The Future of Advertising

John Hockenberry, The Takeaway: Now, there are all kinds of bemoaning the end of journalism, but in many ways changes in advertising are probably more significant and more likely to affect more people. First of all, how are advertisers dealing with technological changes like TIVO, the proliferation of broadband on cell phones, that sort of thing?

Cindy Gallop: Not very well, in that the advertising industry is riddled with fear and insecurity, at the moment, in the wake of the explosion of all of these technological advances and a great deal of nervousness and concern about exactly how they deal with them.

John Hockenberry: And it seems like that there’s this weird incestuous relationship between the content and the advertising, in the sense that the script writers are obsessed with getting ratings and so they want to get the highest possible ratings with the kind of content they use. The advertisers want to get into the content and not be in this commercial ghetto. There’s all sorts of product placement issues that are blurring the line between the entertainment part and the advertising part.

Cindy Gallop: Well, product placement is interesting, John, because actually it’s just one aspect of a much more fundamental trend that I see happening, which is that advertisers these days are so nervous and insecure about themselves and what they’re doing, that they come from a place where they feel, and quite rightly, that an awful lot of people out there think advertising is bad. And they are dealing with that by excusing their very existence and trying almost to bypass the fundamental issue, which is how do you make advertising a good thing? Product placement is just one aspect of how they’re trying to bypass and step away from that particular core question.

John Hockenberry: They keep from apologizing for themselves. Let’s listen to this ad, sort of, in the NBC show 30 Rock.

30 Rock [on tape]: ?These Verizon wireless phones are just so popular, I accidentally grabbed one belonging to an acquaintance.? ?Well sure ?cause that Verizon wireless phone service is just unbeatable. If I saw a phone like that on TV, I would say ?Where is my nearest retailer so I can get one?? Can we have our money now??

John Hockenberry: Alright. Now, they’re joking, but is Verizon getting invoiced for that amount of mention on 30 Rock?

Cindy Gallop: Well, I think it’s highly likely that Verizon will have struck some sort of deal, absolutely.

John Hockenberry: Ya, but it’s funny. They’re apologizing for it, but in fact that raises the profile of the product itself in the way that they keep joking about it.

Cindy Gallop: It does indeed. And actually, 30 Rock is interesting because it’s an example of the more successful approach to product placement in that the very nature of the humor, and the irony inherent in the series itself, allows the producers to integrate commercial brands in a way that many other shows find a lot more difficult.

John Hockenberry: It seems to me that the whole approach and the tone is a way of saying ?We know the deal folks, right? They’re selling products, we’re selling programs, it’s like we’re all together in this.? And all of a sudden the anxiety goes away and it’s funnier.

Cindy Gallop: In theory. But John I have to admit, I personally really take issue with that particular mindset and I’m going to call up a quote from Mark Goldstein when he was CMO at the advertising agency Fallon, who said a number of years ago: ?People hate advertising in general, but they love advertising in particular.? And what that means is, if you ask the man on the street ?What do you think about advertising?? He’ll go ?Oh my god, I hate it, it gets in my way at commercial breaks and interrupts everything.? But if you ask the man on the street ?Tell me some of your favorite ads,? he’ll go ?I really love that Nike ad where?? So people hate advertising in general but they love advertising in particular. Make it great and engaging advertising and people feel it enhances their lives rather than the opposite.

John Hockenberry: Well here’s another strategy for deliberately blurring the line between a show and an ad. And tell me what you think of this. This is from the USA network Psych. And it starts out sounding like an actual episode and then becomes something quite different.