Advertisers are reaching new dizzying heights of desperate. Of course that's because advertising is dead. I'm not the first to proclaim that. And to be clear, obviously not all advertising is dead.

Yet.

So allow me to narrow that.

Annoying advertising is dead.

Note:
The Do Not Call national registry
Myriad spam prevention techniques
TiVo (and the like) for fast forwarding through commercials.

Now this: Adnoodle is a company that will pay you to be annoyed by annoying ads.

Do they really think this will work?

Instead of paying the financially strapped to listen to your annoying ads, why not just create something truly great? Some service, or some product (or both) that just blows people away? Then you wouldn't have to spend money on annoying advertising.

You know that Krispy Kreme doesn't advertise, right? They don't believe in it. Instead, they make a superb product, and give lots of it away free. That's the kind of "advertising" I can get warm fuzzies about.

Or yesterday, I was with my family (parents, siblings) and my Dad was telling us about the amazing experience one of his co-workers had with Dave Smith. Dave Smith, for those not in Spokane, is our "local" car dealer of choice. Local is a funny word of course, because he's actually in Kellogg Idaho. Also known as "the middle of fetching no-where" North Idaho. At least 2 hours in the car from Spokane. And he's the largest Dodge dealer in the world. The largest GMC dealer in the Northwest. Which is, frankly, absurd.

So why is he so successful? When he's out in the middle of fetching no where?

Well, he does do some advertising, but so do all the other car dealers in town.

The ones that are 5 minutes away, and sell the same thing that Dave Smith does.

He's so successful because of conversations like the one my Dad had with his co-worker, and that he then had with us. And this buzz about how amazing the service and buying experience is at Dave Smith permeates the city. No annoying advertising needed.

And finally, Costco. Costco doesn't do any annoying advertising. But they are mind-bogglingly successful. I go several times a week :) and there's never a parking spot. If you've been there, you know why they are so successful. They sell amazing products, at amazing prices, in an amazing setting.

And get this. Last night in that family meeting my sister mentions her recent Coscto experience. She has a DVD player. She bought it at Coscto over a year ago. One of her kids must have stuffed too many Peanut Butter sandwiches in the DVD tray because it finally quit working. So she took it back to Coscto. No problem they said. Go grab a new one. Oh, and here's a $10 refund, the price has dropped $10 since you bought that old one.

Imagine if you will how many people will hear about that story. Imagine how much it cost Costco in advertising ($15 maybe?) to get her raving about it for months to anyone that will listen.

Annoying advertising is dead. Dead, dead, dead. And no amount of packaging will make that annoying advertising work for you. Don't do it. Instead - be remarkable. Be amazing. Give your customers a reason to advertise for you.