Advertising is dead! Long live advertising!

By Eleanor Haas

As everybody knows, paid media advertising is declining in effectiveness. Why? Because audiences have too many options. They have more and more media to choose among. They are deluged with messages – to the point of information overload. They have found ways to skip TV ads.  And they are captivated by new kinds of media, such as You Tube and Facebook.

Three technology-enabled alternatives to the status quo were discussed this morning by a panel sponsored by the law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz. The focus was on who owns creative content and how these ideas are paid for. What the new accepted practices will be will have to evolve over time. But clearly, advertising is undergoing a metamorphosis.

The challenge is what it has always been: how to come up with a compelling creative concept that will make the cash register ring for a product. Technology has added a new twist. Aren’t ads simply a form of content? Can’t they be interactive games or songs? How does user-generated content figure in this as opposed to ads created by professionals?

But once ads become content, the creative brains behind them take on an importance greater than that of a hired hand, something comparable to that of a star screen writer or songwriter. That’s when you get into serious questions of intellectual property ownership and compensation.

One new direction comes from OpenAd.net, which calls itself “the world's first online marketplace for buying and selling advertising, marketing and design ideas.” OpenAd wants to democratize the ad businesses by enabling students, professional free-lancers and ad agencies to compete side by side. In addition, it wants to give creatives a chance to benefit financially from really great ideas that work.

Creatives all over the world who have registered with OpenAd create ads in response to briefs from ad agencies or advertisers. Buyers who have enrolled as OpenAd members get access to diverse creative approaches and can license these ideas as they use them. Creatives are compensated proportionate to the value the buyer perceives in their ideas - as expressed in frequency of use - as opposed to the traditional one-time fee based on time and materials.

Grey Worldwide has been pioneering another new direction for at least five years: creating ad content as branded entertainment. It’s also helping brands get ownership of songs they use as well as using songs as key branding tools. The agency becomes the brand’s A&R consultant, proposing artists and songs as well as their interaction with the brand. In one ad, for example, Rihanna plugs both her own album and Cover Girl products in a format reminiscent of MTV. In another the Black Eyed Peas chant hip hop lyrics owned by Dr. Pepper to promote sales of Dr. Pepper soft drinks.

GO Film, a production company, collaborated with McCann Erickson to produce two music videos by Christopher Guest that pitch Intel processors through original songs that incorporate technical terms specified by Intel. The videos, which were posted on various techie and non-techie Web sites, are designed to deliver pure entertainment value as a basis for an enhanced brand image. One video tells a story about a soft-rock singer – representing Intel software – and a hard-rock singer – representing Intel hardware – and the pleasure they bring their audience of office workers.

Advertising is still a message controlled by a sponsor who is identified and who pays for distribution. But the nature of the message is taking on radical new dimensions, dimensions that at times seem to erase the line between entertainment and advertising.  The times they are a'changing!