Mass marketers actually think they’re going to stuff the Internet full of all this wonderful content, which is supposed to represent the future of advertising, media, communications, and human interaction all rolled into one cute little branded icon … Online services aren’t about information, they’re about entertainment … Marketers should get back to their TV roots … The advertisers who will get rich by brilliantly exploiting online services won’t do it by feeding us specs, brochures, and blatantly bad propaganda, but by being sponsors. Let artists create content. Smart advertisers will make it big by sponsoring the digital equivalent of the “The Milton Berle Show” (aka “The Texaco Star Theater”).
Predictor: Clark, Chris
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Chris Clark, a public relations consultant for GCI Group in New York, writes:”Mass marketers actually think they’re going to stuff the Internet full of all this wonderful content, which is supposed to represent the future of advertising, media, communications, and human interaction all rolled into one cute little branded icon we can access from our home PCs with the click of a mouse. But they’re all missing the point. Online services aren’t about information, they’re about entertainment. Advertising’s traditional benefit is subsidizing entertainment: something we watch, listen to, and sometimes read. Information is different from entertainment; information is a collection of data we generally read in text format. It’s what we used to call books. Information is the library. Entertainment is the movie theater. Some people think the library is entertaining. These people should not be in charge of entertainment. So what should advertisers be doing online? Marketers should get back to their TV roots – and they need to remember that people like entertainment more than information. The advertisers who will get rich by brilliantly exploiting online services won’t do it by feeding us specs, brochures, and blatantly bad propaganda, but by being sponsors. Let artists create content. Smart advertisers will make it big by sponsoring the digital equivalent of the ‘The Milton Berle Show’ (aka ‘The Texaco Star Theater’). In the early days of television, advertisers paid a ton of money to plaster their names, brands, logos, and slogans across anything on TV that wasn’t moving.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Advertising/PR
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: And Now, A Word From Our Sponsors
Quote Type: Paraphrase
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.12/clark.if_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney