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My thoughts on comments by BBDO Chairman Emertius Allen Rosenshine on the AdAge podcast.
Mr. Rosenshine claims that the Internet “doesn’t have the capacity to deliver the emotional capacity of branding.”
Hey, this guy is a legend in the advertising world so we can’t argue with him, can we?
Well, can we?
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You should stop asking rhetorical questions —you know the answer…you do know it? Well, don’t you?
Let’s grab a chat if we can this week or maybe meet before our 3pm tomorrow.
Sean, it’s always best to start from the assumption that I don’t know anything, that way you won’t be disappointed.
I completely disagree with Mr. Rosenshine. The internet as a medium is far more capable of creating emotional connections than other mediums such as television. The internet is a dialogue whereas television is a one way monologue. As you said, the internet provides a way for people to connect and that in itself paves the way for more emotion.
That is not to say that I think the internet will kill television, although it will (and is already) influencing it.
Guinevere, I totally agree with the personal connection idea, but where I think Rosenshine has it at least partly right is around the more traditional “transmission” style advertising. TV arguably has the upper-hand here, in that we watch TV primarily to be entertained, which goes directly to emotional connection. TV is meant, primarily, to make you _feel_ things rather than _connect_ with things. I think that’s where he has a point.
Jay: yeah, I see that. I don’t think he communicated that very well, at least in that short clip. Maybe I’ll listen to his whole podcast.
Keep yours coming!
Hi Jay,
I feel like there is a contextual issue lying between Rosenshine’s quote and asking a question like ‘can the internet deliver emotional content?’. There might be a little apples-to-oranges action happening here.
What I think was in Rosenshine’s mind during that interview was broad marketing to HUGE masses of people. Whatever be the content of the ad or product placement in that big of an outlet, an emotional response will be develpoed by people who are able to relate to others who saw the same thing. Groupthink. Much of what I see MSM marketers doing is trying to create emotion by wielding their power as cultural trend setters. Can the internet do that just as well in such a broad sense? No, of course not.
The internet does have an opportunity to do amazing things in marketing by taking advantage of its conversational quality and near-infinite content possibilities. The emotion, I think more powerfully, comes from what I see as a super-word-of-mouth made possible by the web’s content style and social networks. The emotion comes from the connection and is communicated differently.
The discussion turns from the water-cooler chat like ‘did you see “X” during Dancing With Whomever last night’ to a blog or a tweet about ‘Jay Moonah just told me about “X”‘.
Looking for the differences of the mediums and taking advantage of our stregnths, rather than holding ourselves up to the yardstick of MSM will be NM’s triumph.
Andrew, yeah if you listen to the whole interview (which is linked here and I’d certainly recommend doing for those who are interested) you hear that part of the context of this is talking about things like pop-ups, BUT I did think it was interesting how he kind of blew off interviewer Rance Crain when Crain mentioned video.
But you bring up something interesting — how is the word-of-mouth aspect of marketing, which has also been kind of the uncontrollable and untrackable X factor of advertising effectiveness but can now be observed online, really related to the “emotional content of branding”? Can making someone _feel_ something about a brand enough to discuss or impart that feeling with others something that can happen exclusively online? Could a brand abandon all traditional media and still create that feeling? I think perhaps that’s what Rosenshine was getting at.
I haven’t heard the whole clip, don’t know if I will, but the guy sound like he’s full of it.
I agree you don’t get the audible and visual ques that you do when hearing someone or watching them speak in text but there is more and more audio and video on the web. I find I’m FAR more engaged online. If a lean forward situation where my brain is turned on, when I’m watching TV I turn my brain off and barely notice advertising.
I also think that if you don’t nail you point on the head first try with you TV or Radio Ad your done. The one way nature doesn’t allow you to interact with the audience to correct any misconceptions.
As always thats my two cents!
[...] Some of the comments about my most recent podcast episode (both on the blog and elsewhere) had me revisiting one of my favorite books on the subject of information media, the highly underrated Ambient Findability by Peter Morville. In Chapter Six, Morville outlines the difference between “media” and “genre,” which I believe might go part of the way toward Allen Rosenshine’s claims around the Internet’s inability to carry the emotional content necessary in branding messages. [...]
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