As technology evolves with DVRs and streaming on demand video taking over our TVs, iPods taking over for DJs, and Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, and websites becoming the preferred place for news, I ask the question: Is traditional advertising just PR now? With all these technology tools we use today, as consumers, it seems we avoid advertising more and more. We’ve unanimously adopted the “do not call list” (not that people even have land lines anymore), we fast forward through commercials, if we do listen to the radio we’ll make a phone call during commercials, and we’re so saturated with things to read today we don’t have time to be distracted by ads.
That all said, what is the value of “traditional advertising” at this point? I’m suggesting that it’s now just a PR play. (One could argue this has been the case all along I suppose.) Now, it may not be PR in the sense that you’re pitching to the local news to get a featured article, but in a reputation management sense. Yes, reputation management.
If you think about the products you hear/see in ads I think you would agree that it is extremely rare that you immediately jump up out of your seat and go buy what you’ve seen. Yes, it’s about awareness, but we know that the more and more we are aware of something the more it solidifies itself as a legitimate product we would consider. The ads say (and multiple ads work best): “We’re kind of a big deal.”