Online Advertising Can Build A Brand
We just need to use more blocks.
Something happened on Monday.
Words were shared. More words were then said about the aforementioned words shared on Monday.
These were the words.
This is how I’d summarize those words:
- The Internet and the online advertising behemoth it spawned has had 20 years to create a major consumer-facing brand. But the Internet hasn’t done this.
- This hasn’t happened since brands need to achieve a level whereby they can provide “Cultural Imprinting.” And online advertising doesn’t provide this.
- Cultural Imprinting occurs when someone knows something about the brand and also knows that everyone else knows that same thing.
- So one person can’t just see an ad. Many, many people must also see it.
- And when online advertising obsesses itself with personalization instead of mass marketing brands that follow this obsession minimize — or lose out entirely on — their ability to make Cultural Imprinting possible and relish in the business benefits it provides.
So yes and no.
Yes, personalization is an overused word and approach. It trades creativity and, to paraphrase Shann Biglione in a recent podcast with Mark Pollard, “eloquent media” for low quality messaging left to be made work through Excel analysis that can be likened to a Canadian attempting to find an outdoor hockey rink next to the Panama Canal.
But then no, Cultural Imprinting and its business benefits are not mutually exclusive to everything outside of the online advertising world. Mass marketing can be achieved online. Online can look and act like traditional media as Head of Media Partnerships at Diageo, Jerry Daykins, stated recently when he shared an excerpt from Eat Your Greens: fact based thinking to improve your brand’s health.
The issue isn’t traditional vs. online. And it never has been.
The issue is blinders (digital and also general) vs. thought, an understanding of business and effectiveness (not to be confused with efficiency), and the willingness to put it forward. Because it’s all out there:
- Media In Focus
- Effectiveness In Context
- The Anatomy of Humbug
- Paid Attention
- How Not To Plan
- So much by Steven Johnson demonstrating that whatever we think is new and innovative was thought about prior to Einstein and even further back than that.
- Good Strategy, Bad Strategy
- CMO Today
- The numerous studies out there about the business opportunities through premium sites, video, and high impact placements.
- Everything from EffWeek 2018, especially everything built to speak to CFOs
- Why Common Knowledge Builds Stronger Brands And How To Plan For It
- The Secret History of The Future
- Farnam Street
- On Grand Strategy
- The Elements of Style
- How Brands Grow
- The Strategy Paradox
- The person sitting next to you, behind you, over there, and over there.
Ours is not an industry lacking in the willingness to share.
“And if all sharing gets us is a ‘no?’” you ask.
Well, we’re always going to know how to revise and personalize it for the client.
