While I might not have been able to convince Scott Donaton that he needs to (or should?) review my book, I am deeply honored and proud to be able to share this review from the good folks over at AdJab - one of my must read blogs I will have you know.
(I have pasted the full text below but of course you can just hop on over to AdJab to read the review in all its full-fontal glory)
Book Review: Joe Jaffe's "Life After the 30-Second Spot"
Over the summer, I received a copy of Joseph Jaffe's "Life After the 30-Second Spot," a look at how the way that most companies and organizations believe is the best way to get their point across to customers and prospects - television advertisements. It's important to note that it's not that the ads aren't creative, innovative, or aren't speaking the language of the viewer - at least for the most part - that has caused the need for a "life after" this form of marketing, it's the empowerment of all of us in the marketplace, letting the people "call the shots" for perhaps the first time in a long, long while. But don't get me wrong, this isn't a random hit-piece being done by someone who lives to fast forward through advertising pods. It's a serious look at what other opportunities are out there (you heard me, opportunities) that are changing the way that people are gobbling up content, and reasoning (and some tips) on how companies, ad agencies, and brand managers need to adapt.
In addition to a wealth of information that is still timely even after it cruised through the printing press, traveled from Amazon.com's shelves to my doorstep, and made a number of stops at a beach house, a number of train stations, and finally landed on my office bookshelf, Jaffe has ensured that those of us with maybe not the longest of attention spans, but a vast yearning for more content would be able to get just that - on the book's website, lifeafter30.com. Heck, if we learned anything here it's that a creative domain name, like this one, is sure to attract people who might never have heard of the book in the first place!
Obviously without giving up the ghost on Jaffe's book (we do want him to sell a few copies, ya know), it's important to convey that if there were books that anyone interested in the future of media as a whole, let alone advertising, should read right now, this would have to be one of them. I don't say that lightly, either. As someone who has become so ingrained in the world of reading items that take me less than half an hour at a time (or just minutes, even seconds, when it comes to short-form blog postings), I find it hard to justify recommending most of the books I've come across in the last year or two, just because they come off as lots of filler around some core items - hence my love for blogs. Jaffe and his team of contributors did a great job of creating "quick hits" as far as chapters go, and interspersed enough graphics and bullets to keep the mind from wandering too much.
Some thoughts to ponder that I thought were worthwhile to share for anyone interested: In Chapter 9, Jaffe suggests that instead of following the "that's the way we've always done it" model that so many companies and broadcasters have done when it comes to advertising, that they "just hit the Emergency Stop button and focus our efforts on producting antiwidgets that don't look, feel, or smell like advertising?" Go figure. And again, it's not about manipulating or faking out the consumer here, but many of us who have marketing and advertising experience can attest to believing whether certain vehicles work or not - and the answer is yes, on the whole. Later on in the same chapter, Jaffe has some words to live by for the giant firm out there - "If you can't deliver the goods, your clients will do it themselves via boutiques." I can't agree more. Between the ability for production-level equipment to be purchased by a company on its own, or hell, a freelancer with some bucks, and the frustration with big budget projects not getting the bang of a good viral, why wouldn't this happen?
A few chapters later, the analysis of the DVD as a whole is very simple: "The DVD tells you that consumers don't like commercials." And yes, we do know that already, but what do we do about it? The answer, for the most part, is taking what Jaffe suggests as "on demand" as a whole, and convert that to what your advertising is about. Sure, people feel that there is intrusive advertising all around them, including on their TiVos right now in the form of Showcases. But I'll tell you right now that as the proud owner of 2-TiVos, one that records HD, one of the coolest things on the darn thing is the Showcases, and there are plenty of "on demand" advertisements that I've clicked my thumbs-up button on to find out more about.
Jaffe also provides some insight into longer form content (as in, it ain't 30-seconds) being what people remember most, citing BMW Films, Apple's "1984" advertisement, Reebok's Terry Tate, and much more. In a way, Kevin Costner would be proud. I can't say there is a single *quality* project a company put out on the Web for consumption that wasn't a success, at least as far as buzz and traffic goes, for as long as people have been creating interactive, amusing videos and content. So, if you build it, most likely they'll come, right? Probably.
In being critical of AT&T Wireless (now Cingular) as being the exclusive text message cellphone company on American Idol, Jaffe exposes that the folks at FOX placing that restriction were listening to what the advertiser was saying, and not going the extra effort to secure all text messages across providers. This wasn't about building American Idol as a brand, though, it was clearly the advertiser bringing a "value-add" to the table, or what they thought was one, and running with it. Unfortunately, AT&T Wireless missed the possibility of being able to act as the clearing house for messages coming from other providers, at a cost somewhere south of a dime per message, by doing this. It would have been just as easy (at least on the front end), to say "Text message voting brought to you by AT&T Wireless" as it was to exclude everyone else. Someone missed the boat there. They took advantage of a great technology (thumbs up) and took away choice (thumbs down) for the customer.
I could go on all day jumping on these great examples of how brands embraced (or didn't) new technologies and opportunities (not threats!), as the book is chock full of them - but I won't. What I will tell you is that keeping an eye on what Jaffe has to say (or listen to his podcast, even if just for the accent, to steal a joke) is probably in your best interests if you want to be on the cusp of what's happening. That isn't to say that we'll wake up next year and the television networks will cancel their boondoggle upfronts, but we're going to see much more of these kinds of things where a company buys up all the airtime for a show and "brands" the episode, and probably a ton of failed viral strategies. Some will work, some will be disastrous. But if we, as marketers, don't wake up and smell the proverbial coffee, we're as good as burnt toast.
[ed: This has been a long time coming, and has survived a complete loss of computer-based note-taking and a partial re-read and dogearing, but it was worth it. In the meantime, I've had a ton of great conversations (mostly via email) with Joseph, and encourage you to check out his blog, Jaffe Juice, when you have the time.]
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