Bob Hoffman and me. We're on the same page.
Bob Hoffman, the Ad Contrarian who 10 days ago posted on Pepsi's massive social media failure, and I have had a very civil exchange on the issue and have discovered we pretty much agree on everything: Pepsi, social media, advertising, brain-dead marketing, etc. He posted again today on 4 Questions for the Digerterati , that make a lot of good points, although I still say that the claims of "digital advertising and social media" are completely valid IF YOU DO IT RIGHT. The benefits of digital advertising are debatable. A few months ago there was a lot of noise about how Facebook was driving more eyeballs to business websites than Google, but a few weeks ago, the drive through to revenue from Facebook advertising was pitiful calling into question the benefits of Facebook advertising. That, however, supports one of my key contentions about advertising in the 21st century: Advertising doesn't convince someone to buy something as much as it reinforces t...