It's okay to put forward a provocative argument provided that the reverse of your argument could also be true.So how many times do we have to listen to Steve Harrison saying the blindingly obvious - that offline or online, it's all about the idea. I haven't read his new book 'How to do better creative work' - it's out this week and I look forward to it - but I have ingested his piece in Campaign ('Advertising is not dead, and I can prove it to you', 5 June 2009) and it's left me with heartburn.In it, Steve suggests that both on and offline clients and agency people have been taken for a ride by digital's pundits telling us advertising is on its knees. I'm with Steve up to that point.But why doesn't he stop there? It's when he goes on to do a total hatchet job on digital that his argument enters the realms of dogma. First off, he marginalises the whole online world by telling us it's populated by indifferent and bored (mainly young) people with no time on their hands and even less money.The majority, he concludes, continue to operate much as they ever have, in a supine relationship with brands and consuming 'push' messages - mainly offline - and mainly of patchy quality.Steve opines: 'having grown up with a passive relationship with media, the shift to becoming an active consumer of ideas is neither likely nor desirable. Are smart clients going to wait patiently for the 'groundswell' to eventually envelope these potential customers? And then will they accept a new status quo wherein the customer dictates the flow of marketing communications? Clients will be expecting you to proactively attract and convert new prospects, persuade competitors' customers to defect and encourage existing customers to spend more'.
When he talks about sales-generating, interruptive ideas and digital, it's as if he's talking about two mutually exclusive principles. You can't help thinking that Steve is taking as narrow and patrician a view of the world as the digital pundits he so roundly condemns.Isn't the truth somewhere in the middle? That, within three years, all these distinctions - advertising, DM and digital - will be redundant. It will be about what works.So here's my response to Steve's 'Advertising is not dead, and I can prove it to you'. Digital is an ideas-rich, sales-generating medium and I can prove it to you.Argos's Giant Jar competition online was so popular that it was one of the five most viewed videos on You Tube. It attracted 479,000 unique page impressions and video views in a little over 9 weeks, generated 100,000 competition entries and, crucially, captured over 16,000 unique new customers, resulting in over £700,000 worth of incremental sales with an overall ROI of 4.38:1. It was dramatic and relevant, used a massively interruptive creative idea, deployed film and an immersive interactive game allied to a traditional sales promotion technique - the prize draw.In his article, Steve trashes the prize draw as a technique which attracts an audience with a Readers Digest mentality. People who go for that sort of thing, argues Steve, are who are only interested in free pens and prize draws, not brands or products - somehow not real transactional consumers, just freebie-seeking tyre-kickers.Would those be the very same tyre-kickers who are capable of contributing hundreds of thousands of incremental smackers to the bottom line for Argos? The Argos experience (and I invite you to add yours) proves Steve Harrison well wide of the mark.And by the way, Steve, in relation to blogging, it may be that of the UK's online consumers, 'just (sic) 2.8 per cent bother to blog, only (sic) 8.8 per cent read them and 3.7 per cent comment', but that's like saying only 14 per cent of UK consumers shop at Tesco or only 1 per cent of UK consumers read The Times.That's still one mother load of consumers interacting with each other.
Thank you. I'm from a traditional media background, and I'm sick of traditionalists rubbishing this wonderful new media landscape.
I am afraid that Mr Douglas will have to do better if he aims to rubbish Mr Harrison's arguments. The Argos case history - while admirable in its own little way - hardly demonstrates a fresh insight into the human condition, the power of a big idea, or the craft skills associated with surprising executions. Further, as a piece of flag-waving for the brave new world of all things digi, the numbers for the Argos competition would only be impressive if set in the context of the company's total customer base and turnover/sales. As with all promotions, unless testing and/or research shows otherwise, all that's been achieved is engaging with a great many people who were already brand loyal and bringing forward a purchase they would have happily made anyway.
I think Steve is being very narrow here in the part of digital he chooses to attack – but that he is right to attack what he sees as a slightly self-indulgent strain in a lot of digital work.
The distinction I choose to make is between those large and valuable audiences who use the internet as a means to an end and that much smaller group of people for whom digital is an art-form, an end in itself. Far too much award-seeking digital work seems to be addressed at the latter group, who are a not very lucrative curiosity, frankly. Steve is right to make this criticism, but completely wrong to conflate a few self-indulgent ideas with the wider economic and behavioural significance of the internet - which already drives something like 10% of world GDP.
I might also add that Steve has a more puritanical approach to the value of time than anyone I have ever met. So certain aspects of digital, such as gaming or social networking, are probably disproportionately hateful to him. Don’t expect to see a Steve Harrison Twitterfeed any day soon!
‘Advertising is dead, long live Digital?’
Surely we should be having the more positive debate hinted at by Steve and Dan about how we can encourage younger creatives to learn from advertising’s past and how experienced creatives can effectively add digital knowledge to their skill set.
As far as Jo and Joanna Public are concerned, it’s all advertising and marketing and they obviously don’t give a toss whether brands are on or offline as long as they’re interested and engaged.
Therefore, creatives of all ages should be continually looking at how they can broaden their overall skills to influence the multitude of touchpoints that people of all ages are now engaged with.
It’s like studying history. We have to learn from the past (both good and bad) but we also have to continually add to that experience by embracing the ever expanding digital ways of doing business.
We already know that the Man In The Street enjoys both the traditional and digital elements of campaigns like Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ and Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ whether they interrupt or gently persuade and the creators of those campaigns have also been fortunate enough to pick up many industry awards.
So let’s stop arguing about ‘traditional versus digital’ and just acknowledge that we have at our disposal more online, offline, traditional and new methods than ever before to play with.
Then we can enjoy and concentrate on producing the best possible creative solutions for everyone’s benefit both inside and outside of our business.
Dan Douglass
Blogging for:
Member since: 06 Oct 2008
Last login: 17 Sep 2009
Total Posts: 31
