"Ubiquity is the new Exclusivity" - what kind of nonsense is that?

The adversaurus Linda Kaplan Thaler clearly doesn't get it. She is quoted in this morning's New York Times as saying:

“We never know where the consumer is going to be at any point in time, so we have to find a way to be everywhere,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive at the Kaplan Thaler Group, a New York ad agency. “Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.”

Whaaaat?! What kind of nonsense is that. Ignore the fact that it doesn't make sense, if you can, and instead focus on the fact that she is advocating spamming consumers as often as possible everytime everyplace everywhere as a way of building a brand.

Given that it is only 4 days since the NYT last did a piece about urban spam I'd have thought LKT might have had more sense than to advocate something consumers (and their vote-hungry legislators) increasingly don't want.

In a recent Forrester report entitled "Consumers Love to Hate Advertising:  Clutter, Interruption, And Irrelevance Spur Ad Avoidance" Peter Kim noted that the majority of consumers attitudes towards ads are unfavourable and their research pointed to three reasons why people didn't like ads:

1. There are just too many advertisements
2. Ads are too disruptive
3. Most ads aren’t relevant

So in an age where consumers are getting more power to control the ads they consume I can't really see how ubiquity is going to provide anything more than a short-term answer.

Update 1 : Violent agreement from Ben McConnell over at the Church of the Customer Blog:

"A company that waterboards society and its culture with advertising is an organization that not only lacks imagination and creative skill but is probably incapable of creating or maintaining any kind of meaningful relationship."

Update 2: Influx Insights offer up an anecdote cum urban legend:

"Twelve or more years ago, the famous head of an advertising agency was looking out of his hotel window in Switzerland. It was an idyllic scene; a blue sky, snowcapped mountains in the background, in the foreground, traditional houses were clustered around the town square, but rather too quickly his eyes focused upon upon the center of the square, where he saw dozens of tattered, dirty, torn umbrellas all bearing the name of one of the world's most famous soda companies. The head of the ad agency immediately fired off a letter to the CMO of the soda company, suggesting that it wasn't good to be in the visual pollution business and that ubiquity, was, a very bad thing."

Update 3: Spike at Brains on Fire compares Linda Kaplan Thaler to a bad parent:

"This way of thinking is equivalent to the bad parent that yells at their kid all the time and – when the kid doesn’t respond – YELLS LOUDER."

Comments

[Jason Lonsdale]

Hey, this could be a great game:

"Mass is the new niche"

"Interruption is the new engagement"

"Bombardment is the new targetting"

[Lee McEwan]

Thanks Jason. The last one is my favourite.