Loo.me

There’s a good article about digital advertising and Nike and how they are approaching the shifting landscape.  Some key points to the article:

• TV and traditional ad spending for Nike is down 80% over the past 4 years where as digital spend is up 200%.  They want to go where the consumers are and more and more that is online
• Nike Marketing Director Simon Pestridge says: “We don’t do advertising any more. We just do cool stuff. It sounds a bit wanky, but that’s just the way it is. Advertising is all about achieving awareness, and we no longer need awareness. We need to become part of people’s lives and digital allows us to do that.”
• For brands there’s a fundamental need to engage consumers rather than bombard them with ads
• Another good point in the article is that the days of interrupt-driven advertising is over.  The article claims, “Pestridge insists there will always be a place for traditional advertising, he acknowledges that the days of ‘interruptive marketing’ are over. ‘Now it’s all about deciding what you want to say and how you’re going to say it.'” In my opinion, sites that integrate a sponsors message into the content, whether paid or facilitated, is much more effective
• They spend more time making content that they put on the web than making taglines.  Content like Ronaldinho ‘Touch of Gold’ viral video has over 30 million views (see below)

I think this shows that the content is the ad now.  Advertisers increasingly don’t want to interrupt the user. They don’t want to just inform – they want the user to engage with them.  This is the where the future is.   It’s not in banners, but rather in, as Nike says, “cool stuff.”