Raised by Ad Men, the Internet is in Desperate Need of Guidance from Outside of Advertising
An old saying in the ad business goes “I know half of my advertising budget is working, I just don’t know which half.”
It was once remarked to me by a marketing director with a $1m ad budget, “Nobody talks to me about my ads. We spent almost our entire budget last year in what seemed to be a ‘healthy’ 50/50 mix of digital and print/outdoor, and yet not once did anyone say ‘hey, I saw your ad.’”
When I heard that, I had to believe that the “digital half" was to blame.
This particular marketing director had an outstanding digital team that assembled their product (I should know, I was on his team). But the focus wasn’t right. We were advertising in the digital space. We were talking at people.
How Did It Get To This?
Around twenty years ago, there was a knock at Advertising’s door. When Advertising answered, they found a basket and a note “please take care of me, I’ve got nowhere else to go,” along with the toddling Internet, wrapped in blankets that looked pretty awful (tiny 8-bit animated characters with little shovels and yellow hard hats, above the text “Under Construction”).
Fast-forward to today, and you see the the web has grown up to be exactly what Advertising would raise it to be: a mostly one-way conversation with sometimes catchy design, but often kitschy content.
Had the infant Internet been dropped at Sales’ or Service’s doorstep, then we might have never evolved from the “forum,” where comments are king and a few “experts” rule. So I’m not suggesting that Advertising was a poor choice.
But Sales has always known that profit comes from interaction. Service is best when there is a conversation. A face-to-face meeting, the right words in the right moment — reaction, not just action. Sales and Service know how to talk to, not just talk at people.
Advertising didn’t raise the Internet right. For decades they had produced outstanding work for television, print, and outdoor. But they didn’t really understand the conversation.
And the results come in studies like this:
How Do We Change This Trend?
Sales and Service people need a seat at the new marketing table, as much as a developer has earned their right to be there. Maybe we need a new kind of Salesperson or Service Professional.
Unfortunately, the talk about getting better results here these days is about “AI” instead of trying to get better people involved. We’re so close people from Silicon Valley say. But are we?
Either way, to get back to having both halves of your advertising budget working for you (or at least being able to definitively say you don’t know which half is working), we need to improve customer experiences in digital.
The best place to start may be simply having a conversation about how people are using your digital communications.
“Using” is bolded in the sentence before, because that’s the verb that describes best what to do with digital. People don’t “tune in to” or “react” to digital. Those are verbs that Advertising wants you to do.
