Spam redux

I've just come across this article from USA Today via Adpulp that talks about the rise of non-traditional ad placement.  There's a great quote in it from Richard Notarianni who hit the nails on the head:
"The industry is desperate to find clever ways to reach people, whether or not it has any legitimate value. ... When someone says, 'Let's put advertising in bathroom stalls,' another says 'That's great. It's a captive audience.' " 
As Rance Crain comments:
"I've never seen things changing as much as they are now.  Advertisers will not be satisfied until they put their mark on every blade of grass. Advertising is so ubiquitous that it's turning people off. It's desensitizing people to the message."
I've banged on about this when talking to students that we seem as an industry to be living in a world of insanity - doing the same thing again and again and expecting something different to happen.  All we talk about is finding 'new ways of reaching people' rather than spending time working out how we can make the content and stuff we produce more interesting and valuable.  We're in desperate need to change the conversation, to make it about better content not new ways to spam people into indifference or anger.
Maybe we need to look to backwards to see the way forward.  As Howard Gossage said many years ago: "Nobody reads advertising.  People read what they want to read and sometimes it's an ad".

Comments

[ross]

great post gareth. I think this really speaks to the need for brands in building conversations towards relationships with consumers. Messaging that comes off as yelling or merely being at a point of contact (i.e. bathroom) doesn't necessarily warrant a connection and certainly doesn't warrant a conversation. It isn't natural and in this day and age with so much spam, messaging that consumer's can't or don't want to relate to won't have an impact and is ultimately lost.