We are in the process of creating an evolved advertising agency and are approaching things differently than most agencies today. Our belief is that the world is changing at a more rapid pace than ever before. Technological advancements are dramatically changing the way people consume and engage with media at an alarming pace, but most agencies and brands are advertising to people in the same way. They are interrupting the content people are watching, playing, reading, using with ad messages - witty commercials that tell people what the brands want them to hear.
Our theory is that brands need to do more than interrupt great content. People are also much savvier and less and less likely to believe a simple ad message. We feel that in order to prove value and establish true loyalty, brands need to do more to define themselves instead of just tell people things. For example if say Clorox did and ad saying Clorox stands for clean and germ free and ran it on TV, online, print, etc it would be less effective than if they took their dollars and did something real like cleaned up 10 subway stations/cars, parks, etc under the banner of standing for clean. In other words, doing things that are representative of a brands positioning (that are social/pr worthy) vs traditional ad messaging.
In addition, because of technology and ad skipping behavior/programming, DVR, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc people are viewing advertising less and less. Brands need to do things that are worthy of people's time. Things that are story/article/short video view-worthy instead of ads.
Without having a specific case study to use as an example, we'd like to should how money that could be used for doing useful things that help position brands the way they'd like to be positioned is more effective and a better use of marketing dollars.
We could certainly write a thought leadership piece on this point of view, but would rather put some teeth into it with some data, research, proof, stats to help prove the point. Maybe that's just someone looking and gathering the right supporting data and stats or creating them ourselves.
Here are some supporting stats/quotes:
Harvard Business Review. August 9, 2012 "Traditional marketing — including advertising, public relations, branding and corporate communications — is dead.
Many people in traditional marketing roles and organizations may not realize they’re operating within a dead paradigm. But they are. The evidence is clear."
Forbes CMO Network. December 4, 2013
"It is an industry that is a few short years away from crashing on itself.
It is boxing – very shortly a mixed martial arts model is going to come along and, like boxing, ad agencies will largely become irrelevant."
USA Today - 48% of home have DVRs
YouTube - On Average 70% of viewers skip pre-roll ads when given the option
Ericsson Labs - when TV viewers around the word were asked about the important service option for future TV, an ad-free experience was most popular
Havas Media - Worldwide, consumer said they would care if 72% of all brands disappeared
Potential data sources: Existing studies, Twitter data, Facebook data, Web Forums, etc
Data geography and timeline: Ideally, this would be based on recent data (2012 - today) and US (but not limited to US)
Deliverables: We are open to suggestions, but some kind of report that we can leverage and develop thought leadership pieces from.
Note: We are open to partnering with a research company to publish a report in order to add credibility to the findings.
