Searching for a name...or no name

There's a place called the "No Name" Restaurant in Boston down on the harbor. I always thought that was an interesting name for a restaurant and I always wondered - Could they just NOT come up with a name or were they struck my marketing genius by figuring every restaurant has a name that no one can remember, so if we go with "No Name" everyone will remember it?

To this day I still remember it - must have been genius.

So I came across an article today on the success of mobile marketing and some of the conversion rates of mobile v. other direct marketing vehicles:

http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/crm/mediainsert/archives/008094.asp?rss=1

The content of the article was informative but what got me thinking was the article's use of the acronym OOH (Out of Home Advertising) to reference this type of advertising.

I dont think it's the best acronym for this new frontier but it does bring up a good question - should there be some sort of catch phrase or acronym for technologies and companies that focus on putting advertising and marketing control back in the hands of the individual?

Companies like Hypertag, qtags, us at WIP. Do we need a way to reference ourselves like the CRM's or the UGM's of the world have?

Or maybe we need no name at all. If there is going to be a universal reference to consumer controlled advertising and marketing, my vote is NOT for an acronym like CCAM...but maybe we should just let the masses decide...

Signs of the Times?

There's an article in this week's Economist in the Technology Quarterly section called Signs of the Times about huge video screens that, as the article puts it, "bombard people with ads while they shop".

An excerpt from the article:

With the advent of hundreds of television channels, the internet, and that particular scourge of the advertiser, the personal video recorder, consumers are harder to reach than ever. So where is the hottest place to put advertisements? In supermarkets—because that's where the shoppers are.

And goes on to say...

This ability to reach consumers just as they are deliberating about which item to pick from the shelves—what the marketers at Procter & Gamble, a big consumer-goods firm, call “the first moment of truth”—has huge potential. According to Point of Purchase Advertising International, an independent trade association, more than 70% of purchasing decisions are made in shops.

So is this the future of advertising?...More screens, more intrusive messages everywhere we turn, more manipulation of my eyeballs with the sole intent of trying to get me to buy something.

Keyword search works because you are reaching the user at the point of intent. They are "searching" for something with the intent of finding more information and/or related products and are therefore open to "suggestions".

When I go into a supermarket or a drug store, I'm usually not "searching" for information about products. I know what I want to get most of the time, I just want to know where it is. And even if I dont know exactly what I want - let's say I do put "beer" on my list as the article suggests - I dont think seeing an ad for Molson on a huge television screen is going to steer my purchase decision.

Maybe these screens should be interactive. I could walk up to them and tell them what I'm looking for and they could point me in the right direction and give me options.

Now that would be a technology centered around my needs and my preferences that would enhance my shopping experience.

I mean really, would you rather have a butler looking after your every need or a rather loud mother-in-law screaming commands at you from above?

Think about it

There's an article in todays Behavioral Insider called Targeting the Small Screen by Phil Leggiere, an inteview with Tom Burgess, CEO of Third Screen Media.

Take a look...really read... and then ask yourself: do the paradigms of behavioral targeting, demographics, and even the concept of targeting itself work in radically different medium like mobile?

Targeting and demographics serve advertising "related to" the subject matter the individual actually wants to view. On screens less that 4" across, does it work to serve ads "related to" that content. Think about it, honestly for a second, and then tell me:

Should there really even be "advertising" in the mobile arena in the first place?

Anything less than the individual user being completely in control of what they are seeing and experiencing in the mobile environment, in my most humble of opinions, is simply not going to work.

Agencies may be able to make money, and companies may be able to get exposure but does this really work for me, the end user? Really...does it...think about it.