The Evolution of Advertising – Home Based Agencies

Jump to Comments

If you were anything like me, when you watched this year’s Super Bowl, you were glued to the TV set BETWEEN plays…you were actually waiting for…God forbid…the commercials. The most popular ads were pimping Bud Light and they were kinda humorous, but they did little more than recycle tired jokes/stereotypes and put the face of Bud Light on them. Hardly worth millions of dollars, they simply delivered laugh-track-chuckles and disappeared into a forgettable black hole… never to be referred to again as we product buyers march up and down the aisles of supermarkets and C-stores searching for our favorite products.

Of the few ads that I felt actually worked, were the “user-generated ads”…or put in layman’s terms, regular people created the them; not the glamorous agencies that line Madison Avenue in New York City (gasp!). For example, after receiving more than 1,000 entries for the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” contest five finalists were chosen and consumers viewed and voted for their favorite ad online and it was shown during this year’s Super Bowl. Doritos ended up airing two of the five winning spots on the Super Bowl.

If you missed “the commercials” during the Super Bowl (click here for ad industry expert blogs and videos of all the commercials). You’ll no doubt agree that the overall quality of ads was a major disappointment. In my view, the Doritos ad was easily among the top 3 ads shown. In fact, many experts suggest that the Doritos’ “Crash” spot might be a seminal moment in the growth of consumer-generated advertising.

In an Online Media Daily article this week, Jason McDonell, director of Marketing for Frito-Lay’s Doritos brand, expounded the need for marketers to “get real” and acknowledge that marketing isn’t merely advertising and communication: It’s about “building a relationship with consumers.” What he’s really saying is that to sell to today’s consumers, you actually need to be more in tune with them than the ad agencies are. It’s fine to sit in a war room and pretend you’re an 18 year old girl, but the fact is, you’re working at an ad agency…you’re a guy…and you’re 32 years old. It’s not out of the realm of possible that you’ll get it wrong. Even slightly off the bulls eye is enough to have today’s consumers filter your message to the trash bin of mindshare. Just today I read and article suggesting that although there’s no consensus number, it is agreed by most experts that we are hit with between 500 and a few thousand advertising messages per day. The theory of evolution tells us that our brains are learning how to filter out the junk.

 

 

For example, McDonell also said that Doritos “learned that its target consumer–16 to 24-year-olds–embrace self-expression, independence, and something he called “belongingness”–the desire to belong to something. Doritos learned that the target lives a “hyperlife” (life on a multitasking, 24/7 basis); likes creative control and evidence of its own creative DNA (it wants a stage to perform on); and craves authenticity, reality, and relevance.” To be honest, that’s a very complex concept (especially for the aforementioned 32 year old male) to nail down in a board room if you don’t inherently “get it”. To that end, Doritos found a winning concept and is going to milk this until the media interest fades. In fact, they just now launched a new online contest asking consumers to vote on two new flavors–Smokin’ Cheddar BBQ and Wild White Nacho. Of course, although I speak sarcastically, Ben & Jerry’s has been letting consumers submit ideas for new flavors for years. They got it a long time ago.

But that’s not even the best part of this consumer-generated-revolution. According to Nielsen Monitor-Plus, Doritos posted $19 million in ad spend in 2006 and according to this adage article on XLNTads, there’s very good news on the horizon for you consumers who are also blog readers…some of that $19 mill could come your way in the future.

 

XLNTads is looking to be just this conduit between creative, capable consumers and those brands that are desperately trying to find the perfect voice for their sales pitch.

“The average cost of a Super Bowl spot was $350,000,” said XLNTads CEO Neil Perry. “Some auto manufacturers spend $600,000 to $650,000 to do a single campaign. We say take that same amount of money, pay $20,000 [for creative], and that leaves you more to reinvest in media, in delivering the message.”

Think of XLNTads as giving those of us who are truly brand evangelists a way of turning our fun, little side project we normally jam on You Tube into a revenue source…like those ads on our blog sites (not this blog site, however…yet). All of a sudden Madison Avenue exists in every town, in every neighborhood. I’ve even got a KILLER idea for an ad that I’m currently preparing to lob into XLNTads to see if I’ve got what it takes. Of course, I’m probably going try to negotiate a bigger fee than just 20K. If it takes, I promise to post my results here.

Trying to counter-argue the XLNTads approach, Sarah Fay, president of Isobar U.S., calls this “the democratization of creative content” and she’s skeptical that advertisers will get into the mode of regularly having consumers create the 30-second spot, the idea being that once it’s been done a few times, it’s unlikely to have the same punch. I think, however, that she’s missing the point. It’s not about having a dual message that says “Here’s our message AND listen extra carefully because it was done by amateurs.” Although there was an initial curiosity for the Doritos ads (well, duh, they’re actually running them during the Super Bowl against the most creative big agency stars…and they matched them easily), you’re not trying to leverage a novel concept, but rather, an effective message. The big agencies aren’t banging them out of the park with enough frequency these days, so naturally the brand marketers are looking to see if someone else can translate their messages better…and apparently, yes they can.

This is about the fact that anyone at home now has access to the tools to make a commercial…anyone at home now has the forum to post an idea…brand evangelists are the best buzz marketers and now the brand marketers have seen the light and unless Madison Avenue’s big agencies figure out how to provide better creative, they’re destined to reduce their roles to being media buyers.

Folks, that’s my story…and I’m stickin’ to it.

 

1 Comment

Filed under advertising, agency, branding, brandweek, bud light, business, commercials, doritos, frito-lay, madison avenue, marketing, super bowl ads, tv, xlnt