Paint The Whole Sky, We'll Still Ignore You

Adage shares this in its 3min news: Advanced warning of the stepping up of the most pointless arms race in history.

Turning three sides of a 25 story building into a coordinated animation display, the world's largest digital sign is nearing completion in Times Square, New York. Commissioned by Walgreens, it wraps One Times Square...
Its 23 synchronized digital screens dwarf those of the nearby Thomson-Reuters sign which has only 11 such units.
The designers are determined to push the competitive advertising environment of Times Square to a whole new level.

Haven't they noticed, nobody is looking anymore?

They could paint the sky with their slogans and no one would notice. We've stopped looking at the stage. We're looking at each other.

Comments

[steveballmer]

Could this be why the Vista ads aren't working?

[Dwayne Phillips]

I have noted several things like this on my Day Book (form of blog). It seems that some people are still interested in building the world's biggest (most expensive or most something or other) physical thing. Dubai is building the biggest fountain in the world. China built the biggest dam. Someone else built the tallest building. Someone else built the biggest airport.

It seems that third world countries (if we still use those terms) are infatuated with these "world's biggest" things.

I like the way you said it, We stopped looking at the stage. We are looking at each other.

[gregorylent]

david, you have nailed it, this is where we are now, media savvy, maybe jaded ...

so...

take it to the next level, what is the future of advertising??????????

[david cushman]

Hi Greg. Future of advertising? I've written a white paper about models that fit the networked world a little better (it's available free from my fasterfuture.blogspot.com address. The link 'we've stopped looking at the stage' in the main bodytext above takes you to a slidedeck I made to (more briefly) illustrate the issue and the solutions. Take a look and let me know what you think?

[Felicitas Hackmann]

It's not only that we stop looking around us (not pay attention to buildings, ect.) and instead only look at each other. But it's also, that we get used to things so easily. Absolutely right, nobody is looking. But that is maybe, the people, who are on the photo are no tourists. They are (probably) people who live there, they walk this way every day. They think of their problems, talk on their cell phones, try not to forget the shopping lists. Nobody looks up, realizes how tall the buildings are or what is around them anymore. Except for people, who are not from there or are interested in, for example, advertising, because they work in this field.

[david cushman]

Hi Felicitas, thanks for commenting. I take your point that we blot out what we're used to (Fred Wilson talks about the way google has trained us to ignore advertising by placing it at the top and right of search returns, for example).
And when the noise is so intense (as in the Times Square case) we can't even hear the signals we are listening out for.

[gregorylent]

i laugh at the congruencies in group mind .... i have been trying for weeks here in bangalore to get a site designed where the conversation is the blog .... and i follow your links, your twitter, comments by whitney hess on newmediabuzz, and i see that a lot people are feeling the same thing

here in india i cannot yet find anybody who can even figure out what i am asking for, so it has been hard to spec ... something like about four friendfeeds on the front page would do nicely ....

it is almost a startup idea, too bad i only see the picture and have no idea about the bolts underneath

imagine walking into the coffee shop, four friends are there, talking to each other and about the outside things in their lives, and i want to sit down and go into any of the conversations just like i could in real life ..... right on the front page of the blog

somebody is probably working on it, but i dont know where

thanks for your site, will keep my eye open there

[gregorylent]

i think there could be a business based on customers making advertisements for companies. a reversal of the usual flow which is from company to street .... from the street to the company, and via "social media" .... the "vodaphone" (or verizon, at&t) room on friendfeed, with the honest conversation from customers, with corporate response, being the essence of the message, packaged as a service for the company, both as feedback and as advertisement.

the same money the company is spending on focus groups or crm is ALSO the ad budget ...

and micro-niched

more on this later if interesting

[david cushman]

Hi greg, there are people who have tried straightforward user-generated-advertising. Then of course reviews, recommendations (a simply tweet to a friend) are all adverts.
I think 'advertising' if it is to have any role is to create something users can adapt in order to adopt among each community of purpose they wish to share with.
This http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2008/06/why-traditional-advertising-wont-work.html explains it as simply as I know how. Anything you can add, very welcome.