Steve Lodge left accountancy and a degree in finance behind when he trained as a newspaper journalist in the early 1990s. He later became an advertising copywriter working on blue-chip ad agency clients before setting up Oxygen Creative in 2002. He lives in Somerset and works out of Oxygen's Devon office. Advertising still works – like it used to…
This cola ad is a great example of trust in advertising. Things have moved on, of course, and the word on the street is that social media is the natural replacement for advertising. Why? Because people are not mugs – they know an ad is an ad. They know that advertisers are trying to inform them that their product is better than another.
Social media, however, is positioned as being real people giving real views. And this can be trusted better than advertising? We know this is, in most cases, true. But once again the ad world has caught up with this and all businesses are happily using social media as a form of advertising. So how much can you trust social media – now and into the future?
The Soda board promoting cola's health benefits to children
So, here we are again looking at advertising. Advertising which is managed properly – targeted, researched and well executed – can be as effective as it ever has been. No, we can’t tell people to feed their babies on cola, because people these days have a level of sophistication in their understanding of products. But they can still be convinced to buy your product or to trust your brand.
And, because it’s simpler to harness a return on investment to advertising than social media, it’s simpler to see whether an advertisement is effective and profitable.
Advertising is dead. Long live advertising.
