Posted: June 22

New thinking about ads

(Rome) On the flight back to Rome from St. Louis, I read an interesting article in a London paper about new thinking on advertisements. "Word of mouth" is the new message about advertising, according to research conducted by marketing firm Starcom MediaVest Group, "one of the largest brand communications groups in the world, " (as they claim on their web site). SMG is telling its clients to make radical changes in their approach to ad campaigns by getting consumers to talk about products, either in conversations or through online networks.

Traditional advertising has become less effective as people spend less time in front of a television and more time before their computer monitors. Whereas television ads presume that people passively absort information, the new theory emphasizes people actively passing on information through communication networks. What makes SMG's position interesting is their claim that they can measure the influence of such consumer-to-consumer communication which spreads information so quickly. Starcom claims that their analysis shows that 70% of people talk about at least one brand once a day. Of course, there is already plenty of anecdotal evidence of the political power of SMS messaging by young people who use their cellular telephones to spread news of protests and invite friends to join marches.

If this new paradigm is good enough for the big corporations like Proctor and Gamble who want to be sure people buy their products, then we Jesuits ought to sit up and take notice. Our "product" depends on people being willing to come to a church, go to a school or make a retreat. We never could compete with the big advertisers on television, but we certainly can take advantage of the possibilities of the communication networks that our students and friends are already using. During my visit to St. Louis I stayed at De Smet Jesuit High school which now demands that every single student has a laptop computer which he will take to class. The whole school is wireless. The networks are there if we only are willing to make a radical shift in our thinking. The Irish Jesuits did that years ago when they started the Sacred Space web site to promote daily prayer; some of the men in the social apostolate are doing it. But we could be much more intentional and willing to connect people across boundaries; for example, schools tend not to want to share contact information about their alumni. So our circles of friends remain small and disconnected. We ought to be encouraging and facilitating more connections so that people can talk about their lives and spread their influence.