Laubacher: Advertising Adapts, Improves

Tim Laubacher is a brand strategist with B&a advertising in Columbus, Ohio. He received his master’s degree at The Ohio State University, where he had an especially amazing adviser.

He’s a creative thinker, who is a co-author of Research In Advertising Campaign Design in the forthcoming 21st Century Communication: A Reference Handbook, published by Sage.

With DVR allowing TV viewers to skip through commercials and consumers becoming more capable of tuning out clutter, is advertising facing a TKO?

LAUBACHER: Where consumers’ attention goes, advertising will always closely follow. It adapts. Product messages move from commercial breaks into in-entertainment product placement, for example. Advertising followed the eyes of consumers online in the form of banner ads. So Internet users become accustomed to the banner ads and barely notice them, so Search Engine Marketing becomes useful. Advertising will always face skepticism as entertainment technologies change, but these changes represent opportunities.

With the general public becoming more informed about advertising, are people correct when they say they are unaffected by advertising?

LAUBACHER: Not really. Ads are not always offering logic-based reasoning. Instead ads aim to allow consumers to identify with brands through emotion. So it’s natural that many people feel as though they are unaffected by advertising. But our behaviors show, however, that we are.

What’s your take on Bootb.com?

LAUBACHER: On the surface, it seems to be advantageous to the advertising client. They set a budget, often less than what they’d pay an advertising or other creative agency, and they get access to hundreds of contributors’ ideas, only having to pay for the one they choose to utilize. But Bootb.com and other similar sites will only serve as a supplement to client-agency relationships. To make the assumption that the advertising industry could completely shift to this model of project need and open-sourced solutions undermines the value of strong client-agency relationships. However, if Bootb.com and similar sites become the norm, it certainly represents an unstable future for agencies.

What’s a future trend that we may see in branding?

LAUBACHER: I think we might see brands investing in talented individuals at young ages in an effort to secure their loyalty in the event they become stars. You already see this with Nike, Adidas, and other athletic gear brands investing in youth sports teams, camps, etc. Maybe we’ll see Coca-Cola or Levi’s, for example, sponsoring young actors and actresses and for the talent that make it big, they will work exclusively with Coca-Cola product placement and wear Levi’s jeans in films.

What’s the optimal strategy for Tic-Tac-Toe?

LAUBACHER:

• With your first move, it’s in your best interest to place your X in a corner.
• If your opponent counters with any space other than the center, you’ve already guaranteed victory in the game’s seventh move, your fourth.
• If your opponent is smart and counters your first move with an O in the center, it is best to surround the opponent by placing an X in the opposite corner from your first mark.
• To stay in the game, your opponent must place an O in one of the four open side spaces and not one of the two corners.
• In the event that your opponent falls into your trap and places an O in a corner, you can guarantee victory by placing an X in the only remaining corner and then just letting the game play out.

Tim’s blog: http://www.timlaubacher.com/

Tagged as: 5 Questions, Advertising