Being direct... AdVantage Mar 2004
Is a medium's audience only a means to an end ...
or should they too have 'rights'?
Should the consumers of a medium have any say in that medium's advertising content, or is it just a case of shut up and respond to the ads?
When I look back on my 30-odd years in advertising and try to highlight a single primary difference between the role of advertising during the late 60's, 70's and early 80's and the advertising of 'now', then I would say that it has to be that 'the market' was far more 'reliant' on the mass media (radio, newspapers and magazines, and eventually TV) for all manner of information - at that time.
Wrapped in this reliance was the almost guaranteed opportunity to see/hear/be exposed to - advertising messages, sometimes to the audience's great benefit. A great example of this was in the late 70's when 12x30sec TV commercials was often the maximum annual allocation by the single SABC TV channel, but each commercial could reach an extremely high percentage (around 80%) of the economically active white coloured and asian population of the country (according to AMPS). Stories of a single commercial exposure resulting in goods literally 'walking' out of stores were legendary.
Today of course, we have much greater and far more varied sources of 'information' via a whole plethora of other channels - including a number of alternative electronic means. Whilst many of these electronic channels also wrap ad-messages around their content (or spring ads on you when you least expect them), I believe that it is still the question of the degree audience 'dependency' on the channel for its information or entertainment content - that drives whether any advertising may be viewed as beneficial to that audience, or simply a source of aggravation.
M-Net recently screened Spielberg's futuristic 'Minority Report' starring Tom Cruise, and in a world 50-odd years hence the intrusiveness of advertising is parodied as extreme in this movie - retinal scanners immediately 'ID-ing' an individual walking past a bill-board, and the ad-message is then 'personalised' to address that individual, going so far as to even refer to the individual's last purchase occasion. The idea that anyone would actually require/need that particular message right at that moment - is conveniently ignored, and the level of intrusiveness accepted as 'normal', in the context of the movie. Sadly, this example reflects how many have come to view advertising's overall role in their lives.
Quite frankly, I would really hate to live in a world that 'assaults' me with marketing messages any time it chooses, merely because it can. This form of intrusiveness has already crept into other information/entertainment sources that are on our menu of choice. I find myself torn between the 'right' of marketers to promote their wares, and the 'right' of the consuming public to at least have some peace and quiet.
When I was planning media years ago, I was taught that people actually 'consume' media in the same way that they consume anything else (a conscious decision is taken to listen/read/watch), and there is an acceptance on the part of most people that advertising is an integral part of any media product that they are 'consuming'. But when ads are foisted on an unsuspecting public as a form of guerrilla tactic, that is something else altogether.
Perhaps the only real answer to this dilemma can be found in that most vexing and often illusive of all human relationship-drivers: mutual respect. As long as advertisers (or indeed the consumers) see their rights as 'absolute' and do not respect each other's rights, then maybe the politicians will inevitably edge us towards some form of legalised protection of 'the right of the individual' against intrusive advertising - akin to that already being considered in some parts of the world, against e-mail and SMS spam.
It's on the subject of intrusive communication that I have long had something of a bone to pick with DSTV/Mnet, as another example. As I pointed out before, most members of the viewing (not to mention the paying) public - clearly understand the role of advertising in the media that they consume. What we don't fully understand is why, in the absence of paying advertisers on a particular channel, these paying subscribers have no choice but to watch a seemingly endless parade of programme/subscription/promotional material that has become so aggravating and repetitive, as to make one want to literally smash the TV every time that they come on - yet again!
We can all understand the fact that the clock has sixty seconds; sixty minutes; 24 hours etc etc, and that programme producers allow time for commercial content when they manufacture TV programmes - so gaps are the inevitable result of programme scheduling.
But why do the powers that be automatically assume that they have the 'right' to use these 'gaps', (when devoid of local advertising) to bombard their paying audience with this constant and endless stream of self-promotion? If one adds the inclination to use the top and bottom of the hour as schedule timing guides, then there are times when virtually every channel is running self-promos at the same time, and even channel-hopping can't provide something worthwhile to watch.
I guess that we paying viewers can always execute either one of our two ultimate 'stop consuming' options after all: switch off, or maybe even do the unthinkable ... unsubscribe!