Why are advertising social networks so dysfunctional?
1. Why do the vast majority of the people in these networks end up as lurkers? Most of the people in our network do not actively or consistently participate.
2. Why don’t these networks attract more people from our business? Social networks attract just a minuscule fraction of the entire population of the people working in our industry.
3. Why do only a few people out of the total population have anything to say? We are in the communication business, why don’t we know how to communicate with each other?
4. Why do only a few people out of the total population actively post or comment on other people’s posts or profiles? There are thousands of members, but only a few posts with a few comments.
5. Why do only a few people out of the total population make friends or network in a social network of their peers?
6. Why do only a few people out of the total population stay, while most just stop by for a while, then move on, or rarely check in from time to time?
7. Real life operates one way, and virtual life operates another, why is that? For example, in real life when you say hi to someone, or welcome someone, or make the first move to speak with someone, they will usually respond to you. Not true here. People will often avoid contact in a social network after they have been approached. So why do they come to a social network in the first place?
8. Are most of the people in our business really that boring, or have nothing to say?
9. Are most of the people in our business really that shy or rude?
10. Are most of the people in our business really that unfriendly towards each other, envious of each other, intimidated by each other, not care about each other, or are afraid of each other?
11. Are most of the people in our business really that fucked up?
(Help me out here folks, please. I can’t figure this out??????????)
2. Why don’t these networks attract more people from our business? Social networks attract just a minuscule fraction of the entire population of the people working in our industry.
3. Why do only a few people out of the total population have anything to say? We are in the communication business, why don’t we know how to communicate with each other?
4. Why do only a few people out of the total population actively post or comment on other people’s posts or profiles? There are thousands of members, but only a few posts with a few comments.
5. Why do only a few people out of the total population make friends or network in a social network of their peers?
6. Why do only a few people out of the total population stay, while most just stop by for a while, then move on, or rarely check in from time to time?
7. Real life operates one way, and virtual life operates another, why is that? For example, in real life when you say hi to someone, or welcome someone, or make the first move to speak with someone, they will usually respond to you. Not true here. People will often avoid contact in a social network after they have been approached. So why do they come to a social network in the first place?
8. Are most of the people in our business really that boring, or have nothing to say?
9. Are most of the people in our business really that shy or rude?
10. Are most of the people in our business really that unfriendly towards each other, envious of each other, intimidated by each other, not care about each other, or are afraid of each other?
11. Are most of the people in our business really that fucked up?
(Help me out here folks, please. I can’t figure this out??????????)
Tags: adgabber, advertising, dysfunctional-social-networks
Views: 12
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Cris Allen on -
The ad industry got rich off of exploiting our dysfunctions and insecurities about our dysfunctions. Maybe it's time to turn it around and instead of selling by fear, selling by empowerment. Associate your product with acceptance.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Ashby on -
What is lacking in the advertising world of to-day?
Mainly we appear to lack ideas, strong ideas, competing ideas, confident philosophies, angry dissent. Advertising people used to have ideas & policies & they jostled to present their ideas.
But what is alarming is the impassivity of our advertising people & the idleness of advertising debate, as we wait. There is a sense of vacuum.
Where to-day is the bold advocacy, the impatience to persuade, the urgency of argument? Where are the shouts of “here’s how!”? Where are the leading actors, the big voices, the great thoughts?
Headlines about “Twitter”, the Internet, “Facebook” et al , are these now the only images we have of a once great advertising industry?
But perhaps the problem is simpler but just as scary, in a headline “ Lack of experience affects business” the Institute of Advertising had this to say, “The nature of the business is such that in order to be cost efficient process gets dumbed down and farmed out to more junior people. There is a tendency to commodity and that can lead to work being de-skilled”.
So there you have it technology and a dumbing down are affecting all aspect of advertising…it is time to change or else advertising will become like the Zimbabwe bird flying around in ever decreasing circles until ir disappears up its own orifice!
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Permalink Reply by Buddy 'Friendly' Wachenheimer on
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I agree with you Paul. But I see your words bounce against the people that are here and fall to the ground unheard and unappreciated. Few understand. Fewer care.
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Permalink Reply by TJ on -
Why are advertising social networks so dysfunctional?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? *strumming fingers rhythmically on desk*
Maybe it's because of the insincere fucks that frequent them?
CRAP...was that out loud?
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...Isn't (F)ucks capitalized?
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Not enough people take advantage of the fact that good people make bad people look worse.
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Permalink Reply by J.S. Gilbert on -
As clifford Stohl said a couple of years prior to the original dot com bust "The one thing that is so funadmanetally important in all of these businesses is missing, wisdom".
There were great traditions of people working for agencies, innovating and then eventually striking out on their own. How many great shops came from BBDO and then from Riney or from Goodby Silverstein? But ,as with other endeavors, many people are willing to hang up a shingle without much of an idea as to what they are doing. Medicority seemsto be the pinnacle to which so many ascribe.
We would believe that this is something unique to advertising, but it's prevelant in so many occupations across so many industries. Guys who might have barely qualified as a day laborer 20 years ago are now out there posing as contractors. Supermarket butchers who don't know how to break down a side of beef are commonplace. City Landscapers? How tough is it to make a dog park that can drain properly? Look at so many of todays writers who not only know nothing about crafting a good story, but don't even understand simple sentence structure.
In the past business tended to foster the overacheivere. Now the tendency is to simply say "it's not my job" and with good reason since there is rarely reward but often punitive action.
We must struggle for excellence with often no motivation to do so. And indeed the vacuum tends not to help. But we shouldn't for one second think this somethig limited to the advertising community.
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I have decided to go hybrid. Electric on weekends and gasoline on weekdays. It might help me to be a little more sustainable. And, I am hoping that by squinting I will see less of the crap around me.
This I know for sure, GOOD needs to get its shit together to try and kick BAD's ass
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Permalink Reply by Paul Ashby on
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Enough of frivolous discussion and trivia. We need broader skills and experience to deepen the quality of advertising – right now!
Perhaps this Adgabber discussion will trigger a much wider debate about Advertising & Marketing.
Without a doubt we are all looking for ideas with some of us searching for a formula that might just give the advertising industry a much needed fillip and a wider definition, perhaps then this is as good a moment for us all to put in our thoughts.
Why should we be doing this? Well the old institution, certainly here in the UK, like the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising have already turned into the famed Zimbabwe bird and flown up its own orifice!
Here our key spokesperson for the ad industry is Accountant turned Adman Sir Martin Sorrell...’nuff said?
He makes his decisions on the state of the Ad Industry based solely upon the bottom line. He also has been recently quoted as saying that he wants to move away from an over reliance on the advertising industry...these are words that, without a doubt, encourage very positive thoughts about advertising.
This has been poisonous for the quality of decisions – without a doubt the Saatchi brothers caused more damage to the advertising industry than we care to mention. Then there is the fact that there are simply too many advertising people (well people who call themselves advertising people), the separation of Media Buying and Advertising Agencies has set up conflicts between the two functions where Media Buyers are now seeking advertising ideas to supplement their boring existence.
As we all know the present system of advertising is just not working...through no fault of advertising, the current excitement over the Internet, Social Media, Twitter and all the other distractions. Together with the craven surrender to new media by the management of old media is causing almost irreversible long-term damage to the dear old ad game.
Because of financial dictates there has been an exodus of the very people who have the most to give back to the industry together with a preoccupation with youth. Why the very IPA admitted that within the total number of advertising staff there are now too few with experience of advertising and the selling of products.
Perhaps we should be prepared to make more adventurous experiments in accountability. We ourselves have recently developed and are in the process of instituting a “Payment by Results” program where Clients would have free advertising until we came back to them with the research results and then they would pay an agreed fee based upon a mutually agreed formula.
Surely we must agree that the time is ripe for reform. Such reform must extend beyond the over reliance on the 30-second TV commercial! It must, among other things, center on ensuring that the quality of understanding of advertising improves and that it is held to account more effectively than in recent years!
Those of us who have been privileged to work in the heyday of advertising have a duty to breathe new life back into industry. Such a debate is vital to secure it future!
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How can I be of serv-us, Paul?
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Permalink Reply by Paul Ashby on
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Holy shit Buddy...there you go responding with an offer. But let's get one thing straight I don't think that you should be a mere contributor to this subject I feel strongly that you should be the Head Spokesperson! And leader of the pack so to speak!
Why?
Well read the section below highlighted...I firmly believe that America has to lead us into the promised land!
Task No 1 for Business: Reinvent Marketing & Advertising.
Hopefully lessons will been learnt from the crisis, and one of them has to be :do not try to rebuild business on the principle that Marketing & Advertising are always right”!
To have any hope of repairing the damage left behind by the highly dishonest and incompetent banks, big business must first convince the majority of the population that they are really capable of fixing the problems.. Not only are we trapped in the worst recession in living memory. But behind all this lurks a horror even more shocking; the entire marketing/advertising-economic model of free enterprise, rugged individualism, creative advertising and marketing is broken beyond all hope of repair.
Marketing/Advertising on which the Western world built its seeming success seems to have completely broken down. How else can one describe a situation in which all of the country's main financial institutions and many of its biggest industrial companies are effectively bankrupt and on government life-support?
The crisis triggered by September's Credit Crisis appears to have discredited many of the assumptions on which our prosperity and democracy was founded. In this sense, it really is possible to compare the credit crunch, as Ed Miliband did recently, to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1989 the world, from China and Russia to South Africa, India and Brazil, concluded that there was no serious alternative to market forces as a means of organising productive activity. In 2009 the whole world seems to have reached the opposite conclusion — that free markets and financial incentives together with marketing & advertising, lead even the richest and most sophisticated societies to disaster.
There is, however, a crucial difference between these pivotal years and this brings us to the positive side of our message. Communism was a monolithic and inflexible system that worked against the grain of human nature and had to be brutally imposed. Capitalism, by contrast, is a constantly evolving and organic set of human relationships. It advances by trial and error and takes myriad different forms. Thus the demise of the post-world war 2 fundamentalist faith in market forces as the solution to all social problems now offers us all the chance to preside over a new evolution of capitalism, including Marketing & Advertising. making Advertising & Marketing into a more stable and ultimately more successful form of business. Creating this new kind of marketing & advertising will be the most important challenge to us all.
But two features of this evolutionary process can already be suggested. First, it is clear that America will continue to lead the world in marketing & advertising, but also as a model of economic management .
Second, we must encourage much more pragmatic thinking around the world about when Advertising & Marketing are useful and when they are useless, about the right balance between the profit motive and social objectives, and about the relative efficiency of private and public enterprises. The question we ask today is not whether Marketing & Advertising is too big or too small, but whether it works.
The most important asset that we need today and in the future is not just money but a way of thinking, specifically that businesses biggest problems have to be addressed in a businesslike way in the sense of a serious focus on results. There is no advertising accountability at the moment; understanding which advertising has had the most impact; a determination quickly to scale up solutions that work and toughness in shutting advertising down that does-not work.
Undoubtedly the crisis could well be the cause of an idea whose time has come, for the new model of Marketing & Advertising that we must now invent. More generally, financial regulation and macroeconomic management will surely now recognise that naive theories about "efficient" advertising/ marketing and the highly dubious claim they spawned "advertising works" were a major cause of the entire financial disaster. It will still be capitalism, but Marketing/Advertising will not try to rebuild business on the principle that "marketing and advertising are always right".
Then be good enough to visit my blogsite: http://interactivetelevisionorinteractivetv.blogspot.com and then let me know what you think...OK?
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I think that if today were 20 years from now, nobody would look back at the advertising business 20 years back in the same way we look at how the business was 20 years ago. Hmmmm.
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