Can advertising save the world? | Jeff Rosenblum | TEDxLaSierraUniversity

i believe that the advertising industry can help save the world and look i know that sounds like a ludicrous concept because advertising is known for obfuscation advertising is known for duplicity which are basically just fancy terms that i'm using up on the tedx stage to say that advertising is known for being full of crap but you know what for the last 50 60 70 years being full of crap actually worked from a bottom line profitability standpoint but now thanks to search in social and mobile technology brands are completely transparent and there's a new way to build a breakthrough brand and that new model is empowerment not just interruptions i've worked in advertising for over 20 years and it culminated in speaking with some of the world's top executives researchers professors authors even brain scientists while creating a documentary about the future of advertising and what i learned is the right kind of branding can have a tremendous impact on people's lives but brands don't need to do it for altruistic reasons because that kind of motivation isn't sustainable for corporations they need to do it because empowerment leads to incredible financial results in other words we can get rich helping save the world and what i'd like to do is take you on the journey that i went on and yeah we had this incredible opportunity to speak to some of the world's top executives and brain scientists but one of the most eye-opening experiences was just interacting with a company that built a reputation online for torturing parents and children who is this evil company crayola you see as i went around the world filming the documentary i was away from my kids a lot and if i was gone for a night or two it wasn't that big a deal but if i was gone for three four or five nights i'd like to bring back a little toy something said kids i love you i miss you something that's not too expensive that i spoil with them but something that we can play with together and i saw this incredible ad and i took some screenshots the ad did its job made the product look great there's purple bubbles and orange bubbles kids touch this thing and they're spontaneously dancing i'm on my way to father of the year what i didn't see is this the fine print it's in the lower left hand corner it's like size eight and it's virtually translucent some bubbles recreate it but what i learned is that in today's environment there's no such thing as fine print because i went online to purchase the product and i saw something i've never seen before every single person that rated it gave it one star and if you're ever bored on a saturday night just type this product into amazon because the reviews are hilarious i brought some with me you see everybody gave it one star because you can't give it zero stars the worst product since thaldomide poison whoever designed this product is a sick individual that hates parents and thinks torturing children is great fun if you're thinking of buying this just slam your hand in a car door it'll be better for everyone this isn't even a toy this is some evil person's creation i love this person this person got creative ten steps let's look at a few of my favorites step five is profound realize you can no longer trust the crayola name step seven's hilarious find that kid who bought it for you buy it for him ruin his house and if there's ever a class action lawsuit regarding this stuff i will participate but let's say you're too lazy to read the ratings and reviews well there's photos and there's videos of kids screaming and crying and let's say you think that well what's the big deal most purchases are still made offline well most people most people with some discretionary income we walk around with super computers in our pockets called smartphones so washable my ass follows us wherever we go but at this point after having the experience it only just realized that advertising is ready for a revolution i didn't have the solution yet i didn't realize that it's about brands empowering people but i finally learned it from the founder of patagonia you see when we made the documentary we had the opportunity to interview shaquille o'neal seven foot one 300 pounds but the most impressive and intimidating guy i met was yvonne avon's about five foot five 150 pounds and now he's 75 years old he is the embodiment of the dos equis world's most interesting man you see when yvonne graduated college he called himself and all of his best friends dirt bags and he meant it as the highest compliment what it meant was they didn't care about capitalism they didn't care about materialism all they wanted to do was rock climb and they'd rock climb for months on end and then when they were tired they go surfing they cared so little about the finer things in life that they lived off of cat food not just any old cat food the dented cans you could buy for pennies a can but even cat food costs money so they took an anvil out on the beach in between surfing sets you know an anvil is like that thing that wiley coyote tries to drop on the roadrunner's head and they hammered on it until they created the world's best rock climbing equipment called pitons next thing you know yvonne and all his dirtbag friends are running a really great company they're making the world's best rock climbing equipment they can climb and they could surf to their hearts content but one day he's up on the rock and he saw something that he'd never seen before there's a hole in the rock a scar in the rock and he thought to himself what caused this until he finally realized the tools that he created that fulfilled all of his dreams actually damaged what he loves the most in this world and when i heard this story to me it served as a great metaphor for advertising because sometimes the tools that we have damage what we love the most in this world the health of our customers in our own brand reputation but what i love about the story is when it turns positive because this is what yvonne did he threw out those tools that fulfilled all his dreams and he created new tools tools that didn't damage the rock but turned out to be fundamentally better for rock climbing eventually he diversified into gear and apparel now he runs one of the coolest companies in the world patagonia sells billions in gear and apparel yvonne is wealthy beyond his wildest dreams and has been able to travel the world rock climbing and surfing so the question is for advertising what is that tool that doesn't have the sacrifices and has massive upside and the answer is empowerment not interruptions in advertising we use the term activate when it comes to activating the model is about magnets over megaphones megaphones are the old way of doing business you buy a bunch of advertising you interrupt people you scream from the hilltops we're great buy from us magnets are the new way it's about creating content and tools that are so compelling people go out of their way to participate in it and then share it with others let's talk about patagonia today you see when i when i made the documentary i fell in love with patagonia and one day i was visiting my parents for thanksgiving and it's the day after thanksgiving it's known as black friday basically the number one shopping day of the year brands sell more on this day than they do in months combined and i wanted to buy a new jacket and it went up on the website and i saw this don't buy this jacket it even had a little button to take the pledge so i clicked on it and it had this magnet this immersive experience with all this content and information and if you zoom in at the bottom reduce repair reuse recycle reduces number one basically what they were saying is hey man if you want to buy this jacket we'll sell it to you but if you buy it you're gonna make garbage with your old jacket and if we manufacture it we're going to make buy products with a new jacket so maybe you should just buy less if patagonia built their brand through tv advertising they'd have 30 second interruptions but right within this immersive platform they built a 30-minute documentary celebrating people who have bought less and i remember sitting there at my parents kitchen table and i guess i'm a sap because i cried i literally had tears coming down my face because finally somebody had answered the question that i had for decades and somebody was extraordinarily brave to execute in that way because i didn't buy it that day they lost the sale but here's what they gained my eternal loyalty more important than that they've turned me into a brand evangelist so i've been in meetings around the world proselytizing for patagonia and more important than my yuppy ass right it's the people who are truly influential those who are leading camping fly fishing hiking and kayaking ventures around the world because they've been empowered to understand how they can defend what they love the most in this world which is the great outdoors what i want to do is explain that it's really important for you to understand this is not a green story people don't wake up every morning hoping that brands are going to hug the trees and save the manatees it's not realistic this is a relationship story it's about brands authentically improving people's lives one small step at a time i want to show you a bunch of different brands to show that it's not just about patagonia and we can start with some of the brands that we've already talked about today let's look at patagonia's closest competitor north face sure they've got some great advertising but they realize that they need an immersive platform to empower people so they've taken some of the world's best athletes and had them create tips and videos to help train north face customers how to be better athletes so it sits in the browser and it sits in mobile devices and it's not just about that one-to-one relationship all of these tools can connect into facebook and other social connections so now they're turning people into digitally enabled brand evangelists because they're empowered well let's go back to crayola for a second right sure they created a bit of a turd of a product but they also make some great products and more to the point they've created an immersive platform that helps kids learn how to be more artistic and more creative and i think we can all agree when kids are more creative instead of playing video games that make them more violent we're making the world a better place and they're using all this cool technology that not only pushes creativity for kids but it helps turn their parents into digitally enabled brand evangelists because they can take the artwork and share it up on facebook or amazon amazon was core to the story their empowerment is built into everything that they do there are tons of dying brands that just focus on selling products amazon empowers people through data and technology so those ratings and reviews are built right into the purchase process they use technology like collaborative filtering to give us better ratings and reviews we're empowered to make smarter purchases speaking of technology i'm always amazed at how few people have learned the google lesson right it's not about information and information overload it's about keeping things simple and streamlined but finally somebody figured out in healthcare one of the most convoluted industries in the world this is a site from a brand called oscar a new kind of health insurance company that is using technology to make insurance simple intuitive inhuman it's verbatim right off the really clean home page let's look at fender guitars for them it's not just about selling guitars they have fender university they're empowering people to become better musicians and i bring that example up on purpose because some people question this whole topic they think it sounds like hyperbole can advertising save the world but isn't the world a better place when toy companies focus on making kids more artistic and creative when retailers defend the environment when sports companies help us become better athletes when technology companies help us make better purchases when healthcare companies are more user friendly and yeah when guitar companies help us rip better guitar solos but what if every company that we interacted with behave this way what if the department of motor vehicles and voter registration were incredibly user friendly what a pharmaceutical companies gave us educational platforms about preventative health care what have automotive companies built online communities to help teach us how to use less petroleum i think the world would be a better place but again brands shouldn't do this just for altruistic reasons they should do it because this leads to incredible financial results which is sustainable motivation every single brand that we have in the documentary dominates the competition but we found this incredible piece of research published in a book called firms of endearment and what they found is that there's a group of companies that outperform the competition eight to one over a 15-year period and yes it's about the entirety of their corporate behavior but empowerment is a core part of their dna to be clear this isn't about the death of advertising that false eulogy has been written before advertising can still do incredible things we're just asking it to do too much this is about a creative renaissance this is about recognizing that the advertising industry is filled with some of the most intelligent and creative people in the world and if we just take that creative firepower instead of pointing it outward trying to figure out how to interrupt people and we turn it inward and make the structural changes in the strategies to help empower people and then turn it outward and create these incredible immersive platforms we can all make improvements in people's lives and when you realize that of the 100 largest economic entities in the world 51 of them are corporations walmart for example is bigger than norway so if we all make these small changes they can add up to profound results in people's lives so the question to me is not can advertising save the world the question is do you want to participate in it because the first step is simply deciding thank you very much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 29,242

Keywords: best practices, future, tedx, innovation, california, innovate, ted talk, business, creative, advertising case studies, new york, tedx talks, funny, tedx talk, amazon, corporation, rosenblum, branding, TEDx, relationship, TEDxTalks, black friday, ted x, online, save the world, product review, ted, advertising, ted talks, disrupt

Id: SvbcbEizCBY

Length: 18min 49sec (1129 seconds)

Published: Mon May 12 2014