CharlieMoger.com

No rules. No formulae. No best practices. It’s a new world and no one has a clue.

That’s the take Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts puts forth in a presentation made in his keynote address to Ad:Tech. He sees us living in an age of screens where SIght, SOund and MOtion (SISOMO) have converged to create a new advertising landscape; “good stories well told, emotion, humor and music–in other words, sisomo.” (See an excerpt of his presentation here.)

While he packages it nicely, what Roberts sees as new are timeless principles in a shiny new wrapper. Calling for making emotional connection in advertising is about as edgy as me telling my 3 year-old to “use your words.” (instead of sounds and pointing)

He makes an important: we’ve moved from permission marketing to attraction marketing. ASKING consumers to please give us their time (permission marketing) is a quaint notion rooted in an era when we HAD time to give. In the compressed age we’re living in, ATTRACTING consumer attention means giving them a more appealing idea capable of preempting the one they have now.

Here’s a hint: the idea they’ll find more appealing is not about you.

“Advertising was once a simple mass-market media buy; now it is a dialogue between a seller of soup, sneakers or cellphones and a particular media outlet’s narrow audience. That media outlet is just as likely to be a computer screen or a mobile device as a television set, media buyers say. As a result, advertisers are starting to treat TV more and more as just one conversation among many.”
—Brian Steinberg, Wall Street Journal

Like sales, advertising is a conversation between two people. Effective advertising doesn’t speak to anyone, it speaks to every ONE it reaches. When you stop advertising and start conversing about what matters to customers, you will have begun serving a tasty meal that sticks to consumers’ minds.