Dotcom adverts off-line

A visitor savages internet ads and the New Zealand scene, writes DITA DE BONI.

Dotcom advertising is the "worst advertising in the history of bad advertising," says visiting American marketing guru Jim Rosenfield.

And he considers New Zealand advertising is, at best, five years behind the rest of the world and, at worst, adolescent and self-indulgent.

It takes a brave man - and a foreigner - to take on the self-congratulatory domestic advertising scene as well as the world's dotcom advertisers.

But feisty Mr Rosenfield, here as a guest of the Direct Marketing Association, is comfortable with his assertions.

"My perspective comes from a great deal of work in media theory, and I've also done a lot of study in cognitive psychology, or thought processes."

Mr Rosenfield has worked with clients such as MasterCard International, AT&T, IBM and American Airlines, as well as advising home-grown companies Air NZ, Telecom and WestpacTrust, and has more than 30 years of business and marketing experience.

He says the current trend in New Zealand advertising - towards minimal branding and ethereal images - is "five years behind the rest of the world."

"The [ads] are adolescent and self-indulgent. Overseas advertising has already outgrown that approach, returning to branding as being of prime importance. It annoys me to see this lousy stuff."

He says the best examples of New Zealand advertising are the Telecom ads starring Spot the dog.

Mr Rosenfield's latest quest is to untangle the web for both e-traders and "clicks and mortar" operations.

To understand how the internet will be adapted to society, he says, it pays to understand the pattern of previous technologies and their adaptation into society.

Mr Rosenfield says everything from fire, to the car or telephone and beyond follows a particular pattern of development.

"The internet right now is an `early stage' technology, just like the others were when they were first developed.

"And all those technologies had a `brittle interface' in the beginning.

"The internet is at that early stage now. It has a brittle interface. It's difficult to use, frustrating in many cases, and we still talk of `booting up'."

The real surge in e-commerce will occur when voice activation becomes widespread, bandwidth expands, the internet is consistently dialled in and the whole system becomes more user-friendly.

Mr Rosenfield says advertising marketers have to stop treating the internet like television.

"Humans have a bilateralised brain. The right hand is for instantaneous, involuntary pattern recognition while the left-hand side is for linear thinking, decision-making.

"TV is the greatest right-hand medium in the history of the world. It works best if someone is passive - a couch potato. The internet works on the left-hand side.

"Agencies - who don't really understand how the internet best works - are trying to turn the web into TV. And it's not working."

Mr Rosenfield recalls Proctor & Gamble, one of the world's largest advertisers, holding a summit in 1998 to debate the question of why ads "aren't working on the web."

Participants agreed that "no one had ever made a slogan famous on the web," and that it was not an image-building medium.

He says the content of the current slew of dotcom ads is terrible because the internet is being controlled by "venture capitalists and arrogant young engineers."

Mr Rosenfield says dotcom firms have to realise that brand-building skills are essential.

"The brand will be the experience companies have with their customers over time.

"Internet marketing is direct marketing on steroids but the internet will not eliminate direct marketing."

He says the internet will just change how it is done.

"We are working on sending small cards to people directing them to websites for more information," says Mr Rosenfield. "Using direct mail architecture is definitely the way to go on the web."