Robert Liodice, president and chief executive of the National Assn. of Advertisers, took the podium before a banquet hall of marketing execs recently to tell them what they already knew: Advertising is dead.
"Consumers don't want to be marketed to like some robotic object," he said, as if debunking conventional wisdom. "Rather, they want to be involved, engaged and, in fact, entertained."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday August 24, 2004 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 38 words Type of Material: Correction
Advertising group -- A Sunday Calendar story on the growing presence of advertising throughout U.S. culture identified Robert Liodice as president and chief executive of the National Assn. of Advertisers. The group is the Assn. of National Advertisers.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday August 29, 2004 Home Edition Sunday Calendar Part E Page 2 Calendar Desk 1 inches; 38 words Type of Material: Correction
Advertising group -- An article last Sunday on the growing presence of advertising throughout U.S. culture identified Robert Liodice as president and chief executive of the National Assn. of Advertisers. He is with the Assn. of National Advertisers.
In order to breach a consumer's "initial headset barrier" against advertising, he said, the sales pitch must be "embedded" in something more palatable, such as a TV show, a sporting event, a video game. It must woo with charm and empathy. Liodice laid out the strategy: "First, capture the consumer's attention in human, intriguing and emotional ways. Then, embrace the consumer. Get him or her to feel comfortable with you. Finally, make the sale without really selling. Let the consumer know, hey, we're always there when they need us."
In fact, advertising is more deeply embedded in our culture than ever before. Almost nothing is excluded from branding -- not our cities, our museums, our schools. Even our private lives are being co-opted by corporations desperate to reframe their images as "authentic."
"Stealth" strategies are essential to disarm our cynicism, advertisers say. So teenagers are hired to study trends among their peers and develop ways to reach them -- known as "peer-to-peer" or "viral" marketing. Actors are hired to shill product while posing as consumers in Internet chat rooms or on city streets -- in the name of creating "organic" brand awareness. Logos and slogans are "seamlessly" integrated into the story lines of films, video games, even textbooks.
Consumer activists call this "ad creep" and predict an Orwellian corporate takeover of society. But advertisers herald this movement as the future. Soon, they say, advertising will so effectively impersonate the ideas we use to define ourselves that we won't even consider it selling.
"Advertising," says Jeff Hicks of the Crispin Porter + Bogusky agency, "will disappear."
And, consequently, virtually no experience will be commercial-free.
The future is now
Already, the line is blurred. There were the "street musicians" in San Francisco's Embarcadero BART station substituting AT&T Wireless pitches for Beatles lyrics. And the "spoken-word poets" performing along with a Nissan commercial in a Santa Monica movie theater. And the "tourists" in Manhattan and Seattle asking passersby to photograph them with their new Sony Ericsson camera phones.
