I have been busy reading these crazy things called books lately – yes the ones made of paper.

I have become reinvigorated with the fields of sociology, branding, advertising and something called behavioural economics. Though I believe far too many companies are over invested in advertising and under invested in actually investing in initiatives that drive revenue, I don’t think it is Advertising’s fault we have just forgotten why we turned to advertising in the first place.

Advertising is about increasing brand equity to help differentiation products and increase awareness of the product so that if we find ourselves at the counter we just might choose that brand. Advertising is not about reach and the CPM. Just because you can shout louder doesn’t mean more people are listening.

What I want to do is reach the right people at the right time, communicate more than just a set of brand attributes and provide value.

We need to rethink our preconceived and indoctrinated notions of marketing, advertising and get back to realising consumers are people with needs not numbers.

At the same time we can’t throw out the world of metrics. If anything there is an opportunity to start quantifying the previously immeasureable value of interactions between people previously coined as customer service which is becoming the responsibility of every part of the organisation.

This is by no means a comprehension post, merely a rant to update the world on what I am thinking and working on.

I am working on something big, a project that will attempt to bridge the gap between social capital and advertising but more on that later.

In the meantime, I recommend you pick up the Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, Predictabilty Irrational by Dan Ariely and watch the video below.