Advertising just doesn't work anymore. The Purple Cow is one of the best books on this subject. Consumers are saturated and advertisers are trying to come up with ways to make their marketing relevant, integrated, organic and personalized. The Mini Cooper has based their entire brand on personalization. Get exactly the car you want, design it online, you're unique, "Build your own Mini."
But a lot of what goes on in the world, not just in advertising, is a phenomenon I call faking it. It's where a person or company sees something valuable but they don't understand WHY it's valuable or how it works. They copy it but because they don't understand it, the copy is wrong and it fails. So at the moment, everyone is doing the personalization thing but they don't necessarily get it.
One of the worst, in my opinion, is "Say it With Altoids." It's this bizarre banner ad and mini site campaign where you can write a haiku and send someone else's haiku to another person. Why on earth would anyone other than "Bryce" want to receive "Bryce, choose Sara, she deserves it. Hillary"? And the process of submitting one and having it approved by Altoids so you can go BACK to the dumb site and find it, is just ridiculous.
The New York Times wrote that Wilkes University just launched a really fun personalization idea - they're using actual applicants names in their ads to convince students to choose Wilkes. Watch here.
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