Seth Godin Opens IAB MIXX 2010 at AdWeek in NYC

IAB MIXX 2010 kicked off in dramatic style with Seth Godin bringing his purple cow ideas and more to a packed audience at the Crown Plaza on Times Square. In his address, he challenged the global marketing community to rethink how to connect with tribes and to forgo the old ideas of constant advertising bombardment.

Throughout his piece, Seth referred to the conventional thinking of old which was to promote a brand to the masses as often as possible. He explained how enormous TV ad spend, reaching audiences with prolific frequency, was once the winning formula.  This, with photos of cute babies thrown into the mix, was a sure-fire success. It was a case of constant interruption. But he believes that this model is now dated and ineffective.

No more Mad Men!

In short, consumers have trained themselves to ignore this repetitive form of advertising.

So, what’s next?

His belief is that marketers will need to engage with tribes of people who share common passions, cultures, goals and life filters. And this cannot be done using lots of baby photos. Instead, it will require a level of creativity that goes beyond the banal. Empowering people to have the time and wherewithal to create and invent adds much more value than the everyday box-checking and heavy lifting. He shot a warning across the bows of all big-spending marketers that the smaller guys are connecting with huge audiences on a shoestring – all because they have taken the creative route.

Whilst the IAB have called for more innovative display ad formats, Godin thinks it goes beyond increasing the number of ways to show a digital ad.  One quirky example he mentions are the efforts of Prufrock Coffee in London’s trendy Shoreditch area. This coffee house has introduced a disloyalty card, whereby if you collect stamps from various coffee houses around London, Prufrock will give you one of their coffees for free!

“Ideas that spread, win”

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Thanks,

Colm