Chaos Scenario 2.0

Bob Garfield at Ad Age has been promoting his  chaos scenario for the last couple of years.  This week he updated his thesis in Chaos Scenario 2.0.  A lot of this was sharing evidence of the crumbling of 'old' media as newer media take hold.  All fair observation.  But I disagree with a lot of the inferences he makes about what this means for brands, communication and ad agencies.

First, he makes a rather odd, to my mind, distinction between 'new' and 'old' media.  The argument is that 'old' media was about mass audiences, while the 'new' world is all about the individual - customization, personalization, etc. Ergo, mass communication is dead.  Isn’t this a rather simplistic view?  Isn’t the reality that great brands and great communication are shared by people (arguably, they have become one of the few remaining things that can bind people)?  Aren’t we herd animals not a bunch of individuals? 

Isn’t the distinction instead really one about the approach brands need to take today?  It’s no longer good enough to push messages at people.  Rather, it’s about working out what your authentic enthusiasm is above and beyond your category – your social mission – and providing useful, interesting stuff, be it an ad, an event, a product, a service, and doing lots of executions of it that will attract people to your brand like a magnet.  Brands that today have real loyalty and success, as Doug Atkin pointed out a couple of years ago, have a belief system that can create cult like behavior around it.  Perhaps it’s this personal brand-centric bias – that a brand’s belief and behavior attract fans, rather than an analysis of customer needs driving 'problem solving' through innovation and messaging – that leaves me disagreeing with all these soundbites of the consumer being in control.  Yes, they can choose to ignore you but they should not control you.

Second, I disagree with the inference that because the ‘old’ media model of interruption is eroding, ad content is irrelevant.  If anything, I believe the model has flipped and content (and here let me define content as ads and actions eg run London, design, jet blue check in kiosks, etc) is more important than ever.  One of the joys of the internet is that it has leveled the playing field in favor of the good content triumphing over the OK to bad content that has huge media investment (rather similar to Rob’s point about Coca-Cola and its distribution power).  Brands now live in a meritocracy. No longer is it about how much money you have but whether what you do is useful and interesting.

Content is important.  And brand film is still powerful.  Proof lies in the fact that three of the top five most viewed YouTube films of all time are TV ads, and the Millward Brown research that shows the ‘best’ ads are 30 times more likely to be watched than the poorest performing ads.  The beauty of the ‘new’ media is that you as a brand no longer risk having your content zapped through because of what the other brand did in the ad before yours.  Great, interesting ads won’t be missed because of the 80% of average, meaningless wallpaper that gets produced.

Sorry for the ramble but I needed to get this stuff out of my head.

Comments

[alex w.]

garfield is a great example of old-school thinking trying desperately to come to terms with the new realities. he had already lost me with listenomics (celebrating the so called user-generated ads), and he is a dangerously close to confusing the marketing community further, since he is after all an important thought leader to the industry.
i wonder whether ad age would let you do a face-off with him to get the right thinking out there prominently...
the one point that i would push even further is that of 'content'. imho content is merely the vehicle for a higher goal to gain john's coined brand enthusiasm, and that is meaning. i think the strongest brands today have a larger meaning. they play an important role in people's lives. and diverse content -- mulitple layers of invovlement (in bad marketing consultant speak) -- is the way to bring that meaning to life, to engage people deeper. shit, there have been so many great debates lately: simplicity vs. complexity, old-school brand strength (e.g. interbrand metrics) vs. brand enthusiasm, and now this.
go get em, gareth!

[gareth]

i really like that thought of larger meaning actually demanding multiple layers of involvement. smart as always alex. but i disagree with the idea of the head to head. there's a lot better thinkers out there than me to tackle bob.

[Steve Hall]

Well said Gareth. There's too much doomsaying out there. People are resilient. We in the ad industry are resilient. We will adapt. We will change. This stuff doesn't happen overnight and there will be no cobwebs rolling down the proverbial Madison Avenue. Consumers will alter their media consumption habits and we will adapt to them. Consumers change behavior much slower than some of us would like to think. I don't think there's chaos on the horizon, just change and a lot of it.

[Gareth]

as I've said before Steve, despite the merchants of doom, I fervently believe there has never been a more exciting time to work in this industry. Lots of change=lots of opportunities.

[Rob]

Phew, do you feel better now? :)

I completely agree with your view - the reality is that too many companies equate brand with sales ... and whilst all brands HAVE to be profitable, there are 2 other aspects that have to be accepted ...

1. Communication is a small [but significant] cog in the production of a profitable brand - so all emphasis should NOT be placed on ads/marketing and yet increasingly, it seems this is the 'excuse' why many companies say we are not working for them.

2. A brand is something adored by consumers hearts AND wallets ... and so with many companies just focusing on their short-term/long-term profit, it means they are actually creating a well distributed product, not a true brand. [ie: something that has emotional relevance and meaning in their lives, even if it is not something commonly used/considered]

However interms of marketing, CONTENT is the vital factor.

Sure, media placement is critical - but with so much information all screaming out to be heard ... the ability to attract, engage and enthuse consumers is the ultimate goal/skill - which is why I believe adland can still be a relevant force in an overly dominated Management Consultantcy society.

The real issue between marketing of the past and marketing of the future is that we now have silo'd ourselves so much that we don't work together, we just talk about how WE ARE THE DOMINANT FORCE to fulfill clients goals - which is both shortsighted, harmful and ineffective. [to the industry, clients and consumers]

[Brett]

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