Reflecting on the Future of Advertising

The APA held their annual afternoon on the Future Of Advertising with a diverse line-up of speakers involved in advertising, lending their perspective to enthral and stimulate the discussion.

The debate on The Future of Advertising continues to arouse interesting theories as to whether digital platforms are working and how technology is changing the way advertisers reach their audience.

Our Senior Colourist Duncan Russell went along to Bafta for the afternoon to see what they say the future holds. Filling us all in on the talks, Duncan summarises his experience

Ian Leslie, brand expert and journalist from the Financial Times, was the first speaker and based his talk on an article he had written late last year.

His main point was to convince us that the basic principles of effective advertising had not changed half as much as we thought they had. He suggested that the ad industry had, inspired by an urge to appear forward looking and youthful, thrown the baby out with the bath water and focused too heavily on ways of reaching consumers via new digital platforms. The theory being that the arrival of these allowed for truly targeted' advertising, eliminating the dreaded wastage' that comes with deciding between which TV shows to wedge your commercials.

The real life experience, Leslie points out, is somewhat different. To be stalked around the internet by banner ads is the polar opposite of focused advertising and is the main experience for most of us. Crucially, he also pointed to research that suggested that if you really want to grow a brand into the mainstream, your target audience is not your target audience. The people you really need to reach are the ones that don't care about you and that's pretty much everybody.

The truth is that nobody cares about brands and they don't want to interact with branded content or discuss it on social media. We want to be passively entertained and to be made to laugh, cry and feel anger. Advertisers who do this will be remembered. Being present to people will make your brand more likely to be purchased over another with no resonance, no history and no soul.

Leslie reminded us that while all the new platforms offer up many different conduits through which to bury our messages inside peoples heads, we have to do it with an acknowledgement that nobody gives a monkeys. Therefore it is incumbent upon us to find another way in. To do that is just as hard as it always was, not that much has changed.

Responsibility in Advertising came next from the ASA. It seems that we are at a low ebb. Most people who work in this industry apologise for doing so. We don't half think we are a bunch of rotters, peddling fast food to fat kids, encouraging the poor the fritter away their dole money on in game betting'. The chap from the ASA, said that we should do more to convince people that there are many safeguards in place to protect fat kids and poor people from getting fatter and poorer. We have lots of rules about it. That was pretty much it.

Then the Giff Gaff people got up and told us how they were rethinking procurement . I don't know what procurement is, but if it means making ads and content for the internet then I think I got the right end of the stick. They are all about collaborating, succeeding together and failing together. They like to go straight to directors, to freelance creative teams and to keep themselves as the fulcrum of the creative process. Which is all very well for young gunslingers like Giff Gaff, but I'm not sure it would work at The Yorkshire Building Society. They have no beef with agencies but they didn't want to have long contracts that tied them up to a commitment that they felt may go sour if held on to for too long. Which interestingly is exactly what they offer to their customers. It's all very brazen and modern, no strings, no loyalty.

MPC talked about something, I just can't remember what it was. It was mostly about MPC. Oh, with a bit of VR, which involves standing still and strapping a mobile phone to your head. Apparently, people want to be advertised to in this way. I tried it in the foyer. You are at present, a passive ghost in a 3D environment. While free to look anywhere, you are trapped in space, with no body to look down at, helpless, weightless and untethered while something happens around you. It's an unsettling experience. Speaking as a technician, the focal point of the screens is too small, most of the image is soft and there are red and blue lens aberrations all over the place. Novel? Yes. Room for improvement, yes.

Ed Boehm from Nexus then expanded on this with more examples of interactive technology. Boehm gave us a vision of the future where we have all changed our mind about Google Glass and volunteered to have every flat surface in our field of vision plastered with banner ads. This will be delivered to us either via a swanky contact lens or goggles of some kind. He also showed us how we could influence content by interacting with it. Like the Honda Civic Type R thing by Wieden and Kennedy.

I think Ian Leslie was right, some of this new tech will stick at some point, but no matter how clever it is technically we still have to be happy to have it around, it still has to earn it's time in our day by being good.'

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