Recently I couldn’t help but notice a couple of adverts that got me thinking about the role of advertising. If brands are now defined by the conversation happening around them (which I believe is the case) then what is the role of brand advertising?
The first thing that got me thinking along these lines was reading an article in The New York Times Magazine about NAKEDPizza, a pizza company that is producing healthy pizza’s. (It sounds an oxymoron but according to Yelp reviewers maybe there is something in it). Earlier this year, the company took out a billboard to advertise its Twitter handle @NAKEDpizzza.
The second thing that caught my eye was a two page advert in The New York Times main section from Target. It was a two page ad (insert ad as the image) which went as follows:
You Asked For More. Here Goes.
On May 31st, we published an invitation in this newspaper: “tell us what more we can do for you”.
627 of you e-mailed and we responded to each of you with a personal reply. It only makes sense that we share some of the good suggestions here.
Thanks for helping us bring you more for less every day. If you have any more suggestions, visit us at target.com/contactus.
(Incidentally it is very hard to know how to make a suggestion to Target when you go to this rather bewildering contact page. Oh the irony.)
In both of these cases, the role of the billboard ad and the news paper ad was to elicit an interaction with the customer. In the case of Target, does 627 interactions count as success I wonder or is it more a statement that they are being open and transparent?
Both of these examples got me thinking about some of the brands that have done a fantastic job of engaging with their customers through interactive channels such as Zappos and Comcast and wondered if they would ever buy media space to specifically say ‘come interact with me’? I don’t know, but I am not sure they would. However, if brands today are largely defined by the conversation that people are having about them, does it follow that brands that successfully engage in a dialogue through interactive channels no longer need to do brand advertising?
(@NAKEDPizza Photo Courtesy of TechCrunch)
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