Do Something.

Last week I saw this meme flying around social media land
from a few people.

And it bloody excites me! So much of advertising is not built on true relational principles of listening, value adding and permission. But perhaps a little ironically this meme flying around Facebook without any kind of leadership or solution is nothing more that a disgruntlement engine.

We require those who sit near the artists that unsettle our apathy to take the baton from them, move forwards and DO something!

It seems Banksy (if he did actually write this) is bothered about our consciousness being cleverly invaded by commercially minded capitalists without our permission – Well what can we do about it?

I see 3 options.

Do Nothing
Spend energy protesting
Create an irresistible option

A lot of people choose Option 1 as it is easy and safe, I read the article below this morning which explains a bit more about that option!

https://medium.com/life-learning/7-reasons-why-you-will-never-do-anything-amazing-with-your-life-2a1841f1335d

Option 2 just doesn’t fill me with joy, excitement, adventure and pleasure, it feels hard and would fill my days with lots of negative energy

I prefer Option 3 the idea of spending my days trying and failing at option 3

So can we actually do anything about this messed up world of intrusive advertising?

YES – Absolutely!!!

Every year Mary Meeker puts out her awesome summary of Global Trends focusing on proliferation of the
internet and her latest version came out this week! If you get a spare hour check it out! http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends

The slide that captured my attention more than any other was the Advertising Attention Vs Spend Slide

Our conscious attention is our most precious commodity.

Because what we spend our attention on grows!

Everybody wants a piece of yours!

Marketing opportunities grow and decline where there is a mismatch in supply & demand of attention

In Mary’s slide we can see that we are spending 20% of our media time in our mobiles but currently businesses are only spending 4% of their marketing budget on mobile leaving a 16% and $30bn opportunity in the USA alone.

The print industry has lost our attention but the execs haven’t cottoned on yet, because they are older and like doing what they know and what they won’t get fired for. All the other verticals like TV, Radio and Internet are stable in their commercialisation

A big swing from Print to Mobile is inevitable over the next few years and presents us with an awesome opportunity to reimagine brand engagement with individuals.

I am not interested in challenging the paradigm shift to mobile itself but I am interested in trying to inject a better social contract, better values into this $30BN opportunity that is staring us in the face.

If you get stirred up by banksy’s sense of injustice then I challenge you to build an irresistible brand engagement engine that through its boundaries and constraints forces brands to act with more relational integrity, transparency and mutual value whilst rewarding them with commercial success if they act better all whilst building yourself and your crew a billion $ business

According to “Father of Advertising” David Ogilvy, his contemporary, Howard Gossage, said that “advertising justifies its existence when used in the public interest—it is much too powerful a tool to use solely for commercial purposes.”

It can be done – look at these great examples of were marketing can help change our thinking and drive behaviour that is actually better for us http://www.boredpanda.com/powerful-social-advertisements/

This world sucks when good people take option one.

If you don’t pick up this $30bn opportunity someone else absolutely WILL and it will probably SUCK and we will go round this carousel again. Banksy will say more stuff, you will be stirred enough to click ‘share’ again but nothing will change.

Don’t let that happen, don’t hide.

Do something Irresistible.