Oh my God…I’ve just realised why ‘conversations’ are complete and utter bollocks.
This isn’t going to be one of those pisstakey posts where I mock the wankarama use of the word ‘conversations’ in advertising agencies.
I think it’s a fine word for describing something that is a back-and-forth dialogue, as opposed to a one-way monologue.
But I’m wondering how much we really prefer a conversation over being the recipient of a single communication.
It seems to me that we have almost taken for granted the idea that the two-way is best, as it gives us the chance to have some power and some say in the relationship. But the problem with that is that we already had all the power we needed, because we’re the ones who have always been able to choose whether to buy or ignore.
Isn’t a conventional advertising message just like a beggar on the street? An entity that wants something from you and has to approach you cold (you might say that the advertiser gives you something but the beggar does not, however, I think the beggar gives you the opportunity to feel good about yourself for just 20p – darn cheap if you ask me)? So we then choose whether or not to give a shit, so the power is all ours.
Every ad we experience is like that: ‘please do/buy/be interested in this thing’.
Now, with conversations, we actually lose some of that power by engaging with companies and products a little more closely so that they can draw us in a bit further in order to get us to buy what they are selling.
So why would anyone want that to happen? Of course, plenty of people do for the (very few) right brands – you only have to look on the fan pages of Facebook to see that – but the idea that we would automatically prefer a two-way chat with the companies that advertise to us seems to make no sense whatsoever.
When Nike offers you an online game or a chance to take part in a fun run, it’s just like letting the traveling salesman into your home and allowing him have a firmer opportunity to sell you something. You are on the back foot in the relationship, feeling somewhat beholden to him because of all the effort he’s made in persuading you. Fine, if that’s what you want, but most of the time it isn’t.
Most of the time you want to do what the hell you like, and very rarely is that having a conversation with a teabag manufacturer.
I appreciate that this flies in the face of current bullshit, and therefore might need a little help embedding itself into the current debate, that’s why I have condensed the above into a handy rhyming couplet:
We have no time or inclination
For advertising ‘conversation’.
You are right. The dudes selling charity on the street. I won’t listen to them for fear of having a conversation.
And that’s not a fear of a conversation per se, it’s fear of a phony conversation that is all about manipulation.
But I will give to charity.
I wonder whether the true value of the conversation that is undeniably happening is to be the *subject* of it rather than a participant.
Do something so cool that people talk about it among people they like and trust.
Friendship with a brand is the silliest idea in the world. Who wants to be friends with a person whose only role in life is to take from you? And who isn’t even a fucking person.
It’s absurd.
Great post.
I keep expecting any moment at the Chelsea football ground to hear – “That last goal was sponsored by McDonalds,
just like McDonalds helps you achieve your goals”
The thing about these conversations is that the brands have editorial control over them. If I go onto a brand’s facebook page and say how shit it is, my comment will be moderated and disappear. So they only want to hear stuff if it’s good. For which reason they can fuck off.
Even the news organisations like the Beeb either won’t allow anything controversial to be posted on their blogs, or particularly annoyingly, when there’s a topic that they deem sensitive, they won’t have a blog link for it.
And it’s suddenly struck me that neither of these is actually a conversation. It’s just a monologue that they’re getting a bunch of nodding twats to write for them.
As you lightly reference yourself at the end, it is totally category and brand dependent. Buying bread? I don’t give a sh**. Buying a car? I certainly do.
I’ve been on about this for some time. It’s amazing how idiots can hijack an industry with jargon, and no one questions anything. I’ve never met or heard of anyone who said or implied they wanted to have a conversation with a brand. Yet the new breed of no-nothing MBAs and marketing gurus babble about it like it’s some kind of newly discovered natural law, like gravity. Well, the emperor has no clothes. Never has.
That would be KNOW nothing. It’s early, and this topic pisses me off so much I get happy fingers on the key board. Or it that key bored?
The latest ‘conversation’ I saw was that Polo were asking‚Ķ ARE YOU A SUCKER OR A CRUNCHER?
The thing is I just thought it was a rip-off of ‘How do you eat yours?’ for Cadbury’s Creme Eggs from the mid 80’s. I’m sure there are other examples too. Could it be that there are so many more vacuous idiots about these days that set up or visit facebook pages on inane bollocks that these propositions, that have always existed, have now become so called ‘conversations? Could it be that George Lois was right when he said that reality tv would be the bane of advertising or is it just that what previously went only so many places (tv, press, radio) now goes to way too many places via that interweb thing and now consequently gets on our bloody nerves?
Maybe people don’t want to have conversations with brands but they are definitely out there having conversations about brands. I know because I am on one right now. Ok, that because I have to for work but still…
@johnw
and milky bar were asking me to ungrow up.
[…] of Grip in his recent post on specialized social networks; and the endearingly belligerent Ben Kay rants against the use of the word ‚Äúconversations‚Äù before absolutely tearing into ex-WK and Ogilvy creative […]
Hola,
http://www.ben-kay.com – da mejor. Guardar va!
Gracias
Ilias
[…] of Grip in his recent post on specialized social networks; and the endearingly belligerent Ben Kay rants against the use of the word ‚Äúconversations‚Äù before absolutely tearing into ex-WK and Ogilvy creative […]