The Secret to the Advertising Revolution

by Colin MacIntyre in DONOVAN WORLD

27

Jan
2012

FILED UNDER

Fred Flinstone is the most evil man in advertising! Crayola is the most evil company in the world! The Old Spice Guy is one of the worst advertising campaigns of all time!

It doesn’t take long for Jeff Rosenblum to grab your attention, and he certainly had the crowd at Thursday’s ACE presentation of ‘The Naked Brand – A Lunch with Jeff Rosenblum’ tuned into his message. Rosenblum, who is co-founder and co-president of Questus, an award-winning advertising agency based out of New York, gave a rousing talk about how advertising is not only due for a revolution, but needs one. Jeff spoke about his career, his experiences and also presented clips from his documentary, The Naked Brand.

The Naked Brand presents advertisers with a problem: Consumers are so bombarded with advertising that the traditional methods are no longer working. People don’t believe the lofty claims made by ads, and are also less trusting of corporations than ever before. In addition, consumers are so bombarded by advertising that an overwhelming majority of ads are completely ignored.

Rosenblum says that 85% of TV ads are completely ignored, and only 1 out of 1000 banner ads gets clicked.

Jeff’s answer? Transparency.

His argument is that brands need to spend less money pretending to be great, and more time actually being great. That means less spending on advertising, and more on customer service, R&D and their own internal culture. Advertising can then become less about telling stories about how great a brand is.  Jeff points to examples which include outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia, who told Black Friday shoppers to “Not buy this jacket,” and shoe retailer Zappos, who promotes their customer service even more than their shoes. Both companies have seen an increase in revenue because of this focus on transparency.

The documentary The Naked Brand opens this spring, with 100% of profits going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Follow Jeff Rosenblum on Twitter @JRQuestus.

Colin MacIntyre is an Account Executive at DONOVAN. Comments on this post or suggestions for future topics are welcome.