Conventional advertising is not dead. Neither is the importance of your brand and great creative.

Rick Stanton, Creative Director / Managing Partner
Stanton & Everybody Advertising + Design

It happens about every ten years or so; the rise of a new media or a technology that is going to kill traditional advertising.
And it never does.
It does however, makes for adjustments. And that’s good thing.
In my time it’s been the 8-track tape player, the cassette player, the CD player and pre-set buttons that would all kill radio advertising.
For TV there’s been the remote control and the mute button, TIVO, and some even would say cable.
Somewhere in the mix in the mid-eighties everyone discovered the measurable results that direct mail and TV could bring that would certainly do in us generalists. It didn’t. And today it persists based on tired old direct paradigms that work even less. Junk is the operative word.
And now of course, there is the Internet, the almighty slayer of all communications that came before like newspapers. Ah … no.
Newspapers are as much more to blame for their own demise than another form of communications. Vapid content, reduction in local reporting and reliance on national stories, putting your own paper on-line for free and run away rates versus vastly diminished readerships is the cause of their problems. I think that’s called bad business management.
There’s no doubt about it, changes in the landscape have presented challenges in using these media tools.
But once you understand the challenges you can meet them and beat them.
For starters you can buy smarter by having a better understanding of your key targets’ media habits. The days of carpet-bombing people with media are over.
It doesn’t work and in fact the inverse is likely to occur. People will hate you.
You can use different time formats too like :15s for TV.
And you can pay more for premium positions in the ad pods.
Which leads me to one of the real culprits in the ineffectiveness of all media, including Internet banner ads. Bad creative.
There was a time when radio was the story tellers best friend, when geniuses like Stan Freberg wrote radio ads that were engaging, smart and rewarded people for their time listening. Or around here when ad pros like Terry Heckler did wonderful TV for Rainier Beer that viewers watched with anticipation instead of heading to the fridge.
It’s great creative that makes your media valuable. And that includes the Internet.
The Seattle Times ran an article in the Monday, April 20 paper about some guy who has started what is essentially a brokerage for banner ad placement.
The client supplies their own creative and a budget and he supposedly maximizes the available money with placement and appropriate ad sizes.
What a joke. Does he look at a larger brand strategy? Does he know the client’s overall media strategy that is a part of that brand strategy? Does he test to see which ads and placements work best? He sure doesn’t care if the creative is effective and on brand.
We have case study after case study that proves our way is the right way.
You have to be smarter, understand the end user, what they need and what they want, and you have to appreciate the importance of the brand in the message.
And to that last point, you better appreciate the importance of emotionally engaging creative.
Without it your advertising will in fact die an expensive death.
Read this article.
http://blogs.openforum.com/2009/04/15/5-marketing-myths-worth-testing/