R/GA's New York-based chief creative officer and Aussie expat Nick Law says more targeted, relevant ads still won't work. Faced with cognitive overload, consumers are simply switching off.
Pick up a copy of today's AdNews, in print and on iPad, for Law's take on the dangerous direction of the industry. "It's like telemarketing," he says. "The first time you picked up a telephone and got offers at you, you were probably quite intrigued.
"But eventually when you're trying to just sit down, you get pissed off. Because media is so ubiquitous and always-on there is a tendency towards that because people are making money out of advertising and not considering the cultural impact. They will just squeeze the life out of it."
Law says while advertising across channel still works, its impact is diminishing quickly. "It doesn't matter if there is a perfect ad at the perfect time for the perfect person. If it's the twenty-thousandth ad they've seen that day, it really doesn't matter."
News in this issue:
• NAB ponders fight-back on bank ad war
• Woolies dumbs down, Reckitt wants smarts
• Big Kyle doesn't pull heavy dollars: Austereo
• SBS takes viral-first news approach
• Diageo ditches 'archaic' brand category teams
• Johnnie Walker House keeps out the riff-raff
Also in today's issue, the Nielsen Top Advertisers report – a special eight-page lift-out with all the data on all the big spenders, broken down by category, advertiser and channel. Find out where the money's going, who's splurging and who's pulling back.
UK educationalist and the most popular speaker on the TED circuit, Sir Ken Robinson, talks creativity, connectivity and organisational change, and ESPN's Lance Peatey tips Big Footy Data to bring in digital revenue for the World Cup.
Plus, what's all the fuss about awards? Are they important? What happens after you win? What does it all mean? Creative heavyweights Dylan Harrison, Peter Grasse, Paul Reardon, John Pallant, Nick Jackson, Steve Coll, Fabio Fernandes and Wilf Sweetland weigh in.
John Steedman takes a look at the future tech changing our world, Nick Keenan asks whether digital dog years are catching up with the Kings of Online (that's Facebook and Google), and Tom Moult stumbles into a baby boomer paradise – and wonders whether he should have started that specialist agency after all.
Other people in the magazine: Sandra de Castro, Lizzy Ryley, Andrew Wong, Ciaran Davis, Rhys Holleran, Ian Perrin, Helen Kellie, Adam Ballesty, James Thompson, Tara Lordsmith, Suey Cooper, Monique Perry, Matt Stanton, Stuart Bailey, Justin Graham, Alice Manners, Henry Tajer, Brendon Guthrie, Paul Fenton, Lorraine Murphy, Jeff Cooper.
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