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Seems like I’m running across a lot of people suggesting that advertising has changed and doesn’t work anymore given the realities of the new world.

A few weeks ago, I read an interesting interview with Al Ries (of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding Fame) He was pimping his book, The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR.

Today, I’m pointed to a presentation by Joseph Jaffe called A World without Advertising. I couldn’t get a good read on what he thinks is going to replace it. He mentions consumer generated content a lot, and consumer control — real Clue Train Manifesto type stuff.

I decry Big Content (like the music labels) who refuse to recognize that their business model is broken, and that rather than trying desperately to hold onto the past, they need to find a new way to thrive in the new reality.

I find it harder to do that with Advertising though. I guess it’s different when it’s your background you’re being asked to reevaluate.

I don’t know that Ries or Jaffe have the answers. I don’t even know if they’re right. It may just be that I’m primed for that because the marketing for my new business isn’t working the way I’d planned that it would.

Still, it feels to me though like everybody is saying there’s an iceberg up there you’d better turn, but nobody seems to know where the steering wheel is. I need to work on finding that. I don’t know how to make consumer generated content work for distributing a message. I understand a bit better about how PR might work, but I’m not a PR guy. I’ve never been a PR guy, so I don’t know how to function in that kind of a world.

Here’s a very interesting O’Reilly post about advertisers buying page rank instead of impressions. I hate SEO’s if only because the bastards caused me to shut down my comment sections with all their damned comment spam. O’Reilly brings up some really intriguing points though, and ultimately, I think it’s something that the search engines have to fix.

This interview with FedEx logo creator, Lindon Leader is pretty interesting.

I had noticed the arrow in the FedEx Logo before. Strangely though (and completely unrelated), I had never noticed the arrow in the Amazon.com logo that went from A to Z until somebody pointed it out to me. I guess it’s funny what you pick up on.

Robert Scoble has some Interesting Thoughts on Persuasion.

I’m half tempted to get Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion which is linked in the comments. Except I know it would sit on a shelf collecting dust while I read everything but that. I want to read those kinds of books. I’ve even purchased several of those kinds of books. Somehow, I’m never in the mood when I’m putting one book away and starting another though.

I was all ready to dismiss James Hering’s column, No More “Visits,” Please!. I could see where he was going, and I was pretty sure he was wrong (or just desperate for a column idea to fill inches). But, by the time I got to the end of the piece, I have to say, he’s probably right. We probably do need stronger call to actions.

A bunch of e-mail clients are changing the way they handle image display. A newsletter redesign may be in order. I’m pretty sure our newsletters are readable even if you can’t see any pictures, but I should be 100 percent sure (and then some).

ClickZ has an interesting case study on how Cisco’s sales force is using a template based e-mail system to be able to send e-mails to their clients.

I have mixed feelings about this. As a marketer, I’d certainly like to have the ability to track messages/effectiveness as they’re going out through the sales force. I also really like a templating approach since it makes it easier and more consistent for the sales force while still providing message flexibility. Still, it seems remarkably complex to implement. And, once you implement it, then you need to convince your sales force to adopt it and train them on the best uses. It’s too much to consider on a dim, Monday morning.

So then excessive bounces will get you blacklisted? I had no idea. We’re well below 60% (a number which seems improbable to begin with), but still…

From ClickZ: E-Mail: A Job for Professionals

This clickz article on acquisition strategies says that piggybacking on somebody else’s relationship seems to produce one of the best results when looking at list growth.

That’s obvious, and we’ve looked at newsletter sponsorships with various levels of success. But, they mention this company was able to take the placement out in trade. That’s interesting. I want to think about that for a while….

There are a few interesting tidbits in this ClickZ story, but mostly I’m just setting an anchor in case I ever want to find it again.