In a recent London Times article, the writer asks the readers to learn from the 50's advertising agency initial reaction to television when thinking of the coming changes in marketing, television and advertising due to the internet happening right now. Here are some interesting notes:
"--Authoritative voices were confident that the British public would never accept television with advertisements.
--Setting up a television capability was a significant extra cost with little possibility of immediate equivalent return.
--Personal confidence was low: senior agency people found themselves ill-equipped to recommend the television medium or even to debate it with clients.
--In the early years, television in the UK enjoyed nothing like national coverage, which made it of doubtful (and totally unproven) value to national advertisers.
--To all of that, we can add an all-too-human resistance to novelty and change."
Sounds like what I read about today. Companies firmly entrenched in their current practices are unwilling to budge to the new way of doing things for these exact same reasons.
Another highlight of the article was this little sentence:
"It was really only when television advertising stopped being thought of as new that the medium began to be used both imaginatively and relevantly."
Once the newness of televeision wore off, people adopted it as a here-to-stay medium and creative work flourished. I find it interesting that it wasn't until this point that creativity took off. I wonder if that is happening now. I think this is happening to a degree. Once companies get over the newness and see that everyone is doing it and it's no longer experimental and "fringy" then they'll embrace it and start developing for it. Creatively.
No comments:
Post a Comment