Thursday, November 19, 2009

Ad Saturated Society

Problem:

Our society is now saturated with ads. It is hard to go anywhere without seeing at least 10 ads. While walking to class on campus I pass people handing out fliers, booths for clubs, graffiti ads, posters, banners flown from planes, sidewalk chalk messages, and many more ads. I recently opened a Facebook page & there were 3 popups, 3 ads in the side bar and another at the top of the page! Youtube has ads above the description boxes and multiple ads at the bottom of the videos. I even have the option to advertise on this blog! We see so many ads we have become numb to them.


Solution?

At some point this will have to stop. I really liked Wikipedia’s move to ad-free forever. Relying on charity is a great way to keep customers happy but also keep the business going (link here-> http://bit.ly/2jpHBp ). I also recently came across guerilla marketing, where advertisers place ads in creative, unexpected places. I think this will narrow down ads to only the most creative (guerilla markering -> http://bit.ly/446JSE ). I also liked Sprite’s ad campaign where they threw a party back in 2006 (short article here-> http://bit.ly/1nhzND ) This is a great way to get people interested in a product, and imbed the product into a culture group. The downside is that a party can be expensive, especially if you want celebrities there.


I don’t know how advertising will be fixed, but it needs to be. I think Internet companies need to acknowledge that there are other alternatives to advertising (charity, gathering information about what is popular) and companies need to be more creative with their advertising campaigns.

2 comments:

  1. I'm a big fan of guerilla marketing and definitely want to get involved with some of the more out there campaigns when I'm in advertising. Other than the really creative stuff, it's all about advertising when you have been given permission to, like social networking. Building a relationship with your consumers instead of throwing meaningless ads in their face.

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  2. yes. exactly! build a relationship.

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