How do you know when a love affair has run its course? Well one thing is for sure. If your only contact is a brief hug and the two soft pats on the back when you leave at the end of the night, you won’t be missed. That’s what just happened to the advertising industry.
On the night before the long, dark winter’s chill. The night whose only promise is to dawn upon thunder clouds and blustering winds. The great love of Advertising’s life, 141 members of the Association of National Advertisers, made their feelings perfectly clear.
Even though faced with the greatest economic turndown in our country’s history, 77% of those clients stated for the record, that they intended to cut back on their company’s advertising expenditures. Even though clients and agencies have been partners for a century, this time it’s different.
Historically, companies that increased advertising during recessionary times were rewarded with 230% to 674% increases in revenue by the time recovery rolls around.
Not this time. Miss Client is done with advertising. In certain situations advertising has made Miss Client look foolish in front of her customers. Heads rolled for making Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfield turn out to be the uncool kids they were in High School. But this time to the entire population of YouTube.com. Miss Client is definitely looking around.
ANA President-CEO Bob Liodice. was quoted in AdAge as saying, “The key message I’ve gotten from my members over the past few months is that there’s terrible uncertainty out there.”
Terrible uncertainty? Miss Client has serious doubts? That can only mean one thing. Advertising is no longer serving her needs. Once that begins, it’s only a matter of time before you’re asking the last person to leave the last office on Madison Avenue to please turn out the light.
But wait. There’s more. The ANA survey didn’t stop there. AdAge reported that, “Among the other bleak findings: 72% of marketers plan to reduce advertising-campaign production budgets; 68% plan to “challenge” agencies to reduce internal expenses and/or identify cost reductions; and 48% are looking at reducing agency compensation today.”
“Reducing agency compensation.” That says it all right there. We are in desperate need for leadership on the road to economic recovery. Who better then Madison Avenue to lead the way? “48% ( of clients) are looking at reducing agency compensation today,”says that almost half the clients have a low value perception of advertising as it is practiced today.
So advertising, an $800 billion global industry has been told that almost half of its customers think it’s not worth $800 billion to them. What does advertising do?
Well Advertising is a little tied up right now. It seems the Super Bowl was a bust. Car companies bailed en masse. Citibank and BofA got blasted for half a billion dollar statium naming deals while pleading for taxpayer’s money to pay off their bad debt.
A multimillion dollar class action lawyer Cyrus Mehri and the NAACP are poised to bring down a crushing job discrimination suite with gazillion dollar settlements. And that’s just this week.
Advertising is an industry embattled. Certainly its squirrely Millinials work force won’t go to the mattresses to pull miracles out of hats for panic-stricken clients, week after week after week. They will just cop attitude and walk across the street. To replace the duplicate that just took his spot. Within months, confidentiality will be a thing of the past.
Clients will flounder at first. Disoriented. But they will find their way. In fact, more and more clients are beginning to find their way here.
NeoAdvertising is a curiosity to them at this point. They are curious as to how we intend to make it accountable. But curiosity is not enough to overcome fear. Clients are going to have to see a verifyable marketing breakthrough to believe in the power of NeoAdvertising to engage and persuade. So we have to create such a success for our Audience “O” NeoAdNet to knock out of the park.
Think Hard.
Opinions Matter