6 ms·

How the Mad Men Lost the Plot

90 points by zbravo 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- corin_ 11y ago
  Have you read the article? The entire piece builds to the conclusion that what you say is wrong - or at least, not as right as many people have thought in the past decade. I don't entirely agree with it all.. but if you want to disagree with it, argue with it, don't just state your view that happens to go against the article without (I presume) having read it in the first place. edit: Since the comment I replied to has since been edited, worth noting that what I replied to was just "Just like every other established industry, software is eating the advertising agency. This trend has been clear since the first release of Google AdWords." Not that the later edit contributes much more to the conversation in my opinion... Yes the article didn't prove its claim, but neither have you.
  - sogen 11y ago
    seems like he didn't read the article.
thisjustinm 11y ago
Both sides in this debate, those in favor of "traditional" ads and those in favor or digital ad have a point but I think where things are going lies somewhere in the middle which will end up irking the zealots on either side. The big egos of traditional advertising will be upset because not everyone on earth will have seen their latest "big idea." This is due in no small part to overall media fragmentation which digital (or the internet) but also cable have played big parts. When that Coke ad aired in 1971 how many channels were there? Maybe 6? Of course a large portion of the population was going to see your ad. And on the digital side they'll have to accept that measurement isn't the be-all-end-all. Between crazy amounts of fraudulent data and the simple fact that creativity and "brand awareness" are really, really tough to quantify they'll have to concede that sometimes the traditional thinking around creative work and "big ideas" will need to win out over analytics. Source: worked for several years in advertising on the creative side and then on the tech side (and part of the problem is that those two departments are, well, departments but that's a story for another time...)
- corin_ 11y ago
  Couldn't agree more. You wrote the comment I wanted to write but hadn't got round to starting on. The only thing I'd add is that whether in traditional or digital, an awful lot of guesswork is needed to even know how well something performed, yet alone how something will perform in the future.
- untilHellbanned 11y ago
  > and part of the problem is that those two departments are, well, departments but that's a story for another time. I think the same thing is going on in biology. IMHO neuroscience has proceeded more slowly than it should because it is a separate department from other biological sciences.
hammock 11y ago
>Applying a statistical analysis to sales data, he demonstrates that the majority of any successful brand’s sales comes from “light buyers”: people who buy it relatively infrequently. Coca-Cola’s business is not built on a hardcore of Coke lovers who drink it daily, but on the millions of people who buy it once or twice a year. Having not read the book referenced, I haven't seen the data. But this seems to go against the Pareto Principle AKA 80/20 Rule which suggests 80% of your sales come from 20% of your (heaviest) customers, and against my own anecdotal experience as a marketer.
- slg 11y ago
  I think what is meant is that those loyal (20%) Coke drinkers will continue to drink Coke regardless. There is no reason to focus on them. You are also probably not going to be able to convince someone who never drinks Coke to start drinking Coke. There is no reason to focus on them. That means the best area for marginal sales is those people who occasionally drink it. Getting those people to choose Coke slightly more often is probably the most efficient way to increase sales and is the method around which Coke builds its business.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    That makes sense, but it's not specifically what the quote says. The quote seems to be referencing total sales, and this sounds more like converted sales (for lack of knowing the best term to use).
- thodafeko 11y ago
  The book claims the Pareto rule is conventional wisdom but false: in reality the numbers look more like 50/20. My source: Slide 12 (http://www.slideshare.net/zanaida/how-brands-grow-a-summary-of-byron-sharps-book http://www.slideshare.net/zanaida/how-brands-grow-a-summary-...)
- jerf 11y ago
  I freely admit this is a guess, but: I suspect what was trying to be expressed is that for a mature product, the difference between profit and loss comes from the marginal buyers. If 80% of your break-even sales go to your solid buyers, and 10-30% of your break-even sales go to your marginal buyers, it's critical to court those margin buyers because they are the difference between revenue being 90% of your costs and 110% of your costs. Again, let me say explicitly I am reading between the lines, but it is the closest sensible concept I know compared to what was said. People in general often poorly understand the degree of capital expenditures made by companies, and I suspect those of us in the software vision may have an even more skewed vision since we see billion-dollar companies started with a laptop and ~50 square feet of office space, but when you have real capital expenditures required to make your product (even ignoring advertising, etc.), those little single-digit-percent wiggles right around the break-even point can be huge.
danans 11y ago
I think the article has a point that brand advertising is more about inserting your brand into the culture than convincing people that your product is better. It misses the fact, however, that there are more media than ever for inserting ideas - not just brands - into the culture. These are all competing for people's low-cognitive-load "buy" responses. Most of these alternative media are digital, but some are also hybrid digital/word-of-mount campaigns that move through specific class subdivisions of society. As an example, I have never seen a Nespresso ad (I've heard they exist) but we are heavy users of that product. Edit: more thoughts. Another issue is that people have learned to be skeptical of traditional TV brand advertising because it is so broadly targeted. Especially for traditional brands that people often find passé.
danans 11y ago
I think the article has a point that brand advertising is more about inserting your brand into the culture than convincing people that your product is better. It misses the fact, however, that there are more media than ever for inserting ideas - not just brands - into the culture. These are all competing for people's low-cognitive-load "buy" responses. Most of these alternative media are digital, but some are also hybrid digital/word-of-mount campaigns that move through specific class subdivisions of society. As an example, I have never seen a Nespresso ad (I've heard they exist) but we are heavy users of that product.
habitue 11y ago
Maybe TV is an ideal medium for brand awareness campaigns, but it simply won't have a large enough audience at some point. It seems like these marketers jumped on digital during the hype phase, and were just ahead of the curve. Now they're in the "trough of disillusionment", but eventually the number of eyeballs on TV will go below the point of cost effectiveness and digital will be what they have to use out of necessity.
- msbarnett 11y ago
  The article points out that "eyeballs on TV" hasn't dropped nearly as much as people thought it was going to 10 years ago. They're spread out over more channels, but watching as much TV as ever (and skipping ads less than they used to).
  - habitue 11y ago
    The article says people who watch TV watch as many hours as they used to. It's not true that as many people watch TV as they used to. I don't think there's a good reason to think TV viewership will go anywhere but down over time In any case, I'm not saying we're there yet
subliminalzen 11y ago
The issue isn't so much about which marketing channel works best (i.e. traditional vs digital) but about the psychological levers of persuassion. People don't like "conversing" and "engaging" with brands. That's why social media doesn't work. Social media is supposed to be social and not commercial. As the article said, it's low cognitive involvement that works best, not brand loyalty. That's why advertisers are using the Low Attention Processing Model.[1] With this particular advertising strategy, brand information is 'acquired' at low and even zero attention levels using implicit learning.[2] Implicit learning cannot analyse or re-interpret anything. The information goes directly to the subconscious mind. If so, then we are silently influenced by ambient images and messages around us. Advertisers could be affecting our decision making and even outlook on life in ways we can't perceive. This has been the driving inspiration for these posters I designed: http://subliminalzen.com http://subliminalzen.com. Essentially, if anyone is going to advertise to my subconscious mind, it's going to be me. And I'd rather acquire positive habits and character traits than an emotional connection to a product. [1] http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=364813&fileId=S0021849905050282 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_learning
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kator 11y ago
Reading this article when the author says: “the most effective advertisements of all are those with little or no rational content” I thought of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Isuzu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Isuzu Imagine that, ads I saw 30 years ago just popped into my head. I have to admit I'm in adTech and when people ask me what the highest impact is to any campaign's success I don't talk about the next machine learning algorithm my data science team is working on. I talk about the creative, it's all about the creative (or message). I can find the perfect time, to show the perfectly matched advertisement to a single person, but if the creative doesn't connect with that person I'm just wasting the advertisers money and the person's time.
- qbrass 11y ago
  Sure you remember the ads, but did you buy an Isuzu?
whatever_dude 11y ago
Digital advertising as we know it is just dying and most people know it, or has suspicions. It is slow but it is happening. Certain players are getting better at extracting what they can from it, but the system is moving in such a way that online "advertising" will be considered a really shady business in the long term. It's not just that people hate, and don't click banners; it's because it just doesn't do much for the big brands, and their budget is what moves the needle of what big Advertising companies do. Apple's move towards blocking ads may help fasten it, but it's not about them. It's something that's bigger and already in motion. Big brands are starting to understand that what they want is not to force someone into seeing their name, but to create something that people actually want to use. Be it an application, be it a service. And not force "INSTALL OUR APP!" into someone's screen. For a good example, Coke's new app that allows you to customize the drink you can get from their machine. Or Mountain Dew's fidelity program tracking app. Baby steps, but it's actually something useful. Regardless of what you think of soda or soda drinkers, those are a actual services that some people would find convenient, and would help tie them to the brand. Traditional advertising is a one-way, in-your-face kind of deal, and it works for brand awareness, especially for new consumers (kids). But with the technology we have today, it makes little sense to move that online. We have learned to ignore it. Sure, the internet had to do it, and it helped it grow. But now people are tired. We grew used to it. Most brands are now understanding that there's more they can do with the medium, and finding their way out of that death spiral. I've worked in advertising for ~17 years, nearly my whole career. Finally got out of it and couldn't be happier. Work was fine and my coworkers were great people (there ARE good advertising agencies out there). But it was easy to see it was a dead-end street.
- jkyle 11y ago
  Considering the world's greatest talent seems to go to either Finance or Selling Ads, I'm not sure the death of advertising is nigh. Though the nature of advertising is certainly changing.
  - smacktoward 11y ago
    On the other hand, a Ph.D. wouldn't have helped King Canute turn back the tide...
13thLetter 11y ago
Really good article, but what I found myself thinking was: didn't we already know all this? It's been common advertising wisdom for years that the benefit of brand advertising is simply awareness. Person is in store, person doesn't know which thing to get and doesn't really care that much, brand name pops into their head because the ad had that catchy jingle or adorable cat in it, they pick up that one and go on with their lives. Perhaps the great delusion was that most people care enough about their purchasing choices of mundane items to "engage" with brands. That's never been true and it's continued to not be true, despite the construction of a vast new internet advertising industry focused around nothing but brand engagement at all costs.
Apocryphon 11y ago
So is digital marketing/online ads the bubble that SV is currently founded upon, not VC overvaluations? It seems like in the event of a recession, and companies not being able to spend as much as they have on ads, would have a huge resonance cascade on a lot of startup business models.
Domenic_S 11y ago
"People don't want to engage with brands" I've said this for years, ever since I started seeing twitter and facebook logos on things like ketchup and cereal. Here's one I just saw: who wants to "engage" with C&H SUGAR of all things? https://instagram.com/p/9JVo-gpvQw/ https://instagram.com/p/9JVo-gpvQw/ The only companies that make money from plastering twitter and facebook logos on stuff are ... twitter and facebook.
- Pyxl101 11y ago
  If those social media accounts function as an expedited way to get customer service, then people are indeed interested in engaging with them. That seems to be one of the popular uses of Twitter for brands these days: a way to escalate complaints that aren't getting attention through usual channels.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    I've also personally run across cases where I was bitching about some aspect of the service at a hotel or whatever. Not trying to get customer support necessarily, but just complaining--e.g. the network went out for 2 hours this afternoon. And I've had people from the main hotel customer service reach out and put some points in my account or whatever. It's not a huge deal but this sort of thing can move experiences from black marks to something even mildly positive.

90 points by zbravo 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

corin_ 11y ago
Have you read the article? The entire piece builds to the conclusion that what you say is wrong - or at least, not as right as many people have thought in the past decade. I don't entirely agree with it all.. but if you want to disagree with it, argue with it, don't just state your view that happens to go against the article without (I presume) having read it in the first place. edit: Since the comment I replied to has since been edited, worth noting that what I replied to was just "Just like every other established industry, software is eating the advertising agency. This trend has been clear since the first release of Google AdWords." Not that the later edit contributes much more to the conversation in my opinion... Yes the article didn't prove its claim, but neither have you.
- sogen 11y ago
  seems like he didn't read the article.

thisjustinm 11y ago

Both sides in this debate, those in favor of "traditional" ads and those in favor or digital ad have a point but I think where things are going lies somewhere in the middle which will end up irking the zealots on either side. The big egos of traditional advertising will be upset because not everyone on earth will have seen their latest "big idea." This is due in no small part to overall media fragmentation which digital (or the internet) but also cable have played big parts. When that Coke ad aired in 1971 how many channels were there? Maybe 6? Of course a large portion of the population was going to see your ad. And on the digital side they'll have to accept that measurement isn't the be-all-end-all. Between crazy amounts of fraudulent data and the simple fact that creativity and "brand awareness" are really, really tough to quantify they'll have to concede that sometimes the traditional thinking around creative work and "big ideas" will need to win out over analytics. Source: worked for several years in advertising on the creative side and then on the tech side (and part of the problem is that those two departments are, well, departments but that's a story for another time...)

corin_ 11y ago
Couldn't agree more. You wrote the comment I wanted to write but hadn't got round to starting on. The only thing I'd add is that whether in traditional or digital, an awful lot of guesswork is needed to even know how well something performed, yet alone how something will perform in the future.
untilHellbanned 11y ago
> and part of the problem is that those two departments are, well, departments but that's a story for another time. I think the same thing is going on in biology. IMHO neuroscience has proceeded more slowly than it should because it is a separate department from other biological sciences.

hammock 11y ago

>Applying a statistical analysis to sales data, he demonstrates that the majority of any successful brand’s sales comes from “light buyers”: people who buy it relatively infrequently. Coca-Cola’s business is not built on a hardcore of Coke lovers who drink it daily, but on the millions of people who buy it once or twice a year. Having not read the book referenced, I haven't seen the data. But this seems to go against the Pareto Principle AKA 80/20 Rule which suggests 80% of your sales come from 20% of your (heaviest) customers, and against my own anecdotal experience as a marketer.

slg 11y ago
I think what is meant is that those loyal (20%) Coke drinkers will continue to drink Coke regardless. There is no reason to focus on them. You are also probably not going to be able to convince someone who never drinks Coke to start drinking Coke. There is no reason to focus on them. That means the best area for marginal sales is those people who occasionally drink it. Getting those people to choose Coke slightly more often is probably the most efficient way to increase sales and is the method around which Coke builds its business.
- kbenson 11y ago
  That makes sense, but it's not specifically what the quote says. The quote seems to be referencing total sales, and this sounds more like converted sales (for lack of knowing the best term to use).
thodafeko 11y ago
The book claims the Pareto rule is conventional wisdom but false: in reality the numbers look more like 50/20. My source: Slide 12 (http://www.slideshare.net/zanaida/how-brands-grow-a-summary-of-byron-sharps-book http://www.slideshare.net/zanaida/how-brands-grow-a-summary-...)
jerf 11y ago
I freely admit this is a guess, but: I suspect what was trying to be expressed is that for a mature product, the difference between profit and loss comes from the marginal buyers. If 80% of your break-even sales go to your solid buyers, and 10-30% of your break-even sales go to your marginal buyers, it's critical to court those margin buyers because they are the difference between revenue being 90% of your costs and 110% of your costs. Again, let me say explicitly I am reading between the lines, but it is the closest sensible concept I know compared to what was said. People in general often poorly understand the degree of capital expenditures made by companies, and I suspect those of us in the software vision may have an even more skewed vision since we see billion-dollar companies started with a laptop and ~50 square feet of office space, but when you have real capital expenditures required to make your product (even ignoring advertising, etc.), those little single-digit-percent wiggles right around the break-even point can be huge.

danans 11y ago

I think the article has a point that brand advertising is more about inserting your brand into the culture than convincing people that your product is better. It misses the fact, however, that there are more media than ever for inserting ideas - not just brands - into the culture. These are all competing for people's low-cognitive-load "buy" responses. Most of these alternative media are digital, but some are also hybrid digital/word-of-mount campaigns that move through specific class subdivisions of society. As an example, I have never seen a Nespresso ad (I've heard they exist) but we are heavy users of that product. Edit: more thoughts. Another issue is that people have learned to be skeptical of traditional TV brand advertising because it is so broadly targeted. Especially for traditional brands that people often find passé.

danans 11y ago

habitue 11y ago

Maybe TV is an ideal medium for brand awareness campaigns, but it simply won't have a large enough audience at some point. It seems like these marketers jumped on digital during the hype phase, and were just ahead of the curve. Now they're in the "trough of disillusionment", but eventually the number of eyeballs on TV will go below the point of cost effectiveness and digital will be what they have to use out of necessity.

msbarnett 11y ago
The article points out that "eyeballs on TV" hasn't dropped nearly as much as people thought it was going to 10 years ago. They're spread out over more channels, but watching as much TV as ever (and skipping ads less than they used to).
- habitue 11y ago
  The article says people who watch TV watch as many hours as they used to. It's not true that as many people watch TV as they used to. I don't think there's a good reason to think TV viewership will go anywhere but down over time In any case, I'm not saying we're there yet

subliminalzen 11y ago

The issue isn't so much about which marketing channel works best (i.e. traditional vs digital) but about the psychological levers of persuassion. People don't like "conversing" and "engaging" with brands. That's why social media doesn't work. Social media is supposed to be social and not commercial. As the article said, it's low cognitive involvement that works best, not brand loyalty. That's why advertisers are using the Low Attention Processing Model.[1] With this particular advertising strategy, brand information is 'acquired' at low and even zero attention levels using implicit learning.[2] Implicit learning cannot analyse or re-interpret anything. The information goes directly to the subconscious mind. If so, then we are silently influenced by ambient images and messages around us. Advertisers could be affecting our decision making and even outlook on life in ways we can't perceive. This has been the driving inspiration for these posters I designed: http://subliminalzen.com http://subliminalzen.com. Essentially, if anyone is going to advertise to my subconscious mind, it's going to be me. And I'd rather acquire positive habits and character traits than an emotional connection to a product. [1] http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=364813&fileId=S0021849905050282 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_learning

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kator 11y ago

Reading this article when the author says: “the most effective advertisements of all are those with little or no rational content” I thought of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Isuzu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Isuzu Imagine that, ads I saw 30 years ago just popped into my head. I have to admit I'm in adTech and when people ask me what the highest impact is to any campaign's success I don't talk about the next machine learning algorithm my data science team is working on. I talk about the creative, it's all about the creative (or message). I can find the perfect time, to show the perfectly matched advertisement to a single person, but if the creative doesn't connect with that person I'm just wasting the advertisers money and the person's time.

qbrass 11y ago
Sure you remember the ads, but did you buy an Isuzu?

whatever_dude 11y ago

Digital advertising as we know it is just dying and most people know it, or has suspicions. It is slow but it is happening. Certain players are getting better at extracting what they can from it, but the system is moving in such a way that online "advertising" will be considered a really shady business in the long term. It's not just that people hate, and don't click banners; it's because it just doesn't do much for the big brands, and their budget is what moves the needle of what big Advertising companies do. Apple's move towards blocking ads may help fasten it, but it's not about them. It's something that's bigger and already in motion. Big brands are starting to understand that what they want is not to force someone into seeing their name, but to create something that people actually want to use. Be it an application, be it a service. And not force "INSTALL OUR APP!" into someone's screen. For a good example, Coke's new app that allows you to customize the drink you can get from their machine. Or Mountain Dew's fidelity program tracking app. Baby steps, but it's actually something useful. Regardless of what you think of soda or soda drinkers, those are a actual services that some people would find convenient, and would help tie them to the brand. Traditional advertising is a one-way, in-your-face kind of deal, and it works for brand awareness, especially for new consumers (kids). But with the technology we have today, it makes little sense to move that online. We have learned to ignore it. Sure, the internet had to do it, and it helped it grow. But now people are tired. We grew used to it. Most brands are now understanding that there's more they can do with the medium, and finding their way out of that death spiral. I've worked in advertising for ~17 years, nearly my whole career. Finally got out of it and couldn't be happier. Work was fine and my coworkers were great people (there ARE good advertising agencies out there). But it was easy to see it was a dead-end street.

jkyle 11y ago
Considering the world's greatest talent seems to go to either Finance or Selling Ads, I'm not sure the death of advertising is nigh. Though the nature of advertising is certainly changing.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  On the other hand, a Ph.D. wouldn't have helped King Canute turn back the tide...

13thLetter 11y ago

Really good article, but what I found myself thinking was: didn't we already know all this? It's been common advertising wisdom for years that the benefit of brand advertising is simply awareness. Person is in store, person doesn't know which thing to get and doesn't really care that much, brand name pops into their head because the ad had that catchy jingle or adorable cat in it, they pick up that one and go on with their lives. Perhaps the great delusion was that most people care enough about their purchasing choices of mundane items to "engage" with brands. That's never been true and it's continued to not be true, despite the construction of a vast new internet advertising industry focused around nothing but brand engagement at all costs.

Apocryphon 11y ago

So is digital marketing/online ads the bubble that SV is currently founded upon, not VC overvaluations? It seems like in the event of a recession, and companies not being able to spend as much as they have on ads, would have a huge resonance cascade on a lot of startup business models.

Domenic_S 11y ago

"People don't want to engage with brands" I've said this for years, ever since I started seeing twitter and facebook logos on things like ketchup and cereal. Here's one I just saw: who wants to "engage" with C&H SUGAR of all things? https://instagram.com/p/9JVo-gpvQw/ https://instagram.com/p/9JVo-gpvQw/ The only companies that make money from plastering twitter and facebook logos on stuff are ... twitter and facebook.

Pyxl101 11y ago
If those social media accounts function as an expedited way to get customer service, then people are indeed interested in engaging with them. That seems to be one of the popular uses of Twitter for brands these days: a way to escalate complaints that aren't getting attention through usual channels.
- ghaff 11y ago
  I've also personally run across cases where I was bitching about some aspect of the service at a hotel or whatever. Not trying to get customer support necessarily, but just complaining--e.g. the network went out for 2 hours this afternoon. And I've had people from the main hotel customer service reach out and put some points in my account or whatever. It's not a huge deal but this sort of thing can move experiences from black marks to something even mildly positive.