Prediction 4: The Advertising Backlash Grows

As the consumer becomes more empowered, expect to see additional litigation and regulation as people strike out against advertising and its continued encroachment into every aspect of our lives.

Many people today probably don’t remember the early days of fax machines when they would ring all day & night with unsolicited advertising. It didn’t take long until a law was enacted making it illegal to send unwanted faxes to people (although, it was recently amended) and it is possible that we will start to see legislation relating to advertising in 2007. Sao Paulo banned all outdoor ads and UK banned junk food ads in kids TV and that’s only the beginning. As we start to interrupt the consumer at every turn, without bringing them any real value, we should expect them to strike back through any means possible.

Ad Age, in their January 2nd issue reports that according to Forrester, 79% of online consumers find the idea of ads on their mobile phones annoying and only 3% say they trust text ads on mobile phones.

According to Christine Spivey Overby, one of the authors of the report, "We've grown up with this view of the TV commercial interrupting our favorite program," she said. "There's this ad-equals-interruption mind-set that we have, and when you think about something as personal as the mobile phone that you hold in your hand and carry in your pocket, the idea of a marketer interrupting you while you have the phone, that's an idea that consumers hate."

At the risk of becoming repetitive, here's the ending to a piece we wrote some time ago, It's time to Captivate, not capture, your audience.:

And you can also very accurately look at what will happen if we don't make a change. People in captivity always revolt -- you can take that to the bank. If we don't start looking for ways to captivate rather then capture, then we need to start fortifying the barricades. For the revolt will come. And sadly, many people in this biz will be yelling, "Let them watch commercials" as they're led to the guillotine.