Advertising and moral illiteracy and the Apple/iPhone launch!

By which I mean that the people in the Advertising/Marketing industries don't really understand what they are supposed to be doing.

And to illustrate my point I will take a statement made recently in association with the launch of the Apple 1Phone. This little gem of absolute marketing nonsense was culled from the publicity surrounding the launch of the iPhone.

This from, Marc Gob of marketing expert Desgrippes Gob, New York.

He said "Apple was capable of generating this sort of hype because it had succeeded in turning its products into 'celebrities'. Apple had largely achieved this by offering beautiful and innovative products rather than spending huge sums on advertising, advertising is dead, design is the new advertising."

Hey I know that I can be accused of being unduly harsh on advertising but don't you think that this takes the cake?

He obviously knows nothing about the process of communication, even less in fact that the practitioners of advertising itself!

So let’s review advertising in terms of the marketing of products and, at the same time, hope that those people working in or with Desgrippes Gob read this simple lesson and learn a little of what they should have already known and been doing on behalf of their clients.

All advertising is a form of learning whereby the advertiser is asking people to change their behaviour after learning the benefits of the products or services on offer. However, we all tend to filter out information, which we do not want to hear. This clearly alters the effectiveness of conventional advertising in quite a dramatic way.

The final purchase decision is invariably a compromise and this leads to a certain amount of anxiety; the worry that perhaps the decision was not the best or the right one. In order to minimise this anxiety the purchaser seeks to reinforce their choice and begins to take more notice of their chosen product’s marketing communications.

Due to a lack of understanding of the communication process we have created a media society during the past 40 or 50 years, where the whole process has been de-humanised.

There is now an extraordinary reduction in interaction because conventional advertising and marketing have become a one-way practice whereby information is disseminated in a passive form.

But, people still have this desire to be taken account of. To affect change, to learn and personalise their relationship with their environment. There are a phenomenal number of reasons that cause people to interact, going far beyond just giving them things.

When people agree to participate in truly interactive marketing programmes they are told that their efforts and feedback are of positive help to the advertisers.

And most important to the advertisers, by participating and becoming involved, they then learn and understand the advertising message and do so at their own pace and to fit in with their schedule.

Back to Apple/iPhone launch, despite the communication illiteracy evidenced by Gob, some wisdom stills prevails, despite all the hype there are many who have a sound critical faculty. It is not a given that everyone will want a phone with all those bells and whistles, no matter how beautifully they are packaged.

Surveys show that most people just want a phone that just makes calls. Only 3% of American consumers expressed an interest in purchasing the iPhone. Most of them don't use the full functionality of their mobiles, and most of them, a whopping 86%, don't want advertising on their 'phones!