The Doc Searls : Adage

The Doc Searls Weblog : Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Quote :
Senior moment
I've got an AdAge newsletter here with the title, IS THE AD INDUSTRY HEADED FOR CHAOS? It reads,
BACKGROUND: In an epic 5,500-word front-page article in the April 4 print edition of Advertising Age, columnist Bob Garfield laid out a sweeping vision of an advertising industry caroming toward chaos and disruption wrought by the digital media revolution. Boiled down, his theory goes something like this: The marketing industry is currently whistling past the graveyard and largely ignoring signs of massive, fundamental changes in how the business of mass marketing will be conducted in the near future. The broadcast TV model is working less well each year and will eventually cave in on itself as it reaches ever-fewer viewers with a fare of low-quality programming and mind-numbing clutter. Marketers will increasingly abandon it. But despite their glitzy promise, the aggregate of new digital technologies -- from Web sites and e-mail to cell phone content and video on demand -- lack the infrastructure or scale to support the minimum amount of mainstream marketing required to smoothly sustain the U.S. economy. The result, as the old systems are abandoned and the insufficient new systems struggle to carry an impossible advertising load, is what Garfield calls "The Chaos Scenario" -- a period of serious disruption moving like a tsunami through the marketing business as well as the economy and the broader society itself.
No link, though. And searches on the site for chaos, chaos theory and Bob Garfield all yield no useful results.
Still, who knew mainstream marketing was required to "smoothly sustain the U.S. economy"?

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Oh my my, without a "smoothly functioning" advertising industry to feed the message to the masses, we'll head back to the dark ages.

What a crock!

TiVo is a threat to the economy, depression ahead !
We need to get consumer butts back on the couch and mindlessly watch what is fed to them.