The new science of advertising

For years now whenever I get into a discussion about the future of advertising I fall back on my old party piece: The old agency model of market leadership creative partnerships is long past its use by date. If you think hiring the best creatives, art directors and writers is what is going to win you business in the future then you are in the wrong business…

In the future advertising agencies will be more interested in employing graduates who understand game theory than color theory.

and,

The old science of advertising was based on psychology the new science of advertising will be based on mathematics.

Obviously the old school incumbents find these ideas hard to take.

But as I try to explain to them I’m not talking about a revolution in advertising… it’s more of a logical evolution in the way we manage the customer through to the Kairos Moment.

After all the idea of the science of advertising is not a new concept. You only have to think back to the time when behavioral psychologist John Watson left academia in the 1920′s and brought his philosophy to a Madison Avenue advertising firm of J. Walter Thompson and Co to realise advertising is a lot, lot, lot more than just words and pictures.

We may appreciate the hook in the art work but it’s the science that does the selling… and the new science of selling is all about manipulating the metrics – the numbers – in your favour.

Take for example Bradd Libby’s academic credentials. Bradd graduated with a Ph.D in engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the field of computational statistical thermodynamics (CST). Bradd’s job today? He’s the Manager of AdMax Research and Development at The Search Agency. He and his kind represent the future of advertising. A future of customer profiling, analytics, predictive modelling and game theory.

I’ve said before that the winners of the Information Revolution will dominate the market with their ability to monitor and manage the Kairos moment. (See Surfing the Edge of Chaos). This then is the challenge facing advertising agency of the future: They will need to be able to predict and then manufacture the Kairos moment on demand.

Further Reading:

• Machine Creative - NY Times
• Grooming the next generation of advertising gurus
• Some thoughts on the future of the Conversation Economy
• The Wisdom of the Eurovision Crowd

About these ads