Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [45]
Why? “Fear. Uncertainty freaks so many people out, but we think it’s fucking awesome, all the changes happening because of the Internet. We love change. That’s why we decided to become Internet geeks.”
This is reiterated in a call-out on their new Web site that reads, “An almost radical devotion to Internet culture and nice red Swedish Fish(tm).”
This all sounded cool and empowering and, as the kids like to say, hep. But, I asked, isn’t all this digital work actually more intrusive and dangerous than “traditional” ads? Isn’t the Internet just another pipe through which marketers can pump more insidious, nuanced, and targeted messages?
Webb shook his head. “To experience a traditional ad, all I have to do is open my eyes. In an airplane, car, bedroom, work, et cetera. I just have to look, and there it is, screaming at me. On the Web, aside from banner advertising, I pretty much have to decide to experience a marketing message. I have to click on that banner, I have to visit that Web site, I have to add that Facebook app or watch that viral video. I have to start the engagement. And therefore advertisers have to incent me to do so, the same way they incent me to visit their showroom. Think of VW ads—jarring, in-your-face, edgy. They have to be, because they have to catch my attention. Now think of their showrooms. Clean, friendly, inviting, with nice couches and coffee. Because they have to be, because they have to convince me to come in. Interactive advertising is the showroom.
“This manifests itself in gifts of entertainment, branded utilities, coupons, discounts, honest information, helpful tools like configurators and comparison guides. Things I need and want. Things that would sway me to take action. This is what online advertising is all about.”
Do most brands look at it this way? Do most brands get this?
Webb laughed, and now Palmer, who had just entered the room, laughed, too. Palmer said, “I see the Internet as a way of taking advertising back from the evil assholes,” and McCloskey shuddered just a bit.
I asked where they thought the next breakthrough in online marketing would come from, and Webb said, “MMO: massively multi-player online gaming. Go online and check out World of Warcraft. Eighty to ninety million people are spending like seventy dollars a month to be on it. Billions of dollars is in play every month, and everyone is trying to crack it, to apply a marketing model to it.”
To a game?
“The whole concept of brands and branding is somewhat archaic,” Webb said. “In fact, I think that branding as we know it is gonna die.”
The Death of Branding?
It sounds radical and subversive, but when I think about the etymology of the word “brand” in contrast to the evolution of digital advertising, Webb and Palmer’s hypotheses are worth considering: in Old English, the noun bround is first attested from the epic poem Beowulf, meaning “destruction by fire.” In the old West, cattle were branded with the mark of a specific ranch. Brands were originally created as labels of identification and ownership. For hundreds of years, brands have spoken to people, and people have not been invited to speak back.
Now with the Internet, people are speaking back to brands. The smarter brands are listening, while others are choosing to ignore or suppress the input of consumers, especially dissenters. Commercials are critiqued online. Products are reviewed online. “It’s getting to the point,” Webb said, “where you have to wonder why companies are spending a hundred thousand dollars to focus-group a commercial when a hundred thousand people are already blogging about it online. Branding as we know it is gonna