FLIRTing with the Crowds

With new technologies, an ever-increasing number of services traditionally requiring face to face interaction are moving on to the web. At the extreme are services that don’t anymore need any human interaction on behalf of the service provider. One example of these are web services with which customers can create their own video advertising for TV or web, such as Pick-n-Click Ads, Visible World and Spot Runner. The services claim to bring professional quality video advertising to the reach of companies with a fracture of the costs associated with creating a video advertising campaign.

Being a technophile as well as a graphic designer, I must be skeptical about the phenomenon. The services are apparently targeted to the small and medium-sized enterprises that do not have dedicated departments for communications planning, let alone advertising. This leaves general marketing departments or general management in charge of developing striking, engaging and differentiating creative from standard building blocks. This simply will not work.

There are exceptions of course, but, on average, business directors and managers are not communications geniuses. In a world where our receptors consistently struggle to keep up with the hyperflux of information thrown at us from all sides, it is more important than ever to focus communications efforts that produce meaningful and brilliant solutions, raising us that decisive inch above the competition. And it is not necessarily advertising - video nor otherwise - that is the key: with the tools presently available, there are more cost effective methods at hand for spreading the word - and indeed ones that the advertisers are better at: event marketing, PR, blogging, meaningful dialogue with the customers through online forums, etc. Mediocre marketing communications today has exactly zero value. And it costs money - no matter how little.

p.s. Deutsch, a recognized advertising agency, took part in the discussion by launching the AdConceptor, a parody of the online ad generators. “It’s something, you got nothing. I’d take it!”. Funny.