November 19, 2014

Research Company Crashes Into Planet Earth


Here at the Ketel One Conference Center on the campus of The Ad Contrarian Worldwide Headquarters, there's nothing we like better than a good chuckle at the comic antics of the  research industry.

These buffoons are wrong so often that we've asked our stock broker if he can find a way for us to short their press releases.

Now Forrester Research, the geniuses who ten years ago declared "the end of mass marketing" (but apparently forgot to tell Apple and Amazon and Walmart and Nike and Toyota and... you get the idea) have discovered something that everyone with just a little grey left in their matter have known for years -- social media marketing is a cruel joke.

According to an article in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, "Brands Are Wasting Money on Facebook and Twitter, Forrester Says." Well, who'd-a-fuckin'-thunk-it?

You see, Forrester recently discovered that Facebook and Twitter have fuck-all to do with social media marketing (I admit it, I've been spending too much time in the U.K.) As we have been writing here since about forever, Facebook and Twitter have become the toxic breeding grounds for the seemingly unlimited propagation of display ads.

According to a Vice President and Senior Analyst at Forreester... 
Facebook “will become nothing but a repository for display ads”
Well I'll be darned. It seems like over a year and a half ago I wrote in these pages that..
(Facebook) has mutated into a channel for delivering traditional banner advertising.
And then back in January...
Facebook calls itself a social medium, but its advertising model is good old-fashioned paid advertising plastered all over the page. 
Now that an internationally expensive research company has stumbled upon the truth, I guess maybe the truth is double extra true.

The really remarkable thing about this report from Forrester is that they had to write it at all.

The fact that so many demented people in the marketing and advertising industry are still living in a dream world of "conversations" on Facebook and Twitter -- a dream world that was DOA years ago -- is a sad and disheartening commentary on how far our industry has wandered from reality, and how thoroughly it has been hijacked by an ever-expanding species of jabbering baboons.


Thanks to Atomic Tango for the link to this story.

9 comments:

Jim said...

I think this will be the end of it don't you? All done now. No come back from here. I think 'their' argument will now become one a kin to the God of the gaps.

Wiemer said...

Related to your post: http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/11/18/forrester-s-facebook-conclusion-wrong-their-argument-right

Annie Pettit said...

Conversations? When was the last time a brand had a conversation that wasn't truly just a click getter?

Cecil B. DeMille said...

This is the natural atrophy of a trend. Everyone piles on board and then falls off one by one. It's entertaining in a sad kind of way.

Jonathan Rodgers said...

There's a reckoning to come.


Next up - logjams of human dimness that'll be congregating on the streets outside digital agencies, wondering "what the fuck do we do now?"


One suggestion: learn to be a great creative, or be great in any discipline. Be insightful and original. Be accountable. It's not easy. In fact it's downright painful sometimes asking yourself to hit a high bar. But it's an honest living. And your clients will thank you for the honest results.

Patrick Scullin said...

Asswipery reaches new heights. What's the new shiny object marketers can chase?

royAB said...

BIg Data is making a good run...

royAB said...

Somehow I don't think we've even begun to reach 'peak social' yet - It's the 'comprehensible face of digital' and that's not going away soon...

LeShann said...

this article is absolutely spot on.