by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) I have always felt that in advertising, strategy is essential but it’s not enough. The problem with most of our agency strategists is that they complicate the shit out of the easy stuff and screw up the hard stuff.
Tag archives: The Ad Contrarian
The Ad Contrarian: Vehicle marketers are stupid. Here’s why.
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) A significant part of what I am doing these days is trying to explain to marketers the silliness of ignoring people over 50. A perfect example of this occurs in the automobile industry where the facts and the practices are in complete opposition.
The Ad Contrarian: How to become a marketing moron
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) I find that the only way I can maintain perspective about the impact of advertising on real people in the real world is to live among them. If I really want a sense of how it works and how it doesn’t work, it is best to see it as a consumer sees it, not as a practitioner sees it.
The Ad Contrarian: Social media and the end of the brand ‘conversation’
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian). Marketers they are abandoning the “permission model” and reverting to the “interruption model” in their online advertising.
The Ad Contrarian: ‘Brand loyalty’ — habit rather than loyalty
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) Of all the factors relating to consumer behaviour, perhaps none is more misinterpreted and mischaracterized than brand loyalty.
The Ad Contrarian: Slow, painful collapse of the social media fantasy
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) While advocates for social media still cling to the wreckage of “the conversation” and continue to hound us with apocryphal tales of social media magic, dispassionate observers are starting to realise what a delusion the whole theory of social media marketing has been.
The Ad Contrarian: Why social channels are cloning television in 2014
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) Last year, Facebook pretty much abandoned the fantasy and got into the interruption model big time. Great big traditional ads started appearing in our streams. Facebook still has pretensions of social media, but it’s pretty clear what it really is — a social media channel with traditional advertising plastered all over it.
The Ad Contrarian: 10 TV Spots We Don’t Need To See In 2014
In order to inspire creative people to do better, here are 10 TV spots that we’ve all seen a thousand times and we really don’t need to see again in 2014.
The Ad Contrarian: How status anxiety sinks adland
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) One of the great afflictions suffered by people in the advertising industry is status anxiety — worrying about what people think of you.
The Ad Contrarian: Adland — salespeople or sociologists?
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) Somewhere along the line, the ad industry decided that advertising should be about consumers, not products. This unnoticed and unremarked-upon mutation has had a profound impact on the nature and effectiveness of what we do.