This article was written by our Marketing and Innovation Director in Milan, Luca Della Dora and was first published in Italian here.
If you are the kind of person that doesn’t have the patience to read long articles, here’s the quick version of this piece: “no, the advertising industry is not dead, but we can’t ignore how people’s behaviours are changing any more”.
If you’re in the advertising industry, you are aware of the fact that every now and then an article about the death of advertising pops up (and, to be honest, it’s often just the headlines to underline that).
At the end of October, The New York Times generated a lot of discussion around this topic by publishing an article that everyone in our industry has probably seen at least once in their feeds. If you haven’t read it, I’d recommend you do.
Is The New York Times telling the truth or is it just looking for some clicks? Honestly, both.
The headline has been crafted in order to shake advertisers’ minds – and make them click – but when you come to the article, it’s more advice about how the landscape is changing than the advertising industry’s funeral.
But that’s not the point.
This article made us think about people’s perceptions towards the advertising industry and how important it is not to ignore how society is changing faster than ever.
That’s nothing new, and that’s an important part of our daily work.
But we wanted to point out some principles that are at the core of our vision.
Since our birth we focused our attention in giving people something able to resonate thanks to its relevance, instead of punching them in the face with “brand centric” messages (AKA interruptions).
In the following slides, you’ll find our vision about what is not working anymore (and why) and about what is going to make successful brands even more outstanding in the future:
Summing up again, it’s not true that people hate advertising, they hate bad advertising.
But what is bad advertising then?
It’s the kind of advertising that interrupts people while they are consuming content they care about, it’s the kind of advertising that talks to people as a king talked to their servants, without empathy and with no interest about people behaviour and preferences.
As mentioned in the document, brands have new – and exciting – roles and opportunities in people’s lives.
It’s time to break the boundaries and to allow people to be part of our stories.
Thought Leadership
