The summer is unofficially over, but before it gets too far away, let's do some warm-weather, laying-out-under-a-tree, stream of semi-consciousness...
Social Media's Unintended Effect
Those with open minds and clear heads should by now have learned something very important about marketing from social media. We should have learned how weak consumers' attachments are to most brands.
The idea that people would go on line in large numbers and have "conversations" about toothpaste and toasters and cereal and soap and cheese and shampoo and tomato sauce and tuna and tea and tires and... has proven to be a fantasy. Those who still promulgate this baloney are guilty of more than just naivete.
People with a vested interest in social media will continue to misrepresent its power and effectiveness. It's time for the rest of the ad industry to come clean.
Great New Blog...
...by my partner in the Type A Group, Sharon Krinsky, called The Angry Boomer.
Sharon is funny and bawdy and you don't have to be a baby boomer to enjoy her blog. You just have to be angry.
Her first post is called At Least We Know Where Our Vaginas Are. Yeah, it's that kind of blog.
People Don't Like Online Shopping
One of the facts that always surprises me is that only 6% of retail activity is done on line. Contrary to all the predictions of "experts," according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, 94% of retail activity still happens in brick-and-mortar stores.
As regular readers know, I have no use for self-reported surveys masquerading as research. Every now and then, however, self-reported behavior almost agrees with actual behavior. Such was the case recently in a study reported in Forbes. The finding was this:
“Ninety percent of shoppers surveyed would prefer to buy in a brick-and-mortar store across demographic and age groups”Like we say here at The Ad Contrarian Worldwide Headquarters (way too often), marketers always underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior.
