Is Advertising Always Failure?

In his Buzzmachine.com blog this weekend, Jeff Jarvis raises the argument that advertising is "failure":

That is, the ideal relationship a company should have with its customer is that it produces a great product the customer loves and talks about and thus sells; there is no need for advertising there. It’s only in the case of failing at that idea that one needs to advertise. (And by the way, I hope there’s enough failure to continue to support media!)

Jeff spoke about this at the BRITE '09 conference this spring (see 16:00 in the video)

Jeff Jarvis at BRITE '09 conference from BRITE Conference on Vimeo.

Here was my response to Jeff's post:

Is advertising truly a "failure"? (even one to be hoped for, in order to fund media)

I take your fuller point to be that advertising represents a "fallen state" from the "ideal" of purely spontaneous or consumer-led conversation around the value of a product, service, or brand.  (Think Eve and Adam idyllically swapping consumer reviews in Milton's Paradise… before that damn Apple and its ads arrive.)

I think it's important that some categories and products are much more likely than others to achieve this paradise of having no need for advertising.

Three criteria which are essential to going ad-free:
1.    The product is easily adopted (easy trial, sharing… Everett Rogers' "attractiveness" for Diffusion of Innovation)
2.    The product is at a low price point, and is a lower-involvement decision (especially with a "free" price)
3.    The product has low marginal costs for the producer (all bits and no atoms is the ideal)

If you consider these, it's not surprising that we have ad-free success stories in categories like free web services (Twitter), lower-price media offerings (sleeper hit books or movies), cheap software (those $1.99 iphone apps), or modest-price fashion items (the craze for mismatched socks).  All of these fit the above criteria.

But if you look at a category like cars (less easy trial, high price point and high-involvement decision, high marginal cost per product), I would argue that you will never get a product so innovative that it needs no advertising.

My Honda Fit is damn innovative and uncannily fits a host of needs that I will pay much more for than an iphone app (high mileage, great storage, parkability, etc.).  Yes, I was greatly influenced by 3rd party reviews. But the costs and scale of designing and manufacturing a fleet of cars requires that automakers like Honda also invest in some high-reach advertising to build awareness and jump start the conversation. Even a consumer-crazed car brand like the Mini has found that they simply need advertising (in addition to all their grassroots buzz-making) in order to launch a product with sufficient volume.

To say that Mini's cars, or SAP's enterprise software, or Cartier's luxury watches, are "failing" to create a value offering that is as compelling as Twitter's or Tap Tap Revenge's--because they need ads to achieve scalable sales--would be an unfair comparison.

Still, I think it's a great question for every marketer to ask themselves:

How much are we relying on advertising?  And how much does that reliance reflect a failure to get our customer networks to sell the product for us?

-David Rogers