Thursday, March 25, 2004
Glad Someone Else Thinks So
Jupiter Research, one of the first of the Internet consulting firms, has all of its analysts write blogs. It's a great idea because one can follow the thinking of the researchers as they examine their fields. I spotted the following entry for March 26 and was amused. The analyst is saying what I have written for some time -- that marketers are prisoners of habits and cannot break from TV, even though it is no longer a good buy. Here is what Niki Scevak wrote:
A post by fellow Jup blogger David Card got me thinking more about advertising's supposed axiom: the dollars follow the consumer. The reality, as we know, is they don't. Measurement has a little bit to do with it (it doesn't matter if the Internet has a great measurement system if TV et al don't have similarly great systems). But ultimately the responsibility rests with the marketers and the agencies they employ. With history as a guide, they have done an increasingly terrible job. IT managers never get fired for buying IBM, and ad agencies never get fired for recommending TV. People shrug their shoulders and say it will be different in 20 years, but I am not so sure.
This is what I have criticized in PR since the advent of the personal computer in the 1980s. Our field has lagged time and again. We failed miserably with the Web and gave that medium away to others because we like what we do and the way we do it.
Yes, we are networked now and we do things differently than when I entered the field. But we found the future after it was past. I'm not saying PR should chase every new thing offered in media and technology, but we should examine technologies and media like blogs systematically. We should experiment with them to see how they can serve us and our clients.
Sadly, except for a few early adopters, I have never found that to be the case.
A post by fellow Jup blogger David Card got me thinking more about advertising's supposed axiom: the dollars follow the consumer. The reality, as we know, is they don't. Measurement has a little bit to do with it (it doesn't matter if the Internet has a great measurement system if TV et al don't have similarly great systems). But ultimately the responsibility rests with the marketers and the agencies they employ. With history as a guide, they have done an increasingly terrible job. IT managers never get fired for buying IBM, and ad agencies never get fired for recommending TV. People shrug their shoulders and say it will be different in 20 years, but I am not so sure.
This is what I have criticized in PR since the advent of the personal computer in the 1980s. Our field has lagged time and again. We failed miserably with the Web and gave that medium away to others because we like what we do and the way we do it.
Yes, we are networked now and we do things differently than when I entered the field. But we found the future after it was past. I'm not saying PR should chase every new thing offered in media and technology, but we should examine technologies and media like blogs systematically. We should experiment with them to see how they can serve us and our clients.
Sadly, except for a few early adopters, I have never found that to be the case.
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