Visions of the Future

The future of advertising definitely seems to look more creative and interactive. The last few years we have been at the verge of a paradigm shift between the old age of advertising and the new age. Many of the readings for this week explain their vision of the future for advertising. In my opinion some of the interactive ideas lead the path toward the advertising of the future and some are just fads that will or already have faded away. Robert Greenburg says it best when he says, "The old approach of marketing saturation has created a clutter environment that people are now resisting, in an era when people feel they have less time in their lives for all the things they want to do." He projects, "I think things are going to get infinitely more complex and the challenge is about taking things that are infinitely complex and making them simpler and more understandable." ARG's are an extremely creative way of capturing an audience. Some of those things that Trent Reznor did for pubbing his Nine Inch Nails album were ingenious. I would buy his album just for that. ARG's are the future of advertising because they WORK. This is something that changes the landscape of advertising and public relations. A fad in the ad industry is putting television shows online. Who really has the time to watch them in this fast paced society. It may be interactive and somewhat creative (who would have thought to make a TV show on the Internet), but it's missing the limited time factor. The advertisers will have to put more effort into it than that. Another fad is creating social networking sites to get adds. If all companies created a social networking site based around a certain brand there would be way to many of them and it would defeat the purpose of social networking. They might as well have a Nike Soccer sponsored group on Facebook or create their own Nike Soccer page on myspace if they want to continue with the social networking thing. This again is interactive, but lacks creativity. Social networking sites are everywhere! As far as the shortage of interactive talent goes, I don't think it is something we really need to worry about. One day the you-tube generation will produce the talent that is needed to make interactive ads. We just have to play the waiting game for a while. Soon there will be an abundance of interactive talent and interactive ads won't cost so much and since the Matthew Creamer article "digital talent dearth breeds crisis" was written in 2006, that day will come sooner than we can imagine. It is not something we should worry about now that kids are learning html in gradeschool. Finally, the audio piece from SxSW interactive discussed visions of the future of advertising in searching for the "Big Ideas" of tomorrow. It was interesting to hear about how these ideas came about and it really gave an illustration of what the advertising indusrty looks like and looks for. Today the "big ideas" involve interactivity and creativity. Tomorrow we will see interactivity amplified to the highest degree. It is the only thing that people will pay attention to.