ON UNBRIDLED ADVERTISING ONINE

TURBULENCE AHAD

This post from Gauravonomics on the competitive use of billboard advertising by India's mushrooming, private airlines, hit me on two levels. 

First, was just the whimsical, funny nature of the subject matter.  The post is built around this picture, as you can see here:

"Indian airlines are indulging in a little oneupmanship in the air (via Rajan and Amit) -

Jet Airways: “We’ve Changed.”

Kingfisher Airlines: “We Made Them Change!!”

Go Air: “We’ve Not Changed. We’re Still the Smartest Way to Fly.”

I wonder what the other half a dozen airlines in India have to say about this."

This isn't JUST billboard advertising.

It's a vigorous, in-your-face, debate.

Done via prosaic billboards!

It immediately reminded me of reading a series of blog postings in reaction to something on Techmeme, instigated by someone like Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis or Mark Cuban.

So on another level, it made me think about the "rules of the road" in mainstream advertising here in the US., and how things might evolve as advertising moves online in even bigger numbers.

We would be hard-pressed to see billboard advertising like this in the US, or even in mainstream advertising like television and radio.  Sure we have taste tests, and some direct references to the competition in some forms of traditional media, but not nearly as in each other's face, as what we see above.

It made me then think about advertising and direct marketing online (When do I not think about those things?). 

We'd be hard-pressed to see even banner ads on Yahoo! or AOL that are as feisty and playfully combative as these billboards. 

And that's because the traditions of advertising off-line have for now carried over into the online world.

But compare this state of affairs to the feisty, combative nature of discourse online that exists via blogs, comments, and message boards. 

Not a day goes by where we don't see high profile bloggers get in each other's faces, creating drama and soap operas, by saying what they really think, and letting their emotions hang out. 

Let's admit it. 

We like the feistiness and candor of a Jason Calacanis, Michael Arrington or a Dave Winer in the geek community. 

We look forward to what they'll say next, even if some may cringe at some of their utterances sometime.  Of course it's the legacy of Howard Stern, truly democratized for the rest of us.

So the question that naturally follows is, why SHOULDN'T this be true for advertisers online?

I mean it wasn't long ago, that the very thought of advertisers competing with each other for the highest placement online via bidding for search terms was thought of as something that just wasn't done.  I remember the initial reactions when Bill Gross's Goto.com first started popularizing this approach, way before Google refined and turbo-charged the idea with historical results.

Bidding for search terms?  In full view of potential customers?  How uncouth!

In fact, initially, and for quite some time afterwards, the first few hundred thousand advertisers weren't traditional advertisers at all. 

They were "advertisers" who'd never been advertisers before in a traditional sense.  They were people, just using a new medium to compete for attention in a way never possible in an economical way, with these economies of scale before.

The world's changed a bit since then, in less than a decade.

So what if we let advertisers duke it out across online media with fewer holds barred? 

Like bloggers do today? 

Of course a few holds always need to be barred, as Kathy Serra reminded the blogging world not so very long ago (Tim O'Reilly's bloggers rules of conduct being a first step).

But today's "Gentleman's rules" for the world of advertising in mainstream media, were designed in an era of relative scarcity of media outlets and physical advertising spots.

And we're rapidly transitioning to a world where there advertising and marketing opportunities will be almost limitless at the edge. 

Advertisers and marketers, both large and small, will relentlessly and constantly compete for some piece of attention from six billion souls increasingly coming online via PCs, cellphones, TVs, radios and almost every imaginable device and/or service.

So maybe it's time for a little more unbridled discourse in our advertising and marketing.

India's unruly airlines duking it out via billboards, may be a just a taste of the next big thing in advertising online.

Comments

[Gauravonomics]

Advertising as a conversation: interesting thought!

[Himanshu J Sheth]

No way,Go Air fits in the same genre as the other two high fliers...May be same hoarding in Mumbai would have been very effective :)

-Himanshu
(Blogger at http://thoughtsprevail.blogspot.com)
(Contributor to http://startups.in/india)