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In 'Consuming Life', the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman describes how people are goods and practice marketing. They mutate into products capable of generating attention as well as demand, in order to obtain what he calls social gratification.

We see this happening every day in new media and in particular in social networks: Followers, friends, retweets, feedbacks etc. are just a few examples of social gratifications. The fact that these gratifications are often instant adds to their value.

Whether we want to admit it or not, the majority of us is and always has been very receptive to social gratification. In my opinion this is another major reason for the popularity of new media. After all, how could the average human being obtain social gratification in old media?

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Wikipedia defines 'social' as 'attitudes, orientations or behaviors which take the interests, intentions or needs of other people into account'. Media in turn is ultimately nothing more than a platform used to store, receive and transmit information. Let's look at a refrigerator, which is a cooling appliance used to store foods and drinks (at least for most people). Would we ever think about calling this appliance a social refrigerator? Of course not. Social is keeping in mind what others living in our household like to eat and drink and restocking the fridge accordingly, rather than concentrating on our personal favorites. People are social (or unsocial), but not the appliances, platforms and other tools that they use.

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Incredible as always with fascinating facts about Internet, media, mobile and more . Mobile will be the world’s primary connection tool to the Internet in 2020 bringing us convergence. Already today Nokia manufactures 13 cell phones every second. The computer in the cell phone today is a million times cheaper, a thousand times more powerful and about a hundred thousand times smaller than the one computer at MIT in 1965.

Watch the new video:

Did You Know Version 4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8

Actually I love advertising, especially TVC’s. The commercial break being an interruption of the program I actually want to watch, I use it to check my Emails, get myself something to drink, check what’s happening on other channels etc.

Nevertheless I’m one of thousands being counted to determine the CPT. Advertising is bought on the basis of what it costs to be shown to one thousand viewers and the CPT is still used as a benchmark to calculate the relative cost of a campaign. This does not strike me as being terribly efficient in today’s media world, because many people are not watching what they are being shown. Like me they use the commercial break to do all sorts of other things.

Why are so many people ignoring traditional advertising and even railing against it?

In my opinion there are quite a few reasons, some more obvious than others. Today I would like to talk about quality. There are too many boring ads. If the commercial break is built on the principle of interruption, why not do it in a creative way? Tell a story, be credible, entertain your audience, deliver information that adds value for them – there are many things an advertiser can do to prevent me and others from checking Emails during the commercial break.

Successful brands polarize. Trying to be everybody’s darling means you won’t be noticed by anybody. Their advertising needs to polarize as well, since it is an extension of the brand. If it’s perceived as being boring, loud, dumb, worthless, annoying, the consumer will eventually look at the brand the same way. Perception is reality.

But the problem is more often than not the client and not the agency. An agency can only be as good as their client allows them to be.

What do you do during commercial breaks?

….is not necessarily the Internet. Great article in the Atlantic written by B.C. Greenwald, J.A. Knee and A. Seave. In ‘The Moguls’ New Clothes’ they explain the real problems entrenched in 4 provocative myths:

1. Growth is good
2. The gospel of going global
3. Content is king
4. Cult of convergence

Here’s the link to the article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910/moguls

Questioning the ROI in social media effectively boils down to saying that it doesn’t pay to be a nice guy

Managers aim to please………..their CEO! Rightfully so, unless the CEO becomes their main and only target audience. Chances of this happening in an old-fashioned command and control corporate organization are bigger than you think. Not everybody has direct access to the CEO, creating positive awareness through other channels can therefore be a good career strategy. Placing advertisements in newspapers that the CEO reads are one way of doing that. It indirectly suggests that his marketing department is doing its job in promoting the brand. In a world where the main target groups were reading the same newspaper(s) as the CEO, this was an effective media plan. In a world where they don’t, it obviously is not.

Is your CEO still reading a newspaper?

A lot has been said and written about the relevance of Social Media, its tools and how to apply them. In my opinion one critical aspect has not been getting the attention it deserves so far and that is the organizational structure of the brands that are thinking about engaging in Social Media.

In many ‘old-economy’ brands we still find very hierarchic ‘command and control’ structures. The Social Media platforms are the exact opposite of ‘command and control’, they are about listening, sharing, supporting and facilitating conversations. They are about co-operation on equal footing.

If brands do decide to engage in Social Media, they have to review their corporate attitude and culture first. They have to engage with their employees the same way they intend to engage with their consumers. Companies have already lost the absolute control over their brands to the consumer thanks to Social Media. Trying to preserve that control internally is a futile mission.

The entire organization has to adapt, because Social Media potentially benefits all divisions. Think about the potential for R&D, production, purchasing, HR, sales, internal communications and of course marketing. Therefore it is only logical to conclude that Social Media shouldn’t be left to the marketing department.

As Gary Hamel put it ‘Organizations loose their relevance, when the internal rate of change is outpaced by the external change’. Markets and consumers are changing rapidly, brands need to catch up quickly.

CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, CTO, CMO, President, Vice President, Senior Vice President, Director, Executive Director, Senior Director, Junior Director, Vice Director, Managing Director, Senior Managing Director, Manager, Executive Manager, Senior Manager, Vice Manager, General Manager, Junior Manager, Marketing Manager, Head of Marketing, Head of Advertising,…. – the list is endless.

Not all of these functions and titles will be found in one single company, but one will most probably find a clearly defined hierarchy shaped like a pyramid, in which the job title expresses the position in the pyramid. What started as an organizational principle has unfortunately turned into an operational principle and in some case even into a governing principle.

The system conditions employees and wakens their hunting instincts. Unfortunately their prey is the next ‘higher’ title and not additional market share for example. Employees start focusing on managing their careers, their immediate environment becomes the frame of reference for their decisions and they procrastinate courageous, innovative decisions, because their positive effect is not immediate. In other words, they are out of touch with the market and the consumer sooner or later and fade out the fact that in reality it is the consumer that feeds them.

Herein lies their major problem with social media. They define listening to consumers, opening up the dialogue, crowdsourcing etc. as an attempt to include consumers in the pyramid. The consumer is perceived as another hunter for the next ‘higher’ title, as a competitor rather than an ally or friend.

Lack of metrics, insufficient ROI etc. are neither here nor there, in reality it is about the preservation of the status-quo. That is however impossible. If companies don’t realize that, they will be out of business sooner or later.

Changing the structure of the organization by developing an alternative to the pyramid and getting rid of the title inflation would be a good starting point. What do you think?

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?