Marketing fads – and how to avoid them – to be targeted at Mumbrella360
Marketers’ obsession with fads and new trends is to be critiqued at Mumbrella360 in a collaborative session curated by Tom Donald.
The session will examine why this industry is so prone to spending money on unproven ideas in a rush to be first, and in collaboration with the audience, create a document for the marketing community titled “Won’t get fooled again”.
Donald is founder of boutique agency Punk Rock Shop and was previously planning director at Droga5 Sydney and the Works. The session will identify the biggest marketing fads of the last decade, from QR codes to big data and establish what they have in common, with a view to avoiding similar pitfalls in future.
Donald said: “Modern snake oil salesmen routinely scare clients out of hard-earned dollars for ideas that sound good but have no evidence of efficacy. As the Ad Contrarian once said: “There’s no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he’s missing a trend.”
Mumbrella360 takes place on June 5 and 6 at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney. Earlybird tickets – with a discount of $600 – are available until the end of the month via this link.
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Tom Donald
Um…. “boutique agency” is a very kind way of saying “I’m freelancing…”
🙂
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When you say fads, do you mean like trucker caps, facial hair and thick rimmed glasses?
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Oh but wait Ben, there’s more cliches to be had: Tattoos! Loads of ’em.
But well played, sir. A solid, witty and sarcastic anonymous comment… so you win at Mumbrella comments today.
(In fairness to my myopic self, I’ve been wearing “advertising glasses” since 1989, and my first tattoo is 23 years old…. but down to business.)
For anyone digging about down in the comments, I’d love to get your POV on the biggest fads of the last 20 years.
– Account planning?
– Big Data?
– Infographics?
– “Light a million little fires”?
– “TV is dead”?
What else?
And if any clients are on here, it’d be great to know what you’ve suckered you into paying for that you now wish you hadn’t?
Kindest regards in advance.
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Big Data: Not a fad; see Peter van Onselen comments in this site. Also see amazing article by Charles Duhigg for nytimes ‘How companies learn your secrets’. Definitely here to stay, although it seems few businesses achieve enough critical mass in their data to be useful. Or they don’t know what to do with it.
Infographics: Hungry Beast did it very well, but I found it too information rich. The right balance makes weet bix look like froot loops. I’ve found it useful for conveying mundane info to disinterested audiences.
Million fires: Droga beat us all to the punch with his mobile phones for students program. Will probably end up as “light a few thousand little fires” as tribalism upswings
TV died when Mary Kostakidis stopped reading the news. Is a ‘Game of Thrones’ download considered TV, or are you talking about fixed transmission times?
me: balding; unskinny pants; unlinkedin; only listen to vinyl because I can be bothered replacing them with those newfangled silver disc things
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Sounds like an interesting session, Tom.
I always enjoy Ad Contrarian’s point of view on things, along with Martin Weigel’s Canalside View blog. Voices of reason in an advertising world often gone mad.
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I have been patiently waiting for the Ad Contrarian to wrangle the big data topic and he recently delivered
http://adcontrarian.blogspot.c.....usion.html
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I too love the adcontrarian, but go to the nytimes article I mentioned above.
Target Stores US developed predictive analytics to determine whether their database customers were pregnant (not something these customers were not prepared to admit themselves to a department store).
The solution didn’t end there. They next sent catalogues to these women containing post-natal products. Experienced a kickback from customers who deemed this too intrusive.
The crucial next step was to present post-natal products in the catalogues in a more randomised way, i.e. innocuously placed next to a lawnmower, etc. The customer then thought they were making the choice for themselves.
It’s not the data, it’s what you do with it.
Consider this, Obama has just pledged a gazilllion dollars to map the the brain (his version of going to the moon, and entirely feasible). Once that’s done, we have no chance. You think insurance actuarials are going to ignore this new thing called DNA?
Ads don’t make us buy stuff, they just prompt us with stuff we might like. Depending on our mindstate (another fad term) at the time, we might be very close to the purchasing decision.
Having said all this, I must qualify: Only a business that can gather a broad range of purchasing and behavioural data specific to individuals has any chance of making this work. That means a Coles or Woolies, or a Bank, can do it, but a Schweppes can’t. Even facebook has had to develop a masking algorithm so they can use data from third party sources for Graph Search.
Second qualification: I can’t remember the last time I bought anything prompted to me by an ad.
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@fangeeo Every second person says that ads don’t work on them. But they do.
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1. Second Life. It was going to cure cancer.
2. The whole “two way conversation” thing. Any big organisations Facebook site represents whingers doing what they do best. Whinging.
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@lucy. You’re right. Bought my 1977 car from an ad last year. Apologies.
@I wonder: good call on Second Life.
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social media is the biggest fad marketing has seen in years
the emperor is finally being seen for what he is – nude
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Some great ideas here folks. Much, much appreciated.
Love the Second Life tip.
How about “Account Planning”? Has it really made advertising better? Or are planners mostly doing what competent suits and creatives used to do?
Or how about agency-side “innovation”? Future or fad?
Over-use of the world “platform”?
Keep ’em coming. The more ideas we can harvest, the better (and hopefully funnier) we can make the session.
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focus on the disease not the symptoms … no point talking about past fads, how about talking about why the ad industry often seems so desperate to abandon the tried and tested for the untested and shiny. is it because they think consumers will like them more if they’re seen to be doing something ‘new’ … as i’d say in most cases none of them notice.
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Hmmmm… thank you Shamma. Gave me a great idea for how to carve up the session.
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‘NoLogo’
‘paradigm shift’
‘viral’
‘Groupon’
‘creative commons licence’
‘freelance creative director’
my favourite: ‘Celebrities’ paid to endorse a product (say a bogan jeans brand) then sued by said brand because they are actually expected to wear/use the product in real life, not just in studio photo shoots (which they don’t). Would love to know what the contractual terms stipulate.
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How about re-targeting?
http://www.digiday.com/publish.....aily%202.0
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Re-targeting makes sense, though I don’t want it chasing me. You’ve reminded me to delete my cookies.
The other aspect of that article is consumer awareness of marketing tactics.
People don’t run away from a train approaching them on screen anymore. Our cumulative experience informs some of our subsequent behaviours. Once we are aware of how something is working on us, its efficacy is reduced. Hence our industry’s dependence on further innovation in marketing.
To bastardise the catchphrase of the NRA:
Innovative techniques don’t kill marketing. Mediocre application of innovative techniques kills marketing.
Tried and true still works; look at Clem’s stuff for Bupa. Genuinely valid and differentiated proposition. Astoundingly beautiful execution. Relatively conventional approach.
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