JWT creative honcho pronounces the consumer dead

The consumer is dead! This was one of the chief pronouncements by Craig Davis, Chief Creative Officer, JWT Worldwide, who addressed the advertising crowd on May 25 in a two hour long presentation crammed with case studies, advertisements, coloured score cards and some of the leading JWT top brass.

To explain the first statement, we would like to assure you that Davis was not referring to a hypothetical future scenario where marketers may be regressing into some old form of the barter system.

“In today’s rather fragmented media landscape, the worst possible thing for marketers is to objectify people in the way that they do,” stated Davis. Generalisation, he pointed out is an outdated concept, given the fact that consumers have continued from page 1 never had a higher measure of control, than they do today.The pronouncement for the future then is very clear! Conventional mass media is increasingly being replaced in people’s lives by other forms of communication like the Internet in the form of websites, blogs, testimonials and docu-dramas on the net. Davis contended that with the prevalence of DVR’s, in America itself, 60 per cent of TV programming is watched at a different time than that of its scheduled telecast. Within this, an estimated 92 per cent of the ads are skipped, which should rightfully be a grave cause of concern for advertisers.

“The problem is that creative departments still see television as a sexy medium. It is a sexy medium, no doubt, but it is not the only one. There are a variety of independent media present today, which can supplement the media choices that consumers are bombarded with,” observed Davis. He asserted, “Media choices are getting more diverse and eclectic from a cultural point of view. Given these choices, people are increasingly relying on their instincts when making decisions. We are moving from an age of interruption to an age of engagement. Earlier, the fundamental belief among advertisers and clients was that we were in the business of selling to the consumer. Instead, we have come to realise that today, we are in the business of buying people’s time. And in this process, marketers are closer now than before, to the entertainment industry.”

Davis gave the example of a speech made by Rupert Murdoch in New York recently, where he questioned the future of the print industry in America, by pointing out the results of a study, which showed that only about 9 per cent of the younger generation regarded newspapers as trustworthy; while a miniscule 4 per cent regarded newspapers as interesting. Davis contended that the same issues of credibility, which were being addressed to newspapers, could well be applied to the nature of mass media advertising as well and that the advertising community needs to be constantly challenging their creative solutions with engaging and innovative ideas.

“There is a need for more ideas, imagination, innovation and inspiration from agencies. In the new evolving media space, where the people are the new clients, the agency’s role extended to making sure that people spend more time with a client’s brand and to do this, they had to ensure that they create such ideas that helped people spend more time with their client’s brands and to constantly try to better that idea,” summed up Davis.

“One of my favourite descriptions of the internet business was made by the head of Yahoo!, who when recently asked to describe the nature of his business, summed it up, thus: ‘I am in the business of stealing sleep!’ That to me reiterates the belief of time being the ultimate currency in today’s world,” remarked Davis. He pointed out that clients once known for their staunch conservative attitude towards anything slightly radical are today willing to take that risk, in order to engage the consumer.

Imagine a situation where a company actually instigates an extensive media campaign spread out over four months and spanning web blogs, fan websites, viral videos, direct mail, print and TV campaigns, live stunts, viral voicemails and collaterals, all of which, paint the company as the main instigator in a “conspiracy theory” like scenario. As a result, the brand is painted as the bad boy in this whole media worked frenzy, which in the final stakes, worked very well to make their launch a success.

The brand in question is the US gaming company SEGA, which began a campaign to promote the launch of their First Person Football game. This was one of the extreme examples of clients taking on such an extreme risk, as to paint themselves in a bad light, one of the first no no’s of conventional advertising.

To read the entire story, grab your copy of Impact Advertising and Weekly magazine issue dated May 30-June5, 2005