Powzot

Update: This post was supposed to post on MLK day last week, but I’ve been too busy to edit it until now. Just pretend that you’re reading it last Monday. Thanks :p

Advertising, an abridged history: In the begining there was branded packaging and it was awesome, then everyone started doing it and it wasn’t enough, so a few started doing print ads and traveling salesmen, but then everyone started doing print and that wasn’t enough, then radio happened and soap operas and radio ads started, and soon everyone started advertising on the radio, and then TV happened and a few started advertising on TV, then more, then everyone, then we got cable and there were a million specialized channels (ok, at first there were like 15, but just stick with me, I’m going somewhere with this increasingly long sentence) and everyone was advertising everywhere on the TV, not just in comercial breaks but also in product placement and script mentions, and then the internet happened, and everyone got a website (because you had to, remember?) and then started email newsletters and banner ads. And then, 180-odd some years later, someone thought to look back on all this work, on the advertising landscape they had been a part of creating. He looked back and he said, “Well, shit.” Everyone was doing all this stuff, and no one was paying attention anymore.

Welcome to the age of popup blockers, DVRs, Bittorrent and all the other fun and ad-blocking technology that computers and the internet have brought us. But, I have dream.

I have a dream that someday soon, advertisers will realize that everyone hates them not because they hate products, or buying things, but because they hate being talked at. They hate having 18 minutes of every 1 hour TV block (30%) filled with messages talking at them, in broad unspecific language. They hate seeing 15 banners on the left side of every 3rd web site they hit. They hate having 7 netfix pop-unders reveal themselves after they close their browser window. They hate that advertising, 99% of the time, adds nothing to the culture, or the conversation.

I have a dream that someday soon, advertisers of all stripes will realize that we can do more with our craft. We can engage consumers in a valuable way, answering specific questions, helping them solve specific problems that they have, and doing good for the community as a whole. It’s not just a fantasy. Last year KFC took on an initivive where they paid to fill pot holes in city streets, as long as they could paint their logo on the patches. This year Pepsi shifted it’s Super Bowl budget to it’s Refresh Project, where the company will take ideas from it’s customers to use that money to advance social causes (aka chairity).

Are these executions perfect? No, but they’re a start. And they’re trying to do something more than just make noise. I have a dream, that someday cause marketing will become the norm, not the exception, and then we as advertisers can feel good about the work we do day in and day out, instead of knowing that we’re just adding to the dull roar of modern life.

Welcome to 2010. Like Y2K before it, nothing especially huge went down last night (except that Dick Clark was once again replaced by Ryan Seacrest, and I think we’re all a little worse off because of it.) I’m not a huge fan of recaps, which is why you didn’t see any here in the last weeks. However, I am all about predictions, and I have one to make about our newest new year based on what I saw in the last few weeks of 2009.

2010 will be the year of sharing

Yeah, I know, shocking right? But we actually have evidence to back this one up now, and it’s not just X million Facebook users now and Brand Y has 15 fanpages and 22 twitter accounts. Yes, the number of people using the most popular social media services are up, as are the number of big companies paying attention now. But more importantly, the number of social media services is growing. The number of people with “smart” phones is growing aka mobile internet usage is growing.

Notice how I haven’t talked about businesses using social media? It doesn’t matter if they’re using it, or have plans to use it right now, because the important thing that’s happening is their audiences are moving into the world of online sharing. (The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is boomers, so it’s not just us damn kids leading this charge.) And they’re not just sharing opinions, they’re sharing art and culture from across the globe. This is going to be where marketers are going to have to go, and the smart ones will not just take their messages to these new services and communities, they’ll participate in them, they’ll listen to them and they’ll learn from them.

Pepsi’s big announcement a couple weeks ago helps validate this idea and show that conventional one-way advertising is loosing some of it’s shine. And while they’re not specifically investing in social media, the shift shows that the way budgets, big budgets, are allocated is in flux. Like everything it’s only a matter of time, but mark my blog post, sharing is going to be the in thing for 2010.