The strange death of modern advertising
Sometimes I feel as though I am standing at the graveside of a well-loved friend called advertising.
The funeral rites have been observed. The gravediggers have done their work. The mourners are assembled. Most of them are embarrassed to say they ever knew the deceased. "Advertising?" they say, "I'm not in that business."
At the age of only 50, advertising was cut down in its prime. Advertising holding companies used to boast about their share of the advertising market. Now they are proud of how much of their business is not in advertising. How did this happen?
The first stage in the illness, they said, was sociology - the family no longer gathered to watch television. So they said, the 30-second commercial was finished. The next symptom was technology - because, they said, even if family members were all in the same house, they would not all be watching the same screen. Laptops, mobile phones, iPods, games - all brought more media fragmentation, more channels, more choice, more complication.
Now, the diagnosis is that it is all in the mind - it is all a question of psychology.
Today, social scientists divide the world between digital natives and digital immigrants. Anyone over 25 is a digital immigrant. He or she has had to learn the digital language. The digital native learnt it like you learnt your mother tongue, effortlessly as you grew up. The digital immigrant struggles and forever has a thick, debilitating accent.
The latest affliction, according to neuroscience - and this was the death knell - is that the digital native's brain is physically different as a result of the digital input it received growing up. It has rewired itself. It responds faster. It sifts out. It recalls less.
This, apparently, is what makes it possible for a modern teenager, in the 30 seconds of a normal television commercial, to take a telephone call, send a text, receive a photograph, play a game, download a music track, read a magazine and watch commercials at x6 speed. They call it "CPA": continuous partial attention. The result: day-after recall scores for television advertisements have collapsed, from 35 per cent in the 1960s to 10 per cent today.
So, they say, sociology, technology and psychology have put advertising in its box. If you are in advertising, you are about to be buried. What to do? There is only one option left: to pray.
Conveniently, a Bible has been placed beside you in the box. Because you are a God-fearing person, you open it. Through divine good fortune, it falls open at the exact right page to show you your escape route.
You find the way out in the gospel of St John:
In the beginning was the Word . . .
You read on:
. . . and the Word was God.
No copywriter could put it better. The word is the brand's guide, protector, defender and saviour.
The word comes first and it is singular - one word, not several words. For a brand, the word comes before all actions, in all media, at all times.
Two words is not God. It is two gods, and two gods are one too many.
The word is the saviour because in each category of global business, it will only be possible for one brand to own one particular word. And some of them have already been booked.
Each brand can only own one word. Each word can only be owned by one brand. Take great care before you pick your word. It is going to be the god of your brand.
Try this simple test on your own company's products or services.
Pick a brand. Any brand.
Now, think of what you are trying to say. Can you precisely describe, in one word, the particular value, the characteristic, the emotion, you are trying to make your own?
If it runs to a sentence, you have a problem. A paragraph? Sell your shares.
Why? Because nowadays only brutally simple ideas get through. They travel lighter, they travel faster.
What I am describing here is a new business model for marketing, appropriate to the digital age. In this model, companies compete for global ownership of one word in the public mind.
This is "one word equity".
In this new business model, companies seek to build one word equity - to define the one characteristic they most want instantly associated with their brand around the world, and then own it. That is one-word equity.
It is the modern equivalent of the best location in the high street, except the location is in the mind.
For example, the word "search" is now owned by Google. For 20 years, "favourite" was owned by British Airways. Sony used to own "innovation", but that word has probably now been taken by Apple. Royal Bank of Scotland, in its US marketing, will soon own "action". The same applies to political parties or countries - Britain's Labour party won three elections with the word "new". America's one-word equity is "freedom".
The challenge is to find the word, the word that guides everywhere. And once it is found, never to forsake it. How do you find that word? There are 750,000 words in the English language. How do you know which is the right one? It is difficult.
To reduce the complex to the simple without being simplistic requires, in the words of Bertrand Russell, the painful necessity of thought.
The pain comes from the ruthless paring down of the paragraph to the sentence and the sentence down to the word. One-word equity is the most priceless asset in the new world of the new technologies. Discover it and you have the route to salvation and eternal life.
Lord Saatchi is an executive director of M&C Saatchi
广告必须一词制胜
有
时候，我觉得自己好像站在一位挚友的墓旁，他的名字叫做广告。
葬礼已经举行。掘墓人的活已经干完。哀悼者聚到了一起。多数人都羞于承认认识死者。“广告？”他们说，“我不是干那行的。”
广告年仅50，英年早逝。广告控股公司过去常常夸耀自己在广告市场的份额。如今，它们却为自己有多少业务不是广告而自豪。这是怎么回事呢？
他们表示，疾病最初发生在社会学层面――家庭成员不再聚在一起看电视。因此，他们表示，30秒的广告完蛋了。第二个症状是科技――他们说，因为即使家庭成员共处一室，他们也不会都在盯着同一个屏幕。笔记本电脑、手机、iPod、游戏――所有这一切都带来了更多的媒体细分，更多的频道、更多的选择、更多的复杂性。
现在，诊断结果是，病因完全在于心理――完全是一个心理学问题。
今天，社会科学家将人类分成两种：数字土著(digital native)和数字移民(digital immigrant)。任何一个超过25岁的人都属于数字移民。他或她不得不学习数字语言。而数字土著学习数字语言就像学习母语一样，在成长过程中轻松就能学会。数字移民则很费劲，而且永远带着一种浓重而糟糕的口音。
根据神经学的观点，最新的折磨（这为广告敲响了丧钟）在于：受到成长过程中数字输入的影响，数字土著的大脑结构发生了变化。它调整了自己的线路，反应更快，能筛选信息，但回忆得更少。
显然，正因为如此，一个现代青少年能够在30秒的电视广告时间内，打一个电话、发一个文件、接收一张图片、玩一场游戏、下载一曲音乐、读一本杂志，同时以6倍的速度观看一则广告。他们称之为“CPA”：持续局部注意力。结果是：电视广告的次日回忆得分迅速下降，从上世纪60年代的35%降至现在的10%。
他们表示，社会学、科技和心理学最终让广告寿终正寝。如果你在广告业，你就要被埋葬了。怎么办？只剩下一个选择：祈祷。
方便的是，一本《圣经》放在了墓中你的身旁。你是个虔诚的人，因此打开了它。在神的护佑下，你翻开的那页，正好为你指明了逃生之路。
你在圣?约翰(St John)福音书中找到了出路：
“开始是那个词……”
你接着读下去：
“……那个词就是上帝。”
没有任何一个广告撰写人能写得更好。“词”是品牌的向导、保护人、捍卫者和救世主。
词最先出现，而且是单数――一个词，而不是几个。对于一个品牌而言，“词”在任何时候，任何一个媒体上，都出现在所有行动之前。
两个词就不是上帝了。而是两个上帝，但两个上帝就显得多余了。
“词”是救世主，因为在任何一类全球行业中，一个品牌只可能拥有一个特殊的词。其中有一些词已经被人预订了。
每个品牌只能拥有一个词。每个词只能由一个品牌拥有。在选择那个词时要格外小心。它将是你的品牌的上帝。
对你自己公司的产品或服务做一个简单的测试吧。
选择一个品牌。任何一个都行。
现在，想想你想说什么。你能用一个词，来准确描述你打算拥有的特殊价值、特性和情绪吗？
如果你的回答是一句话，问题就来了。如果是一段话？那就卖掉你手中的股票吧。
为什么？因为现今只有最简单的创意才能成功。它们能轻装前进，速度也更快。
我在这里描述的是一种适合数字时代的营销业务新模式。在这种模式中，各家公司都在争夺公众心目中那个词的全球所有权。
这就是“一词权益”(one word equity)。
在这种新的业务模式中，公司都希望打造一词权益――定义他们最希望能在全球范围与其品牌瞬间相联的一个特征，然后拥有它。这就是一词权益。
这是现代意义上的大街上的最好位置，只不过这个位置在心里。
例如，“搜索”这个词现在属于谷歌(Google)。“最爱”这个词曾被英国航空(British Airways)拥有了20年。索尼(Sony)过去曾拥有“创新”，但这个词现在可能已经被苹果(Apple)占有了。苏格兰皇家银行(RBS)在美国市场营销的过程中将很快拥有“行动”这个词。这同样适用于政党或国家――英国工党凭借“新”一词赢得了3次选举。而美国的一词权益是“自由”。
挑战在于找到这个指引一切的词汇。一旦找到了，永远不要抛弃它。如何找到那个词呢？英语中有75万个词。你怎么知道究竟是哪一个？这很难。
为了变复杂为简单，又不至于过分简单，用伯特兰?罗素(Bertrand Russell)的话来说，需要经过一番痛苦的思考。
痛苦来自要无情地把一段话删减成一句话，然后再把一句话删减到一个词。在新科技的新背景下，一词权益是最珍贵的资产。找到它，你就会找到救赎和永生之路。
萨奇勋爵是上奇广告公司(M&C Saatchi)的执行董事。
