Four Marketing and Advertising devices that are actually doomed

Buh Bye

One of the stocks in trade for the folks who work at M&AD is to make fun of clickbait columnists who want to declare a marketing or advertising medium to be Dead. Look around, and you can find people sticking a fork in just about anything that employs pros, from email to display to SEO to individual consumer categories, and so on, and so on. If you are first to declare something Dead, you win!

It's hackery, but it gets clicks and views, so the best you can do is make fun of them and move on.

However, there *are* business models that are closer to this mortal coil than others. And at the risk of belaboring the obvious, here's the ones that we see as not being around in another generation or less.

1) The (printed) Yellow Pages

If you are anything like me, you are kind of amazed this is still around in the first place, since the only thing you've done with it for 15 years is move the book from your doostep to your recycling bin, since there is this thing called the Internet, all while wondering why you haven't called to opt out of delivery in the first place. My children don't even know what this is, and in a world with ubiquitous communication via the Internet, a total market coverage device that's outdated the day its printed just doesn't make any sense.

I get that there are probably direct marketing pros with coupons and spreadsheets that show this is still a winning play and purchase. That math is getting worse every week and every month, and there's no reason to think that trend will stop.

2) Outbound Telemarketing

In retrospect, it's amazing that this ever was an industry, given how disruptive and disagreeable a cold-call can be. While the phone will still be a prime tool for reaching targeted lists and CRM work, the days of trying to reach new customers with little more than a number are going to be blocked and trucked out of existence, even to the point of robo-calling getting the heave ho. No one, other than the people who made a frightening amount of money on it over the years, will mourn its demise.

3) DRTV

This is one of those formats that may be hard for elites to imagine still exists, but remnant broadcast inventory is cheap, and it really does not take much in the way of conversions to make the math work. The problem is that broadcast viewership numbers are just crashing against the Web, especially for youth demographics that make up a sweet spot for many of the products offered. At some point, production costs have to make even the remnant buy a poor purchase, especially when the remnant audience is getting smaller and smaller.

4) TMC Mailers

Unlike many digital pros, I don't believe that all direct mail will go away; there's just too much value in print for establishing brand credibility and integrity. But I do believe that elements of direct mail are doomed, and the foremost among them is the most unwanted. That would be the Total Market Coverage piece, with bundled flyers from your local grocery stores and pharmacies, that's been littering your mail box since, well, forever.

The problem with the TMC is, like the other pieces on this list, is that there is little branding benefit, and spreadsheets that are just going to point in the wrong direction until there is just no reason for it to continue. Beyond the environmental issues, the plain and simple is that some people in a neighborhood are never going to become customers of the stores that have been hitting their mailboxes every week. If you can pull out those dead addresses -- and with the Internet of Things, you will -- there is no reason for these mailers to exist.

You'll still get flyers, but only for the places that make sense. And only the print shops and mail carriers that are going to see less billing will mind.

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Ads on Jerseys

Slightly more garish than usual Mets

Complaining about things like ads on sports jerseys is a great way to seem very old and crotchety... but there are moments when, well, the crotchety just overwhelms.

To wit, the notion that ads on sports jerseys are not just an atrocity, and an abomination, but also an inevitability.

What's the big deal, fans of the English Premier League might ask? After all, Arsenal makes over $46 million a year in a deal with Emirates, ad Manchester United makes $81.6 million a year from Chevrolet for their deal, which includes jersey-front sponsorship. People in the U.S. should just relax and accept the ads. You won't even notice them after a while.

And sure, the money is great, and they may be right. Heaven knows sports fans in the U.S. have gotten used to many terrible things. But there are a handful of critical differences that make all of the difference in the world. To wit:

1) Teams in leagues outside of the U.S. do not benefit from a closed market monopoly.

If your NFL, MLB, NHL or NBA team is just plain terrible, and doesn't even try very hard to get better, or pay to retain or attract the services of good players, they stay in the league. Forever and ever, really, and the level of derpery does not really matter. In fact, there's a very real chance that a team that does not try to win will make more profit than one that does, thanks to revenue sharing.

In other countries, the worst teams are relegated -- in other words, sent down to the minors. It makes for fantastic drama for a much wider number of clubs, and serious misery and joy for fans and haters of a specific laundry. But what it means, more than anything else, is that making hay while the sun shines is very, very important. As you might imagine, advertising revenue from jersey sales, not to mention tickets, TV ratings and all of the rest, is highly dependent on staying in the first division.

2) Teams in the U.S. benefit from corporate welfare around stadiums and broadcast rights.

Thanks to some highly questionable public service decisions based around the artificial monopoly of "major league" teams, local municipal governments in the U.S. are set up in a perennial game of chicken against other cities, especially when it comes to retaining at-risk franchises in stadiums that aren't quite as new and lucrative for corporate sponsors.

Other nations? Well, there's no artificial monopoly, thanks to relegation and promotion. So there are really no true "minor league" cities -- there are just ones that are at that status in the here and now. Once again, the sources of perpetual revenue just aren't as evergreen.

3) The non-viewing public does not, for the most part, subsidize sports outside of the U.S.

Everyone who pays a cable bill is, whether they ever watch the network or not, paying ESPN about $5 a month. Smaller, but still potent, amounts also apply to other networks that carry sports, including the ones that are actually ran by the leagues. If and when cable becomes unbundled, or enough of the paying public cuts the cord, maybe the math changes, but that's a great deal of inertia to overcome. Other countries, well, not so much.

So the plain and simple is that American leagues are literally awash in money, and simply have to decide whether if there is anything they can do that is so beyond the pale that it will kill the golden goose. Will it be ads on the front of jerseys?

Probably not.

But honestly, why risk it?

Especially when you've already got more money than you will probably ever be able to spend?

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The Internet of Cranks

A year ago, the Gartner Group predicted that an affluent family home might have, within seven years, hundreds of objects with connectivity to the Web. Which has, with the greatest of speed, provoked the backlash of all Old Man Yelling At Cloud backlashes, because back lashing about technology, especially technology that seems unnecessary or exploitative on cost, is like falling off a log. Without wi-fi.

And sure, there's some of that, and it seems like a far off thing to imagine that a connected oven is going to make a lot of sense, since the best it can do right now is just start the oven from an app, as if you've left dinner in the oven before leaving for work. Security issues are also a concern, and a reason why bleeding edge is never fun.

But that dramatically misses the point. The reason why you connect dumb items to the IoT isn't for what they'll do on version 1; it's for the possibility of a version one in the first place, and the much greater potential of a version five. Starting your oven with an app is pointless, but having an oven that never burns the meal, because it's got sensors that prevents that kind of thing? Or coordinates with a future IoT robot? Well, that's handy, and wins on energy and safety, and you can't get to that point without the early stuff that seems pointless.

This also works for just about every other device that seems silly now. The IoT toothbrush? Well, on version one you get kids brushing more and better, because it's an app on their always-on phone that shows all of the places that they are missing. On version two, maybe you've got an early decay diagnostic that will make your dentist trip happen sooner and with less drama, or maybe inspire the flossing that you haven't been getting to.

An IoT mattress pad? I'm getting spam from my bed! Ridiculous, except when it's a potential life-saver if it gets to a strong enough diagnostic level, and part and parcel of a more efficient exit patient strategy for post-op. The IoT toilet? Gross! But the same diagnostic abilities (not pleasant to think about, sure, but true) and I, for one, would be happy to pay for a plumbing situation that alerts me as early as possible when there is a stoppage, so I never have to clean up that job again. The IoT Basketball? Keeps score for you, and gives you the true shooting percentage. (Personally, I'm looking forward to IoT golf balls, because losing golf balls is my personal hate moment.) And so on, and so on.

Will there be abuses? Of course; no progress is ever perfectly smooth or sensible. But there's no chance of progress without the connectivity in the first place, and the price of adding the connection is so borderline trivial, especially as more and more connection points and devices hit the market, because, well, Scale.

So lighten up, IoT Scolds. The future is coming no matter how snarky you get about it, and some of these executions are going to be great. (And others, we'll just giggle at later. Much later.)

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Please like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or visit the agency blog. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.