The Persuaders Among Us
The advertising industry’s and the broadcast television industry’s business models are broken. They’re leaning against each other for support – not because it works, but because that’s what they’ve always done.
That’s what I learned watching Front Line’s – The Persuaders.
It’s a fantastic and accurate – from what I’ve heard being 1 step removed – illustration of the panic within the advertising world on a national – if not global – level.
At the end of the 90 minute show, I was left with a distinct feeling that advertisers were completely disconnected from those they serve – both their clients and their client’s customers.
If we overlay the Cathedral and Bazaar metaphor on advertising. The big, multi-national ad agencies are in fact cathedrals. Expensive, disconnected, and inconsistent (both in value and effectiveness).
Where as other channels like this weblog, podcasting, and other participatory media. Like those Dan Gillmor talks about in We the Media are the Bazaar. Completely embedded into the events, relevant (therefore valuable) to the people involved, sustainable, and cheap.

4 Comments
Yeah but ad agencies aren’t divinely inspired.
The metaphor doesn’t work anyway.
Sounds simuliar to the recent Wired article…
Customers are so saturated and so much more savy that it really comes down to the product…
Advertising was the topic of conversation at the recent MNteractive Saturday Coffee also. I pulled all these thoughts together into episode 8 of First Crack with Garrick Van Buren [mp3].
The best of We the Media turning into a subsidiary of Big Business? Here’s the article at Wired.
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luetrain Manifesto #74: We are immune to advertising. Just forget it If Frontline’s Persuader Among Us or regular visits to Hugh McLeod’s rarely work-safe Gaping Void hasnR [...]
[...] luetrain Manifesto #74: We are immune to advertising. Just forget it If Frontline’s Persuaders Among Us or regular visits to Hugh McLeod’s rarely work-safe Gaping Void [...]