The New Advertising Outlet: Your Life | Hacker News Reader

The New Advertising Outlet: Your Life

nytimes.com

11 pointspg8 comments

What I think is interesting in this approach is that they "got it". The idea of "permission marketing" is something that Seth Godin talks about for years.

Even big companies are seeing the value of providing services as a way of forming branding. It is no longer "guerilla marketing". It is getting mainstream.

Now, PG: wouldn't it be interesting to have a startup that could take this idea and "go meta", finding a way to provide smaller business the means to reach out for the users? :p

This is the most exciting article for the tech community I've seen in a long time. Way more exciting than facebook platform, etc.

Look at these quotes:

"Nike executives say that much of the company's future advertising spending will take the form of services for consumers, like workout advice, online communities and local sports competitions."

"How can we provide a service that the consumer goes, 'Wow, you really made this easier for me'?"

"People are coming into it on average three times a week. So we're not having to go to them."

"Nike spent just 33 percent of its $678 million United States advertising budget on ads with television networks and other traditional media companies. That's down from 55 percent 10 years ago, according to the trade publication Advertising Age."

"We're in the business of connecting with consumers."

I'm disappointed that there's not more discussion here

I read this and liked it a lot, but I was frankly stumped when I asked myself the question "okay -- how do you take this somewhere else? Make it an engine?"

I'd love to hear suggestions. I mean, custom web/product development is a great thing. You write some code with a business that you co-license the product with. So? Where am I writing a web app that I can apply to many different businesses? Where is this different than in-house promotional coding?

Like I said, I love the story. Just wish I could make something useful out of it.

Much of the responsibility is on the marketing side.

BUT

"Interactive" advertising agencies like www.schematic.com are picking up this business...and charging out the wazoo to develop very straightforward applications.

The new bottlenecks are the platforms that service the markets, networks, and communities that consumers [i.e. prosumers] connect on.

There is a lot of money to be made here.

Umair Haque at Bubblegeneration has a great analysis here:

"...for geeks, marketing, branding, advertising, etc are eeeeevil.

"The challenge, of course, is for geeks to understand that it's exactly this value equation they should be disrupting, not ignoring: making marketing, branding, advertising not evil.

"That they're evil doesn't mean you should ignore them - it means you should be destroying them and then redefining them: making them less about Madison Ave and BuzzAgent, and more about the deep 2.0 principles that in fact, are revolutionizing the deep economics of many industries - principles like peer production, gift economies, sharing, transparency, social capital, anticonsumption, and deep culture.

"Let me be a bit more blunt than I'd like to be: geeks (you too, VCs), this is your Next Big Thing - stop blowing it already.

http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2006/02/industry-note-great-...

Translation for slow readers like me: disruptive marketing through technology. I think it's the "disruptive" part of it that I was missing.

I'm all over that. In fact, if I understand you correctly, you just made a case for my application to YC. Because I have several dormant startup attempts, I had a lot of sizzle and flash I could have chosen to present, but instead I went with something exactly like this.

This reminds me of the proposed "coke spaces" that got some media attention back in 2001. Amazingly the entire term has been mysteriously cleansed from Google, and the only thing I could find to prove I'm not crazy is one cached Slashdot discussion thread:

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:N03ZKM2QIzMJ:slashdot.o...

Drug companies have been advertising this way to doctors for years. They often hold lectures and give out educational tchotchkes that many doctors find genuinely useful. In fact, drug company lectures and educational materials are the main way that a lot of doctors keep up on new developments in their field.

(All this, of course, is notwithstanding the bad parts about drug companies giving doctors free stuff).

hmmm...I think all this tech stuff about sport is cool, but the most important thing in sports is sportsman's will. The one can drip thyself with dozens of sensors, ipods, etc. But if he don't have a passion....it's useless. Nevertheless, smart point for Nike.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com