There seems to be a discussion taking place in the advertising industry. Maybe an existential crisis.
You know, “Who am I?”
“What’s the meaning of life?”
That kind of stuff.
I think that is a good thing too.
Because for far too long, our advertising efforts have become less and less effective.
One reason for this is that there is just more advertising than anytime in history.
The second thing that is causing this lack of effectiveness is that as there has been an increase in quantity, quality has also taken a hit.
By quality I don’t mean beauty or even production value, I mean quality in focusing on converting people in a manner that is meaningful for what your campaign’s goals are.
That’s the challenge with the banner ad. They are easy to place, but often meaningless.
Its the same or maybe even a bigger challenge for the people that are placing ads for you and are willing to place ads anywhere that they can.
This has led to a number of instances where the brands that are advertising are having to defend themselves because they inadvertently partner with organizations, new sites, websites that they don’t approve of. That don’t reflect the position of their company.
Unfortunately, despite learning these lessons over and over, we still see brands and advertisers chasing mass.
Even when we have seen that “mass” means something entirely different now.
Mass used to be 3 TV stations and a limited number of entertainment options.
Today mass might mean an audience of 100,000.
The context needs to change.
That’s the problem with chasing mass, if you don’t clarify what mass means…you do yourself more harm than good.
If you don’t clarify what success looks like, you are likely to find yourself chasing down a rabbit hole of poor decisions and poor placement.
If you continue to chase mass, more likely than not, you aren’t going to catch it.
That’s the big problem of mass.