often built on greater financial chicanery that Bernie Madoff’s tax return.
In to-day’s market whatever supposed “next big thing” our digital culture favors in any moment faces an ever more accelerated journey to oblivion!
Because ad agencies still don’t understand it – we will not take delivery of your commercial messages – we never have and never will!
However we can create programs where your advertisement becomes a valuable source of information – with surprising ROI results – & there’s more.
Read “Television Killed Advertising” it will show you how advertising has failed us and more…much more.”