Post-advertising age? Not to tomorrow’s agency’s leaders
It would be hard to find an industry for which the past is more romanticized than advertising. The heyday of the '50s, when television exploded and Lucy stole our hearts and Madison Avenue became more than just a street. The catchphrases that continue to stay with us, from “A diamond is forever” to “Where’s the beef?” to “Just Do It.” Then of course there is “Mad Men,” which in more recent times took the romanticizing to new heights.
It’s only been 11 years since Don Draper downed his last Old Fashioned. But when I first started teaching advertising and brand strategy at the University of North Texas a couple of years ago, one of the pieces of advice I was given was this: Avoid Mad Men stories. The show is too old for today’s students, I was told. Too old?! Already? If you consider that this year’s rising freshmen were seven years old when Mad Men went off the air, the reference is indeed already too old.
For those who swear Mad Men went off the air no more than five years ago, that’s gonna leave a mark.
Time marches on. As do professions.
The skies may be friendly – but they are also cloudy
All of which leads me to advertising’s current state. When EMARKETER/Admazing says that total U.S. media ad spending is forecast to jump 8.5% this year to top $460 billion, that would seem to indicate blue skies for the advertising industry. But the inconvenient truth is that the canvass is dotted with clouds.
Let’s start with this: The playing field has fundamentally shifted. Paid media used to have it largely to itself. Owned media didn’t exist. Earned media? It existed. But it wasn’t at the same level – certainly not in the eyes of, as they used to say, “the agency.” With the “the” often underlined for the unwashed.
But then owned media took over. First, the internet. Then, social media. The average adult now spends six hours and 58 minutes online per day. And our parents thought we watched too much TV.
Shared media? Perhaps the most powerful of all. Not to mention the roll that earned media is on. Turns out that AI-driven search engines love nothing more than credited sources. Meaning that the third-party endorsements that PR has always been there to generate are more valuable than ever.
The only dish that is more distasteful to advertising? Only a third of marketers today say their media investments always meet their mark. In an age of hyper-targeting, how can this be?
Then, of course, there is the wintry mix of consumer control. Advertising used to be one-way. Now it’s two and, really, multi. We don’t want to see the ads? Fast forward. We don’t want to know if the ads even exist? Ad-blocking software.
All of this has led to a legitimate question: Are we now in the post-advertising age? Put another way: Has Don Draper’s way of building brands and selling products and services become old-fashioned?
Professions march on. As does time.
Sunny with a chance of sunny
I’ll make this easy: No and no.
Advertising still works. Developing great creative and ensuring that it appears exactly when and where the advertiser wants it to appear is still the most powerful way to build awareness. Especially if the medium offers longer-form opportunities for the inspiration that can come with great storytelling. The consumers who now have more control in the equation than ever? Even as our attention spans dwindle by the minute, a recent study showed that nearly two out of every three of us (64%) will watch ads when they’re entertaining, followed closely by relevant and funny. Not too bad.
We all know the famous Wayne Gretzky quote about skating to where the puck is going. I had a chance to do just that this past weekend by attending ADMERICA, the annual conference of the American Advertising Federation. The highlight of the conference – the theme of which was "Eyes on the Future" – came courtesy of the NFL, which sponsored this year’s National Student Advertising Competition. They must have liked what they saw from the 103 teams that participated. Just before they announced the winner, which turned out to be the University of Oregon, they announced they were adding the new national champion team to their agency roster – and that its work will air during next season’s Super Bowl. Not too bad!
Oregon’s team later recreated its winning presentation. The students were completely unafraid. As were the UNT students for whom I served as faculty adviser when it was their turn to take the stage at the district level. The only thing the next generation of advertising majors are afraid of is what AI is doing to their job prospects. But they’re not so afraid to not major in advertising. It is the #1 major for enrollment within UNT’s Mayborn School of Journalism.
Eyes on the future. Even if I can't tell my students why Mad Men is the greatest show of all time, I will definitely tell them that their time is coming. And you can take that all the way to Madison Avenue.
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