Alison Ray at SXSW: Don’t want to scare you all, but we’re not going to have jobs for much longer. At least, not the jobs we have now.

By Alison Ray at SXSW

How does it feel to be at SXSW? Among all the creative technologists, marketers, food vans, instigators of innovation, vendors, speakers, mentors, and the dreaded start-ups?

Pretty freakin’ scary if you work in advertising. After today I’m agreeing with the old saying – Don’t tell my mother I’m in advertising. She thinks I play piano in a whore house.

Don’t want to scare you all, but we’re not going to have jobs for much longer. At least, not the jobs we have now.

A million years ago, while in university, I had to debate on the topic “Will the internet kill newspapers?”. Today’s session on “Can’t buy me like” had the same feel to it – the industry, communications, media, brands and customer experiences are changing and the ones who will feel the impact most is us.  (For those interested I argued that the internet experience couldn’t replace the authentic Sunday morning experience of reading a paper over a lazy breakfast and coffee. The role might diminish, but there would still be a role. Jobs and Co. have since come up with tablets, which makes my context argument less valid, but it was about 12 years go. If you think to yourself I was still in primary school then, I hate you.)

Bob Garfield @Bobosphere and Doug Levy @douglevy1 have written a book titled “Can’t buy me like”, all about how authentic customer connections drive superior results. They believe that in 2013 if you are blanketing the world with advertising, you haven’t realised how the world has changed. While the industrial revolution emphasised scale, the digital revolution has decimated it.

In the product era, marketers would focus on their products and their features – any colour, as long as it is black. In the 60s we hit the consumer era – where we found out who we were selling to and marketers played to the heart and mind. Here the marketer defined the brand and shaped perception. In this era, the fundamentals were reach, frequency, target audience, influential ads, placed where people would see them. We all know those – we talk them everyday. But Garfield and Levy outline forces that have irrevocably changed this – the collapse of mass media, transparency, social connectivity, and trust.

This has given rise to the new era – the relationship era – where people’s experiences have a huge impact. Fundamentals of relationship era marketing are trust, belief, purpose and authenticity. Messages in this era that are just designed to shape perception feel patronising.  And the scary thing for us, is that advertising doesn’t work well any more in a social media fragmented world with a Like button.

These things –  trust, belief, purpose and authenticity – can’t be faked. The two presenters reinforce time and time again that you can buy advertising, but you can’t buy love. You can’t even buy like. But you can earn it. People know when companies are being inauthentic. Engraving the words Integrity, Communication, Respect on your build wall won’t make your company those things – just ask Enron. They suggest these 5 tips (left) for making sure that you are authentic and relevant in this new world.

These guys gave us numerous examples of “Firms of endearment” who widely outperform other companies. Advertising budgets for unloved and untrusted brands are three times higher. The underlying message: companies that care about something bigger than selling their product sell more of their product.

This did make me wonder, is this the wrong topic to be blogging about for Campaign Brief?

I don’t think so. I work for a business that has a purpose – to make a difference on our clients’ business. If this is truly our purpose, we will have to continue to evolve and change as both our clients do, and the environment does. We may curate content instead of writing newspaper ads for our clients, but our purpose stays.

This session was so interesting – plus presented so well – that I actually got up to ask a question. I wanted to know how we sell this new concept into not only our marketing clients, but also the board/executive level which is where real change needs to be endorsed.

Bob Garfield’s response? Buy the book. I plan to.

Alison Ray, planning director at The Brand Agency in Perth, Western Australia, is attending SXSW in Austin and reporting exclusively for Campaign Brief.