Last week I was honored to be asked by ITV to deliver their “Spotlight Lecture” at Advertising Week Europe, which was held in London.
It was a week-long conclave of ad, marketing and media people.
My talk was called “The Golden Age Of Bullshit” and was about the difference between the predictions of experts and the reality of the past 10 years.
The fellow introducing and interviewing me on stage is Mark Austin who is chief newscaster for ITV.
If you’re interested (or having trouble sleeping) you can find my talk here.
By the way, love this tweet...
16 comments:
That is an extraordinarily good talk and a joy to listen to. It really upset me. I've been trying to say many, many of these things for years - but sadly "What often was said but ne'er so well expressed" - well, by me,. anyhow.
Finally someone has the balls to say on a major conference platform what I've been droning on about to colleagues and clients for years, as the industry has become ever more drunk on social media kool-aid. Fantastic
Hmm I dunno, this song is kinda compelling...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itvvFfeLh84
Excellent speech, but somewhat still missing the mark on what to do with digital. You confuse social and engagement with digital, and assume guilt by association. The damage done by the gurus selling digital as the engagement medium is in fact impacting this perception. Yes, expecting relationship, engagement and connection is at best a gamble, at worse simply delusional. But this doesn't mean digital cannot help brands grow. Digital channels can offer great advertising placements. Take China, where I work, the power of online video pre-roll advertising is massive (some of the largest shows have almost as many viewers online as they do on TV). Tablet advertising is proving extremely powerful to reach a more affluent class. As for programmatic buying, as scary as it might sound, this is still the most scientific, opinion free way to practice targeting (look alike targeting is delivering way above average results for example). Interruption marketing can work on digital; Beware of throwing the baby with the bathwater when it comes to digital, only looking at it as a participation channel is becoming prey to the nonsense you describe.
The fight is the science of interruption vs the cult of participation. Not traditional vs digital media.
"the science of interruption vs the cult of participation"...quite an ironic comment on a talk about BS. I'm calling it.
Ha! Fair point - what I am (clumsily) trying to say is that we have plenty of evidence of the impact of advertising as an unprompted exposure (what has been referred to as "interruption" over the last few years). There is science and data that backs up the "old" ways of advertising, and they still apply. Not only does it work cognitively, it also scales and reaches.
On the other hand, we have plenty of advocates of "participation" marketing, deciding that consumers are now fully in power and that all we need is their permission and engagement - with very little evidence it actually works to grow brands.
Not sure I've bettered my case...
Brilliant. Looking forward to the new book.
This is the only proof needed to show how wrong you are about social media's efficency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itvvFfeLh84 :)
This talk was genius.
Totally spot on.
We've far far far too many young people spouting crap in this industry, it's so wonderful to get a rare glimpse of wisdom.
For every 26 year old on a platform at SXSW with 13,000 followers proclaiming the normal nonsense about content marketing or social or the flavor du jour, please let's play this 10 times.
We need more material like this, and more people like this and more thinking like this.
A great review by Adrants.com http://www.adrants.com/2014/04/bob-hoffman-says-marketers-are-drowning.php#more
Absolutely incredible. I'm listening as a mantra. Over and over.
Oh, yeah. I saw it on TV the other night. Had no idea what it was for, turned down the sound and went back to the crossword. Just didn't "engage me in a conversation about their brand."
Maybe they should bring back "Cop Rock".
Yikes! They tailor-made this campaign for you to skewer. Isn't it nice to know you’ll never run out of material for this blog?
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict Type A will be remembered long after Type E has been fumigated and buried.
Bob, nice talk. Thanks for reminding me to dust off my bullshit meter.
I really enjoyed the talk, thanks Bob!
Everyone clearly needs to get social, with social media: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itvvFfeLh84
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