Ep 95 Is Traditional TV Advertising Dead Media Training April 4 16

Have we entered an anti madman era where advertising just doesn't work any longer?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in Life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Here are the statistics from the 2016 Florida Republican Primary. Senator Marco Rubio, the home state senator running for president at the time, spent $8.2 million on advertising throughout Florida's 10 media markets. Florida is notoriously inexpensive media market for politicians. Having 10 diffuse media markets, he spent more money than all the other candidates combined. Meanwhile, he came in a very, very distant second place. He paid on average $13 per vote. That's more than a couple of cups of coffee at Starbucks. Donald Trump destroyed him by more than around 20% more roughly 46% of the vote for Trump to 26, 27% for Rubio. Donald Trump spent basically nothing. He did spend some, but very, very little. What does this mean? Now? There have been many in the marketing circles, the permission marketing circles of the world to decry advertising and proclaim the death of advertising for years now, and Certainly in the 2016 presidential race, that seems to be apartment advertising does not seem to have had any impact whatsoever. Let's scratch a little deeper and really figure out what's going on here and what is in fact significant. I do think in the case of a presidential campaign where people are intensely interested, people do care about who's president of the United States. You might not care who is on the local water conservation board or even on the school board in your town, especially if you don't have children. But people do care about politics. So it's easier to generate natural interest in a presidential race. And if you have an interesting message with social media these days, building your own networks, as in the case of Donald Trump with his 6 million followers on Twitter, if you have genuinely interesting, different messages, it's easy to get attention and to cut through the clutter. We've talked about Donald Trump here before. I'll give you the standard caveats. I'm not here endorsing him. We're not here to talk about his political views or policies. Nothing I'm saying is an endorsement of Donald Trump, but I'm also not here to bash him. I really want to analyze what's going on with respect to communication trends that are relevant to the rest of us. I think people misread what's going on here to simply say, well, advertising doesn't matter anymore in politics. You can say that's the case in 2016 for the Republicans, but. And it's a huge but Context is everything. The particulars of the situation, Trump, and I mean that that term not in the name of Donald Trump's sense, but the particulars Trump any overriding principles that can be projected on a future campaigns. Because here's the problem with saying advertising doesn't matter. If you are running for agricultural commissioner or banking commissioner, education commissioner in a place like Florida, most people don't know about that race, most people don't care. You're gonna have a very difficult time. You can't just say you're gonna deport people of a certain ethnicity and get attention. It's not seen, it doesn't seem relevant. So the only way you can actually get in front of people is through paid advertising. What Trump has shown is if you have a genuinely different message, interesting message, a controversial message, well then you don't need advertising to get it out. It will just go viral. But how many people have that? I'm always struck by those who say advertising is dead, advertising is dead. It's all about social media content creation and sharing things on your iPhone and sharing podcast on your iPhone, your iPad, your ipod. People are always talking about things are like Apple these days. You got to be more like Apple and have content that so good people want to share. Here's the problem with that as a reference point. Apple is one of the biggest traditional advertisers in America. I see their billboards all the time. You see their ads on tv. They do advertise, they do traditional advertising. You can say it's better. Many of you remember from a long time ago their whole think different campaign. But they are a traditional advertiser because they know people are not may be interested in the latest with a cell phone or a computer, but it's not as interesting as a presidential candidate saying we gotta run all these people out of our country or do other inflammatory things. We are moving towards a world where it's a blended environment where your paid messages have to complement what you're putting out with your own content and what you're communicating in social media. Now, I'm a small business folks. I'm a one person business. I have certainly dabbled with paid advertising over the years and Google Ads, done television ads or radio ads. I personally have never found advertising to be effective for my business. Doesn't mean advertising isn't effective. It just means I'm not smart enough or haven't been savvy enough to figure out the right mix. So for me, in promoting my own business, I've used search engine optimization, webcasts, social media, creating books, videos, online courses, and that's worked for for me. But I can't then just say, well, advertising doesn't work for small businesses. No, just means I haven't figured out how to make it work for me. So I would be careful about gross generalizations talking about the death of advertising. But what it does show, I do think what's important here in the political situation is that the candidate with the most money isn't necessarily given a big advantage anymore. Nobody had more money in the history of the entire world political campaigns than Jeb Bush did going into 2015, early 2016, and it got basically no votes for him. So simply having the most money in a political campaign at the presidential level doesn't matter. Doesn't help you that much if you don't have interesting messages and you don't have the ability to communicate those messages in a compelling way. I would argue, and I don't think that's that controversial these days, to say that Jeb Bush was not a particularly compelling communicator during his ill fated campaign. Whether you liked his messages, that's a different issue. But the fact that he had more money than anyone else, but a message that wasn't that different in the fact that he wasn't a great communicator, you put it all together and it ended with a thud. Nothing happened. I do believe in the future when people are trying to size up presidential caliber talent, it's not just going to be about who's the best fundraiser, although money is still going to play a role in this. It's not just who can say the most inflammatory things, although the ability to generate interest is important. It is about who is the most consistent communicator on a regular basis and can do it not just through advertising, but through every speech, every tweet, every interview, every soundbite. Because Donald Trump, as much as some of you may find him wildly detestable, you cannot deny his ability to cut through the clutter with his messaging and to have his messages stand out and to be able to communicate in a variety of ways. He gets more attention to his message through one tweet than a Marco Rubio or a Jeb bush with a $10 million advertising campaign. That is power. And it's power that is not going away in the future for politics. It is applicable to some other people in some other industries, but not always. We'll be talking more about changes in the modern media landscape in just a moment.

Do you have a speaking related question for number one? USA Today best selling author TJ Walker. For more than 30 years, Walker has been a public speaking coach and media trainer to presidents of Countries, Prime Ministers, CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize winners, professional athletes and Ms. Universes. Send your questions to infoediatrainingworldwide.com or on Twitter J. Walker.

In an unrelated story, although it frankly seems related, cbs, the major media company, announced that it's trying to sell its 117 radio stations that they're in 26 markets. It allegedly reaches 70 million people. And I say allegedly because anyone who spent much time around radio, especially AM talk radio, news radio can will tell you people wildly inflate their audience figures. CBS saying they have 70 million audiences. Like me saying I have a 5 billion audience for my podcast and my YouTube channel. Well in theory, anyone with the Internet could reach it. Doesn't mean 5 billion people watch or listen. Same with a lot of radio. Now I say this is unrelated to the presidential campaign and yet it is related because the same factors are in play. Donald Trump is doing extraordinarily well in the presidential primaries and campaigns as of the date when I'm taping this show, which is March 17, 2016. Not because he has the most money for advertising or is spending the most on advertising or has the cleverest ads. He's doing it by simply saying interesting things and typing interesting things on his Twitter account. And that's why I don't think it's just a coincidence that CBS is trying to unload, essentially dump its 117 radio stations. Not because it has anything directly related to the Trump campaign. It's just that people are not listening to I don't listen to radio anymore and I've been a news junkie, a news talk junkie for virtually my whole life. But yesterday I had to drive from Long island to go to a training in New Jersey. The entire way I listened to Amazon music, no ads, didn't hear any news. But I can get the news from my RSS feed. Not while I'm driving. Of course, that didn't happen even a year ago. People are deciding more and more that they want to listen to what they want, when they want, how they want. Some of you are listening to this podcast right now in your car. Whereas a year ago, two years ago you might have listened to the local AM news talk station, might have been a CBS station. CBS clearly sees the writing on the wall. The numbers for news radio and news talk radio are plummeting. Now I remember just a few years ago I was a guest on WOR Radio, one of the biggest talk radio stations in the entire United States, based here in New York City. Long tradition of talk and after my segment the producer booking me said basically, hey, you got a job for me? Can I do some media training for me? I got to get out of here. Nobody listens to this anymore. Our host has to be beg for callers. And this is from the number one media market in the entire country. New York City, a powerhouse station with a strong signal. This is now several years ago and the bookers are telling me nobody listens to our station. We don't show up in ratings anymore. Media buyers are buying out of habit. Well, you can get away with that only so long if you don't have results. People are not going to spend any more money. Cbs, they're getting out. We'll see who pays and what they're able to get for it. I do think anyone who's interested in communicating, communicating to the media. You can't just write off every old medium because the history of media is more is more. Radio didn't die just because of tv. Movies didn't die just because of television. Paper books didn't die just because of ebooks. Things can build and add on each other. If you want to communicate, you have to always be looking for where the audience is. Ultimately that's your focus. Not on whether something is new or the latest technology, but where the audience is. Increasingly, the audiences are on a cell phone because they're listening to or watching you on a podcast on their cell phone. They're using that phone to listen to you through their car speakers. They're not just pushing 6:80am and listening to a generic AP broadcast from another city of somebody who's reading a wire service report found on the Internet from three hours ago that simply isn't cutting it anymore. So this is not a stock picking show, folks. But I would certainly not advise buying any traditional stocks in media, TV or radio companies. We'll be monitoring the media as always here, trying to help you figure out what the best ways are for you to communicate. Anytime you're speaking, whether it's a speech, a presentation, a webcast or a broadcast. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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