Advertising is dead, long live advertising!

The changing landscape

Crushed cars on street corners to advertise a movie; students getting paid to tattoo a certain brand logo on their body; nude girls walking in streets to advertise a cloth brand. Should we think that the advertising industry has gone mad?

What is behind these changes in the advertising landscape? What makes advertising agencies and brands turn to these forms of guerrilla marketing and stunts?

Well, the reason can be traced back to some huge changes that have taken place in the mid-1990s. The arrival of televisions, on one hand, has changed the way we look at commercials and the way we react to them. On the other hand have technologies as the Web and instant messaging that changed our relationship with media from a passive to an active form.

Advertisers can’t rely on the way customers behaved before. We are harder to pin down, are more demanding and in a way, less predictable. Because these changes professionals have been looking for new ways of communication to respond to our new behaviour. These new forms of communication are more noticeable and are inviting the public to be more actively involved.

This being said, we can say the advertising industry hasn’t gone mad, but acting in this little crazy way is now the best thing to do. 

Exploring new ways

How long have you been stuck in a situation before you decided to change plans? How long have you sit in a traffic jam before you decided to look for an alternative route? Maybe we all hope the situation magically solves itself?

As time passes and we move slowly, these thoughts flash through our brain. But most of us stay put, waiting the situation out. Thinking the problem will resolve itself anyway.

In exactly the same way, traditional advertising channels like tv, radio, magazines and newspapers are blocked because too many advertisers are using the same channels in the same way, which result in people ignoring most of them.

Yet, alternative routes are available. The only problem is, only a few brands are truly aware of how to get away from these traditional channels and plunge into this new territory. As long as brands take different alternative routes, they can make use of unique and exclusive ways to get to their destination.

New forms of communication

Communication these days needs to have more in common with the experimentation of fusion cuisine and less with the predictability of pre-packed ready meals.

The best cure for predictability is to renounce routine practice. Not to stay between the lines, but to go wild again. Not to go where people expect, but where they don’t. Not to use media that is constantly being used, but to find the ones that have never been considered.

These new ways of advertising have unleashed a new spectrum of possibilities that we all should embrace. In short, there is born a new way of creative advertising, breathing new life into a sector desperately in need of it.

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