RHetoric

I've had this book on my shelf for several years:  The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR.  I dusted it off today after reading a New York Times story indicating the book's prophecy is closer than ever to being realized.

When the book was written, in 2002, the term 'social media' was not part of marketers' or PR pros' lexicons.  However the authors' premise was that in the 21st century, successful brands are born with publicity and the credibility generated by PR.  Advertising's credibility is increasingly marginalized because it is a bought-and-paid-for message.  The authors claim advertising's true value is brand maintenance, not brand definition.

So no wonder then that new research finds that advertising continues to contract, while PR and 'word-of-mouth marketing' is expanding.   See the full article here.

This is not to say that spending on more credible forms of communication will overtake ad spending - not even close.  But projections that place the media industry as the third-fastest-growing economic sector in coming years (after mining and construction) are due primarily to the growth in PR and word-of-mouth marketing.

This is all good news for brands with great stories to share, and good news for those of us in the business of telling great stories.

Michael Phelps’ fingertip finish for his seventh gold medal is worth celebrating, unless you are the ad man for Speedo.

He (or she) is likely crying in his Tsingtao because the Speedo logo, stitched into the special racing suits worn by the American team, has been covered over with black tape by some swimmers. And Michael Phelps is wearing a Speedo suit with only Nike logos.

From the ad man’s perspective, all of this boils down to a lost 30 seconds of exposure in men’s and women’s races so far, calculated by one industry analyst at a loss of $750,000 of value ($25,000 per second). 30 seconds folks!!!

This is where the ROI calculations of traditional advertising conflict with reality. Is it really fair to say that 1,300 Speedo racer suits (at $550 a pop) will go unsold as a result of the logo not popping up on camera for 30 seconds?

Which raises a larger question altogether - how many Cokes will go unopened, Visa charges uncharged, and McDonald’s McNuggets unfried as a result of blokes like me fast forwarding through all the commercials in between Olympic events?

It appears as though Madison Avenue’s relationship with the 2008 Olympics is not much different than that of the 1968 Olympics (also sponsored by Coke and McDonald’s, and where U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz began his gold rush). Maybe by the time the Winter Games roll around, we’ll see advertising strategies catch up with reality.

In the meantime, Speedo’s top executives are probably celebrating… they did not spend boatloads on an Olympic sponsorship, yet all of this free PR is doing wonders for awareness of their high tech racing suits.

For those who didn’t have the chance to read my blog posting after the Super Bowl, I wrote a commentary on the state of television advertising. The general point of the posting was that TV commercials are becoming an antiquated form of advertising, with the unique exception of Super Bowl ad buys.

Today, I read the Bulldog Reporter’s Daily ‘Dog, a weekly newsletter about the PR industry, and came across an article relevant to my previous post:

Marketers Disillusioned with TV’s Payoff In Post-Strike World: Survey Finds Advertisers Looking for Better Metrics, Better Formats

Has traditional TV advertising truly lost its power? Regardless of the answer, marketers and advertisers are already eager to find alternatives. A new survey from the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research shows a dramatic loss of confidence in the medium as the industry gears up to explore new ad formats and forms of video commercials, Advertising Age reports.

Click here for the full article