We live in a World with a deluge of choices

By: Paul Ashby

Some people claim it is a triumph of the Starbucks economy over the Ford economy. Starbucks is governed by the idea that people make choices - in their coffee, their milk, and their sweetner.

But could this be simply more marketing mythology? In actual fact Ford offered more choices than Starbucks ever did. In the mid 1950s the options available to the purchaser of a Chevy Bel Air four door sedan were infinite.

As for Starbucks, well Starbucks is a predatory franchiser and its arrival in any town usually means the extinction of existing small cafes - and Starbucks then asks people to fork over US Dollar 2 or more for a cup of coffee!

If you think that Marketing and Advertising exist in a world governed by logic and reason you clearly don't know just how irrational, off the mark and wasteful marketng, and especially advertising, has become!

So what we must do. more than ever before, is to deflate the sweeping generalisations of the advertising and marketing world. We must definitely steer clear of their overarching theories on communication - mass communication that is.

And no wonder, Advertising people love to blame anybody but themselves when campaigns don't perform - its easier than admitting they haven't got a clue!

Tragically for us all, Advertising/Marketing people will persist in asserting their own superiority, instead of having the humility to learn from what is good in other ideas, as well as to recogise their own past mistakes.

Advertising people love ramming their own failed ideas down the throats of others, which is, in fact, rarely a productive habit!

Advertisings' assertion of superiority has led to the current situation of : clutter,ineffectiveness and a total lack of accountability, as well as customer and consumer mistrust!

This assertion of superiority has resulted in frequent "put-downs" more than ever before.

The recent carpeting of Rimmel by the Advertising Standards Authority is an interesting one and confirms the above.

One reporter said, "I don't believe that anyone imagined for a second that's how their eyes would look if they spent Ł6.99 on this mascara."

"Anyway we all know how advertising works: They present some impossibly beautiful model in lacy lingerie...and expect us to believe that we can look like that".

Far worse and annoying are the TV advertisements. I'd never presume to tell the ASA its job, but maybe it could investigate some current ads for crimes against humanity:

1. A girl's boyfriend thinks her colourfully wrapped tampons are sweet. What utter advertising fathead saw this as a USP?
2. Cillit Bang. If it can do that to a 1p piece what might it do to my sink unit?
3. A smug woman fakes traffic noises down the phone to her boy friend. She's late because her clothes smell of nice Lenor and she cannot stop sniffing them!
4. A policewoman with indigestion starts dancing to Flashdance while direct traffic-courtesy of Gaviscon-what utter nonsense!
5. A grimacing, constipated woman takes a tablet and is soon happily kicking a football in the park.

We also live in a world where advertising and marketing constantly come up against an inconvenient truth, that is that there is still to day no firm evidence that advertising works at all, especially television advertising.

It is this self-proclaimed consensus amongst advertising agencies and the media that it does work that has detached itself from the questioning rigours of hard research.

Those of us who date question the dogma "advertising works" are vilified as heretics or wose, as deniers.

There is a need for heretics because throughout history herecics have stood up against dogma based upon the bigotry of vested interests.

The truth is that there are no facts that link television advertising to sales even after all these years!

Instead of hard facts, the advocates of advertising resort to talk about the new technology and the future, all based upon false assumptions and unreliable measuring schemes. And of course the main causes of all these problems are the vested interests of television and advertising agencies.

One of these problems, and it is a major one, is the fact that there is no need for such bodies as the Advertising Standards Body, customers are well aware that they are being sold to. All the ASB does is give an even great misperception that advertising is all-powerful, when, in fact it isn't at all.

These militate against all our interests-and something must be done about it - immediately!

Added on: Nov 1, 2007

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