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It’s sort of like a clash of the titans, except the two mighty powers do not actually do battle in person. Bob Garfield, an editor at large for Advertising Age and a cohost of NPR’s On the Media, has written a book about media and advertising called The Chaos Scenario. As you can surmise from the title, Garfield sees these industries as being in a state of upheaval—and, in his opinion, they’re not doing much to halt their demise. Jeff Goodby, of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, reviewed the book for Advertising Age, awarding it a meager two stars.
The two men are, obliviously, coming from very different frames of reference, and with different interests at stake. Garfield comments on the industry, while Goodby derives his livelihood from it—he is the industry. Of course he thinks Garfield is being unduly negative about advertising’s chances of survival, and of course he believes that the current upheaval will have a Darwinian effect on agencies. Only the best will survive, and he intends to be among those still standing. The idea that no one will make it out alive is simply not an option, because that would mean acquiescing to his own obsolescence. Give up? No way, especially not in an industry as competitive as advertising.
As Gooby writes in his review:
The Chaos Scenario is “a well-researched descent into what he gleefully sees as the fragmentation of mass media on a global scale. It’s fun to watch the channels fly apart. It’s the internet and DVRs that are causing all this, he says, with their heroic empowerment of the individual to call his or her own shots.
Along the way, he chronicles in great detail the inevitable demise of mere newspapers, tenuous magazines and teetering media empires. (‘Boom goes the dynamite,’ he intones again and again, in a not especially charming way.) But he saves the real snickering for advertising people, who are basically riding an out-of-control steam train while lighting cigars with a vanishing stack of $100 bills.
According to The Chaos Scenario, advertising is now in a screaming ‘death spiral,’ in which ‘fragmentation of an audience and DVR ad skipping lead to an exodus of advertisers, leading in turn to an exodus of capital, leading to a decline in the quality of content, leading to further audience defection, leading to further advertiser defection and so on to oblivion.’
Oblivion. Jeez, I hope my kids don’t read this.”
There’s more to Goodby’s review, which has garnered 36 comments (and counting) at Advertising Age’s website. There’s also a link where you can download free chapters of The Chaos Scenario. It’s worth checking out.
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Is the ad world dying? Jeff Goodby doesn’t think so.
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It’s sort of like a clash of the titans, except the two mighty powers do not actually do battle in person. Bob Garfield, an editor at large for Advertising Age and a cohost of NPR’s On the Media, has written a book about media and advertising called The Chaos Scenario. As you can surmise from the title, Garfield sees these industries as being in a state of upheaval—and, in his opinion, they’re not doing much to halt their demise. Jeff Goodby, of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, reviewed the book for Advertising Age, awarding it a meager two stars.
The two men are, obliviously, coming from very different frames of reference, and with different interests at stake. Garfield comments on the industry, while Goodby derives his livelihood from it—he is the industry. Of course he thinks Garfield is being unduly negative about advertising’s chances of survival, and of course he believes that the current upheaval will have a Darwinian effect on agencies. Only the best will survive, and he intends to be among those still standing. The idea that no one will make it out alive is simply not an option, because that would mean acquiescing to his own obsolescence. Give up? No way, especially not in an industry as competitive as advertising.
As Gooby writes in his review:
There’s more to Goodby’s review, which has garnered 36 comments (and counting) at Advertising Age’s website. There’s also a link where you can download free chapters of The Chaos Scenario. It’s worth checking out.
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