Thorin McGee is Managing Editor and Online Editor of the All About ROI magazine, AllAboutROIMag.com and eMarketingandCommerce.com. He's worked on several other Target Marketing Group products, including Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense and the Publishing Executive magazine and website (PubExec.com). Before joining NAPCO, Thorin worked on consumer media websites and magazines for Wizard Entertainment and helped design the now-defunct European careers website DrShift.com. In Ways of Thinking, he probes trends, tools and tactics in marketing to and interacting with consumers online.
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I'm reading "The Next Evolution of Marketing" by Bob Gilbreath, and he delivers an interesting message about how marketing that has meaning and adds value to consumers' lives — before they buy anything from you — is more effective than traditional advertising. It's an interesting book I'll probably talk about more in a couple weeks.
However, Gilbreath drives his message home behind a point that consumers are irate at ads and avoid them like deadbeats dodging collections agents. He sharpens this attack with facts and stats such as 76% of Americans joined the National Do Not Call Registry, most people who own a DVR skip commercials, and software for blocking banner ads (Adblock Plus, and yes, it blocks regular, static banner ads, not just pop-ups) won PC World's "best product" award. Gilbreath describes a world where people hate advertising the way the Tea party hates taxes, and over the course of the first chapter says traditional messaging is "everywhere," "intrusive," "irrelevant" and "offensive."
He's certainly not alone in that opinion. Comedians and consultants alike love ranting about stupid advertising, and I've edited more than one article about advertisers basically wasting their money. The tradiitonal, godawfully expensive commercial is easy fodder for anyone recommending a new approach.
But me, I don't hate advertising, and I don't think most people care that much, either.
The squeaky eyeball gets the Visine, so when someone complains about advertising it makes the news — Gilbreath points out that a handful of calls can get companies to pull national campaigns. But I'm in my thirties, and I've got a lot of positive memories of traditional advertising. The Bud Bowl, Geico's Gecko, pretty much any ad run during the Super Bowl ... they can add to the fun, so I give them a chance. Same with movie previews — I really don't know if I want to see a movie or a new show until I see some ads for it — and coaster ads at the bar. I commute by train, so I relish reading something, anything, interesting on a billboard while waiting for a late one.
Ads can annoy me — anything can annoy me — but I'm not hostile to them. If commercial breaks are reasonable, I'm liable to let them run. I've even flipped channels to find spots I was interested in. If someone puts an ad in the restroom, I really couldn't care less (unless it's lookin' at me; that gets weird). I give web banners a chance to catch my click so long as they don't take 60 seconds to scroll down, stall my browser, or do something else ridiculous to tick me off (many do in fact do ridiculous things that tick me off, but that's for another future post.)
It's easy to overstate consumer hostility toward any for-profit project, but it's a mistake to attribute isolated outbursts to the whole audience. No one complains about marketing messages that interest them and convey information they want. And I think we're all going to be shocked by just how many consumers are happy to participate in initiatives, like Facebook's new privacy settings and global "like," that help you target marketing to them even more.
(If you want me to look at a book, send it to me at the NAPCO offices: 1500 Spring Garden St., Philadelphia, PA 19130. I make no promises. We're not doing book reviews or a book of the week or anything that relies on me consuming more than a dozen pages a weekend. But I will take a look at anything you send. If it sparks an idea, I'll work it into Ways of Thinking.)
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