THOUGHT (aka Centric's Blog)

Let’s bring Don Draper forward to the Centric offices today. At first, he’s cool. He sees posters of our print work on the walls, he’s stunned by the big flat-panel television (and high definition shows), and he thinks that computers are just an evolution of a typewriter. Then we start going to websites.

"What the hell are these?" he asks.

We tell him: this is the way most people communicate these days. They put up MySpace pages with photos, they put up YouTube videos, they research purchases by going to corporate websites, they talk on forums. We show him iChat. He looks a little troubled.

"So this is like a videophone?"

No, no, we tell him. It’s everything. Phone. Text. Pictures. Instant messages. Video. We show him YouTube.

"Wait a minute! Anyone can put any movie they want up here?"

We tell him about copyright and DCMA. He shakes his head and looks around for the scotch tumbler. Not seeing it, he sighs and leans forward and stares at the screen. "But that won’t work. People do what they want."

We just nod.

"How much does this cost?" he asks.

To post a video? It’s free.

"No, no! The whole thing. This internet."

A lot of people get it bundled in with their cable service. If not, it costs, well, five to eight dollars (in 1960 dollars) a month for access.

"For how long? How many minutes do they get?"

Minutes? It’s connected all the time. People can use it as much as they want, pretty much.

Don looks a little pasty and gray. We show him how you can do video ads, and he waves us away. "No. That’s no good. You don’t need to finish the ad. You don’t even need to look at it. You should be doing television or print!"

We tell him, sorry, online has been proven to be 2x more effective than television and 8x more effective than print–and that the way things were going, finding newspapers and magazines to place print in might get pretty difficult in a couple of years.

He’s white and shaking now. We don’t bother pulling out the iPhone. We just let him click around on the big screen, watching as his eyes get bigger and his complexion loses even more color. "So, anyone can talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, anyhow? For free?"

Pretty much, we agree.

He shakes his head. "This won’t work. This doesn’t work. If people can talk, they can talk about how Uncle Milt died of lung cancer and how his doctor told him to quit smoking. And the words are right there for all to see!"

Or their video, we say. We show him a modern high-definition video camera. He just looks at it and asks how much it costs.

In 1960 dollars, about ninety dollars, we tell him.

He fumbles in his breast pocket and pulls out an old-fashioned pack of cigarettes, but we stop him, saying, You can’t smoke in here.

"Why?" he looks like he’s ready to cry.

You can’t smoke in any public building. It’s against the law.

Suddenly he’s pissed. "What kind of communist state are you living in? It’s like you’re living in Russia!"

We don’t have the heart to tell him, but he sees it in our eyes.

He swallows. "China?" he says, in a very small voice.

We shake our heads.

Don collapses in a chair, curling up into a fetal ball. "Send me back," he says. "Send me back! Send me baaacckk!!!"

————–

So, what’s the point of all this, you ask? The point is that we can look back at some imagined time and consider it a golden age. But the golden age of advertising wasn’t the 60’s. Sorry. Not even close. Putting up a roadblock ad that people have to see in a handful of different media was child’s play. You could buy the reach. Then it was just a matter of clear communication.

Today, media is fragmented. There are dozens of different tactics you can use online alone. And many of them require customer engagement and interaction. There are no roadblocks. There are only circus tents and beckoning shops and cool parks. And the ones that connect with people are the ones that will work. And the ones with real, honest connections to the brand are the ones that will be the most successful.

No, the golden age of advertising wasn’t the 60s. The golden age of advertising is right now.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 9:25 am and is filed under Ruminations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.