You Brand

‘Father knows best’ was a very successful US sitcom in the 50s. As the name suggests, moms were moms, kids were kids and father knew best. It reflected the paternalistic attitude that fathers – the kings of the respective castles – were wiser than mothers and kids. This empowered fathers to make decisions on their behalf, presumably for their own good. It resulted in the authority of the powerful over the less powerful, responsibility was not shared. Communication relied on commands and instructions rather than on conversation.

Many brands still have that attitude today: Consumers are consumers and brands know best. Social media have effectively proven that brands don’t know best, which is why many brands have a problem. They have to change their attitude, not just apply some new tools and technologies.

‘Father knows best’ was successful in the 50s and 60s. Times have changed dramatically since then. Brands are well advised to realize that. Prisoners of the past will not win their freedom in the future.

Who knows best?

More and more people don’t trust advertising. A recent GfK survey carried out in Spring 2009 in Europe and the US found that only 28% trust advertising managers, only politicians were found to be less trustworthy. As Howard Schultz aptly analyzed:In the 1960s, if you introduced a new product to America, 90% of the people who viewed it for the first time believed in the corporate promise. 40 years less than 10% of the public believed it was true.Is advertising dying, because people think it’s lying?

In the world before the Internet, one way media dominated. In this world, brands used advertising to address and influence target consumers ‘efficiently’ – ‘reach’ became the magic word and with it CPM (cost per thousand views of the ad) became the benchmark to calculate the relative cost of the campaign. A dialogue with the consumer was not on the agenda!

Since the 60ies, one way media channels exploded and they effectively developed two revenue models:They sold content to their audience and they ‘sold’ their audience to the advertising industry. Hence the amount of advertising exploded as well. The following 2 examples illustrate this point perfectly:

In 1965 it was possible to ‘reach’ 80% of the 18-49 year age group with 3 60-second Television commercials. In 2002 a brand needed 112 Television commercials to reach the same target.

In 2006 the average US consumer was exposed to approximately 5.000 advertising messages per day. Assuming a 16-hour day, that means 1 ad every 11,6 seconds

It is not surprising that consumers are increasingly annoyed with the omnipresent, impersonal brand monologue in one way media accompanied by an increasing loss of trust and a decline in quality caused by rapidly increasing demand.

Is advertising doomed to die? I personally don’t think so and will share my views in the upcoming posts.

What do you think?