Yes, there was a time when advertising used to have some popular relevance. People liked commercials and campaigns, it was popular and influential. It was something stimulating in terms of storytelling, technique, form and content.

Now, after the overwhelming change of technology and media, even disciplines, like Gastronomy, have far more popular relevance than advertising.

Why? Simply, because they are more innovative.

Creativity -as advertising creatives understand it- is no longer innovative. Because, due to the industry standards and old fashion rules that keep seeking for “the big idea”. The big idea is dead, people will no longer sign our jingles, people will not comment on Mondays the new funny idea for X brand seen on TV.

Yes, we can blame people because they don’t watch TV. We can blame interactive advertising because slogans don’t work there.  We could conclude people don’t like storytelling -or, at least, they don’t like in a TV format-. But the fact is that people comment on Mondays the new iPad, the new cloud service or the newest application for mobile devices.

Public want innovation. Even the Cannes festival just dropped the word “advertising” from their own definition. People -and media- want new stuff, not another edition of the Big Idea myth. They want innovation, wherever it is. Wether it is in a media lab, in a development department, or in a kitchen.

We can not create something new if the rules are the same. The future of advertising is evolving to a mix of New Media, where you let the user play with devices, and the message is simply replaced with a successful user experience.

Old school just pushes messages. In my opinion, the future goes to events and New Media. Events that connect with people, which give the user relevant content and tools. New Media that give value to the public.

Give a tool, give an experience. Give the public something relevant, or the public will go home and play with his own content and networks apart from you.

Technical format
While production companies were arguing about DV, HDV or HD standards during the last years, in other  layer the fight is much bigger cause there is not standards in video through internet (even in internet itself). Every platform took its format and just broadcasted it. Now, the huge amount of contents is forcing the companies to make an effort to decide an standard format that allows distribution and exchange of contents. YouTube finally decided to abandon the 4:3 format and takes panoramic format. The standard H.264 is becoming the in-fact standard due to image quiality and weight, and even some platforms like Vimeo are allowing their users to upload their videos in HD (1280×720) or even Full-HD.  Due to the quantity of distribution platforms and devices like tablets, smartphones, portable videogame devices, etc, experts think that there are too many formats and the challenge of future is to decide an standard of distribution of it if we really want to push the industry.

Source
The unexpected blooming of video in Internet come from the source of the videos: users are the main creators of everything; particular users uploaded millions and millions of videos ti Youtube or equivalents, and years later the Production companies waned about the opportunities and created their own online channels through the platform.  But this romantic ‘power to the people’ it is not 100% true; at least 60% of contents that private users uploads are old TV productions, videoclips, and other stuff that they never produced by their own. Anyway, we can find three big sources of contents we can find in networks:

• Video contents created by users
• Contents by Production companies adapted to the network (Youtube channels, live TV)
• Productions oriented for Internet distribution

Once the internet and mobile blooming got past, the insane merger of the largest multinational corporations and the massive acquisition of small agencies by the huge international groups in the early 2000′s, everyone thought that commercial communication would consolidate as the solo-voice that globalization criticisms predicted.  It means, a global rhetoric, an only style, predefined formats and a standard distribution in the media, yielded by a few voices.  The risk was extended by the standard nature of technology. Everyone used Nokia, the ‘dotcoms’ flew from Cupertino to every single home, and we spent hours watching the loading page of Hotmail.

Times doesn’t seem to be different now. Google is the father of everything (if not the big brother) and iPhone is getting drunk in every corner-bar going Dutch with his friend Android.

But the real change doesn’t come from technology, neither from the networks;  the web and applications had to evolve from a broadcast message to a full collaborating environment. It’s the popular Social Media and we don’t need to talk about any longer.

Think globally, act locally.
There are two big agents who use this historic expression summing up their daily work. The first one comes from the system itself; the second one comes from the opposite direction, the main system criticism.

Nestlé International was accused many times of being an extremely huge company to be able to respect local markets and small communities, bringing the only thinking of western way of life and capitalism methods to unprotected areas. However, Nestlé’s executives have always defended the corporation showing that at least 40% of the company’s revenues come from local brands, both produced and distributed over every country or community they work in. They said to work globally but every single step they take is local, that is their interpretation, in their own words, of the mantra ‘Think globally, act locally’.

On the other hand, the second agent to use hold belief is the anti-globalization community itself. The term was coined by the activist David Brower in 1969 referring ecologist roots. Years later, the anti-globalization movement extended the meaning of the same idea; we can not change the world if we don’t start the fight in every little community first.

A real change in today’s context
This historical account is just a nice point to start. Not too long ago, the information interchange in the internet was one-way: from brand to costumer.  Now, the fight is not in the mainland but in the little streets instead; users are interchanging information passing over the brands.

Anyway this is not the main issue.  The point is the result of these tools: everything is more local than ever:  social networks connect people who are near, no one wants to find transcontinental couples but persons in their own town in online dating services, people are leaving nicknames to take real names instead (see Facebook, Xing), the audience wants to show their real photo in profiles, 3G networks are concentrating applications involving local services, bloggers are putting maps of their physical locations in their posts, technology is helping the local political debate, and local events are taking power through the same social networks.

Not enough? We are missing the most important point, which has a wide future that we’ll meet soon: Local advertising is not only possible but really powerful as well, through services like Adwords, where advisers can segment messages geographically, and contact the right person in the right place they need.