Advertising of 2007 (U.S.)

In the first in our series looking back at the best global branding and marketing of the year, Johnny Vulkan of Anomaly gives the view from the U.S.

by Johnny Vulkan

• View Slide Show

"Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking."

Silence.

In the vast chamber, high ranking marketing executives, attending a conference organized by industry paper Advertising Age, shuffled nervously in their foldout chairs before a couple of stifled chuckles drifted over the room, mingling momentarily with the familiar buzz of twitching BlackBerrys. Breathe everyone, breathe.

The damning words came from Robert Stephens, the charismatic founder of Geek Squad and builder of one of the growing number of brands that have been built without the help of Madison Avenue. I think it would be safe to say he's done a pretty good job.

Remarkable Year for Marketing

A few weeks earlier I'd heard Scott Cook, founder of Intuit (INTU), speak. Intuit produces Quicken and QuickBooks financial software. "A brand is what a friend tells a friend it is. Not what a company tells them," he said firmly.

Shuffling executives, nervous chuckles, more twitching BlackBerrys. You get the picture. This year hasn't been a wonderful one for advertising professionals—unless your business is advertising conferences entitled "The Future of Marketing"—but 2007 will prove to have been a remarkable year for the marketing profession in general.

The best stories of well-marketed businesses and brands have come from companies that haven't spent their money on conventional media but have adopted new approaches. Take for example the plucky crew at Blendtec and their wonderful Will It Blend? viral video series that has been viewed more than 70 million times. They're actually making money from their marketing by selling advertising and taking commissions to blend things, all while enjoying exponential growth in sales of their iPhone-obliterating blenders.

Thinking Differently About Brands

Or look at the grassroots efforts of a sports journalist in Britain who created My Football Club, a Web-based initiative that galvanized more than 50,000 soccer fans to become owners and managers of fledgling football club Ebbsfleet United. These new owners get to vote for who is on the team and who gets bought and sold. All of this was done with a marketing budget of essentially zero—yet they've already attracted big-name sponsors such as EA Sports (ERTS) and Eurostar.

This may well be cause for concern if you're an advertising or media agency whose business model is predicated on clients spending lots of money on creative work, and then buying media. But it may end up being good news for the people who actually buy products and services—or those who care to think differently about what's really needed from brands these days.

The money hasn't disappeared; it's just that some of it is being invested in places other than "traditional" advertising—primarily in products and services themselves. The creativity that was once the preserve of advertising has surfaced in rapidly expanding research and development departments at a new generation of creative innovation businesses. And a fair chunk has found its way to ambitious Gen Y'ers who have their hearts set on following the example of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

A Business Imperative

We've moved past the point where bragging rights belong to the creators of articulate analogies or metaphors for why one generic car drives better than another.