BOOK REVIEW: Kellogg on Advertising and MediaEdited by Bobby J Calder and Philip Kotler; 304pp; Wiley-Blackwell; €20
THE WORLD of advertising and marketing communications has been convulsed with wave after wave of such seismic change for the last decade that minor earthquakes in Tanseyland are regarded with relative equanimity.
Beginning with the internet and quickly followed by the mobile phone, the media world, prone to frenzy in the first place, was thrown into a complete tizzy with the fragmentation of some traditional, especially electronic, mass media, accompanied by a proliferation of new media and a reported indifference bordering on cynicism among the public to all forms of marketing communication.
Inevitably an army of quacks miraculously appeared, often in the form of instant books designed to explain all, calm shattered nerves and which were full of clappy-happy solutions, as long as you succumbed to the dubious charms of some overnight consultancy which just happened to be run by the author. Now we have something a little more substantial.
Written mainly by a team of business academics from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, this book is the best account of the changes that confront the media and marketing communications business that I've come across.
It doesn't overplay the jaded consumer bit, which is a good start. I've always been dubious of that hypothesis because there is no reason to believe that people haven't always been suspicious of snake oil salesmen. Anyway, it's at least 50 years since the public were described as a shower of gurriers with scant regard for the problems of running an ad agency.
This book suggests that many of today's problems are caused by an issue that is often ignored - product parity. It's not just the myriad new media channels with the public taking control of when, where and how they are prepared to engage - it's the fact that in most markets, goods and services are much better than in the past and are all becoming more alike. Cars are a good example; they're better than they used to be and they're beginning to look the same.
It's difficult to understand for a generation who never woke up of a winter morning and wondered whether their car would start, but it's a fact. For me, the most interesting chapters are by writers who attempt to deal with the implications of this change.
They wisely resist the temptation of offering an instant blueprint; the dust hasn't settled yet, but some tentative possibilities are raised.
We need to think in terms of conversations rather than communication, the word "engagement" crops up a lot, and American philosopher John Dewey's work on this difficult concept is examined. In one of the more important contributions, the need for a more reciprocal relationship with customers is raised.
This new relationship will involve not just a change in communication strategy but a
new commitment to customers;
think John Lewis with their
highly ethical stance, exemplary staff relations and longstanding commitment to being "never knowingly undersold".
The fact that we are in, to use the current post-Lisbon cliche, uncharted waters, means that there's no clear way forward but there are a series of as yet unconnected issues that have to be addressed - and most of them are raised here.
There are a number of chapters on new media, including a handy little summary of the differences between Marketing 1.0, the old analog world of mass audiences, Marketing 2.0, the new digital world we've arrived at, and Marketing 3.0, the more networked world we are about to enter.
The fact that the new world will put businesses under much more public scrutiny means a greater role for public relations, and although some of the authors overplay this a little there are some useful insights, including a neat little matrix mapping the likely significance of a business story with the likely audience demand for coverage, which
I suspect will be heavily plagiarised.
The murky issue of branded editorial and programme content is given a somewhat Jesuitical airing, although the fact that advertising agencies wrote the copy for the original US soap operas in the 1930s is acknowledged.
However, there's no mention of the Kennedys of Castlerosse; is there no limit to the insularity of the American business academic?
One of the most impressive features of this book is the number of interconnected issues that are discussed without attempting to structure them too tightly.
They include the need for a much more diverse range of skills for people working in a business that has allowed itself to become much too specialised. There is a real need for generalists with synthesising skills who are capable of taking an interdisciplinary approach, integrating the contributions of different disciplines.
The thorny subject of payment is also considered, and the fact that the time-based approach is in some ways even more riddled with inconsistencies than the commission system is alluded to.
The author of this section makes the intriguing suggestion of an intellectual property model where the client effectively licenses the IP of the agency and the agency reaps a share of the revenue derived from implementing their strategy and creative work. I can see all kinds of problems here but it's certainly worth considering.
It is a common human conceit to imagine that we are part of a new epoch, about to enter a new era that will represent a complete break with the past, but all the instruments we have seem to agree that the marketing communications business is in such a position, which has been described by one observer as "where the past provides no examples, the present offers no guarantees and the future generates no confidence".
This book is too subtle to attempt predictions but if you read it very carefully and begin to apply its numerous insights you will be better equipped to face that future with confidence.
John Fanning is author of The Importance of Being Branded - an Irish Perspectiveand is a member of the board of The Irish Times
