April 09, 2008

Advertising Is Dead And It's Everywhere


Everywhere you look, there's advertising -- on buildings, buses, taxis, t-shirts, dry cleaning bags, sidewalks, hats, and urinals. Advertising, once just a minor annoyance, has now become unrelenting and impossible to escape.

And yet new age marketing gurus like Seth Godin can't stop telling us that advertising is dead (see "Let's Buy Seth A Television.")

TAC has some theories on why these people refuse to believe the evidence of their own eyes:
  1. They're making a nice buck on the "Advertising Is Dead" gag.
  2. They're so in love with the internet that, in their minds, it has to vanquish everything else. (You know, the Oedipal thing.)
  3. Angry that they couldn't make it in the ad world.
  4. They just keep reading and repeating each others' blogs.
  5. They have not yet read The Ad Contrarian book.
One through four I can understand. No excuse for number 5.

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