No More Retreat. We Must Admit to Advertising’s Failure!

Author: Paul Ashby

The £500,000 Honda waste of money on “live” television advertising is perhaps, the final straw in the acceptance of advertising as a means of “communicating” with consumers.

Our unwillingness to admit to the huge failings of advertising are reflected in our business institutions suffering from a loss of nerve to admit that advertising has become a total travesty, and amount to a national moral funk. We have let advertising standards fall in almost everything and especially in understanding the true meaning of the word communication.

Our claims that “advertising works” reflect an unwillingness to look rather more closely at the “evidence” touted by the various bodies representing advertising (and media) self interest!

It would appear that sometimes a decision taken by Media/Agency/Client is so lacking in common sense that the only appropriate reaction is to bang one’s head against a brick wall. However a blinkered advertising campaign, such as Hondas’, is so bad that the outcome can be truly toxic. There are more and more grotesque examples of such decisions, decisions lacking in any knowledge of the communications process, emerging as advertisers try to cut through the clutter, attract consumers’ attention etc.

I guarantee that the £500,000 could have been far more effectively spent with total accountability. All is revealed in my book “Television killed advertising” out end September.

Advertising people don’t understand the real world, they don’t understand the meaning of the word “communication”, and with the decision to split the creative role and the media role, there has been a proliferation of “experts” who still don’t understand communication. Between them issues forth a startling amount of opinions as to what constitutes “good” advertising, never for once realising that there is no such thing. Advertising people are subhuman living in a fantasy world in which communications can be controlled by “creativity” and supposedly sophisticated readership/viewing habits can instruct customers to read./watch their advertisements...they don't of course! The world we live in is vastly different from the world they think we live in.

Perhaps the change to reality is already starting! “US retailer quits TV for instore promotions”! Although only a casuist would draw hard and fast conclusions from such sparse data, it isn't good news for the US TV industry that a major retailer like Gap boosted its bottom line after quitting the medium in favour of instore merchandising for several successive quarters.

The switch trimmed 18% off the firm's marketing expenditure during its most recent quarter, contributing to a 40% year-on-year leap in profits.


So…no more retreat, let us rediscover the true meaning of communication and then start to provide our clients with the sort of marketing communication they deserve in the 21st Century.

Advertising has set no standards for the effective, accountable marketing communication of products/services matched only by the total lack of relentless curiosity! The history of advertising is also one of constant rejection towards anything that questioned the supremacy of advertising, despite the fact that the alternative on offer was substantially more effective and less expensive than advertising itself.

1. In a nutshell: marketing as we know it is a construct of the last century or so. Markets, on the other hand, have been around for thousands of years.
2. Interactive communication is not the same as online/digital. Truly interactive is "letting customers into the heart of your business"
3. In markets (as opposed to marketing) the sale was merely the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence. The rest was conversation and relationship.
4."Listen. Measure. Respond."
5. "Why" is more important than "how".
6. At the farmer’s market, the farmers let you taste the fruit. How can your customers "taste your fruit"?

So let us define Interactive Marketing communication. Interaction can be defined simply as straightforward communication between two parties. Presently we are in danger of losing the real meaning of interaction, as we tend to focus discussions on the emerging technologies and neglect the communication process itself.

With an understanding of the real meaning of Interactive Communication, existing media can be made interactive, and subsequently far more cost effective.
Interactive Marketing Communication turns passive advertising into active advertising and actually alters behaviour during the communication and learning process.


In my book “Television killed advertising” to be published end September 2008, I detail just how much more effective
Interactive communication is when compared to conventional advertising and details the results of a research investment in excess of £5 m.

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