The World of Jason Sadler

(This is Post 1 of 2 on Advertising)

I’ve been curious about advertising for as long as I can remember, which in actuality isn’t that long as I have a pretty bad memory. However, I do remember reading Highlights Magazine as a kid and realizing that the pages that weren’t the most fun in the magazine were the ones that kept the magazine going. That struck a chord that has been with me for many years. Does advertising have to be boring? Does it have to be an annoyance? Does it have to be the thing you skip over to get to the good stuff?

What is “Advertising”?

I was curious how advertising, the word, was defined so I did some Googling:

• The act or practice of calling public attention to one’s product, service, need, etc., esp. by paid announcements in newspapers and magazines, over radio or television, on billboards, etc. (Dictionary.com)
• Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to take some action. (Wikipedia)
• The action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements. (Merriam-Webster.com)
• The business of drawing public attention to goods and services. (Princeton Wordnetweb)
• Here are 50 more definitions from OneLook.com

From all of those definitions, what stays the same? It’s bringing a product/service/etc to an audience. Anyone can throw things out there, but are people there to listen?

How has Advertising Changed?

I don’t think anyone can argue that the way we learn about products, talk about products and are influenced to buy products has changed. In 2009 Nielsen did a survey that had “Recommendations from Friends” as the #1 trusted form of advertising. In fact, 90% of the audience surveyed said they trusted their friends as compared to 33% trusted banner ads. 

As Social Media continues to grow and people continue to create new interactions and communities online, getting product recommendations from friends is only going to increase. I’d be shocked if in the next few years you asked 100 people where they get most of their recommendations to buy things and they don’t say Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc etc. It’s all coming from their friends because they are real people that they interact with (online or not).

I believe that buying an ad in a magazine, regardless the size of the magazine, is nothing more then a branding exercise anymore. If you’re a big brand, you need to reinforce your logo, product and image to your audience. Branding is a part of advertising, but only a small slice and usually left to bigger companies who are in direct competition with other big companies (ex: Coke vs Pepsi). For anyone looking to engage an audience, grow a community around their product or have people sharing information about them you need to immediately stop paying for printed advertisements. The money you could be spending on effective campaigns in social media or through grassroots efforts would return 1,000x the ROI (return on investment).

My last note about a change in advertising is that banner ads can be very effective in getting a lot of eyeballs on a product or company. But, do random chunks of eyeballs even matter? Most banner ads are the new magazine ads that people are ignoring. When you spend money on banner ads you can see how many impressions and you can even pay for click through traffic. But who are these clicks? When people click through are they actually doing anything or just window shopping? What’s keeping them engaged, especially if your product is new or isn’t a necessity to them? Wouldn’t it help to have someone recommend people seeing your product? Some form of real human interaction getting them there?

What is the same in Advertising?

One thing that will not ever change in advertising is even if 100% of recommendations come from friends, you still have to reach those friends! As Social Media continues to pave the way to growing community and growing large networks of friends, you need to find a way in. Does that mean go spend all your advertising budget on Facebook ads? Not at all. But if you’d like to target Facebook, why not go to some larger college campuses, pay 100 students to hand out a free coupon or gift card with your Facebook page on it. Get people to your page, engage them in the community and reward them when they become brand advocates for you. Two friend tell their friends, those two friends tell their friends, you know the deal.

Will billboards all of the sudden come down in NYC’s Times Square? Not any time soon as long as 1,000 people walk through every minute (thanks Wikipedia). However, do all of the brands currently pumping $10,000s, $100,000s or even $1,000,000s need to think about better ways to spend that money? Yes. Do you know how far $100,000 could go in social media? You could easily employ 3 full-time people to manage a Twitter account, search keywords for 8 hours every day and interact with tons and tons of people (in the right way). Will it take a lot more time and resources then paying an agency to broker the billboard deal? Of course. Will the ROI of a billboard come even close to real human interaction across a platform (Twitter) reaching over 120,000,000 users? Never.

Companies and people need to advertise, but they need to start thinking about advertising THROUGH the right people. Yes, this is selfish plug for iwearyourshirt.com because I firmly believe I’m building a fantastic community of consumers who want to be introduced to new companies and want to engage with them. Are you guaranteed to sell a product when you buy billboard space, a magazine ad, a banner ad, a guy in your t-shirt or paying people to engage on Twitter? No. But the last two will give a much better opportunity and will help the long tail in brand loyalty and equity.

What Next? Part 2 of Advertising.

With the help of a few smart people I’m trying to gather a ton of data regarding current advertising options, dollars spent and estimated return. I’ll have Part 2 of Advertising at the end of this week or early next week and I welcome your thoughts, suggestions, ideas and anything else. 

Thank you for reading and thank you for being here!