So, what comes after GREEN?

[db7]

From June 6th - 10th in Atlanta, I attended the national convention of the American Advertising Federation. All the BIG Media (newspapers, cable, satellite, radio, web), Agencies and Researchers were there. The hot advertising topic is GREEN advertising. The hot regulatory topic is a national ad tax, and how long it will take a new Democrat-controlled national government to pass it.

It may benefit our forum to discuss GREEN advertising. Advertisers are certainly scrambling to jump on the GREEN bandwagon. Anyone sold any unique GREEN advertising lately?

Interestingly, nobody was considering the next GREEN. Where will advertising go after 1) consumers tire of the topic (ALL ad themes fade in the public's focus eventually) and 2) corporations have squeezed all the sales dollars they can out of GREEN associated products? Any guesses?

[Ad Chatter]

This is a good question. I've wondered this myself from time to time. My guess is a fairly safe one - new technology. With all the money being thrown at green cars, green homes, and green everything else, I think new ways of reaching the consumer will be a byproduct of all that research. Especially with the recent steps being taken to institute a national free Wi-Fi.

[db7]

New technology makes sense. Here's why.

Imagine the world as a teenager's room badly in need of cleaning. The teen has "polluted the environment" by throwing dirty clothes on the floor and ignoring tasks like dusting and cleaning. Can a parent correct the problem by ordering the teenager to stop changing clothes? That would effectively reduce the accumulation of dirty clothes on the floor. It would, however, adversely affect the teenager (depending upon the teen's desire to wear clean clothes), and the room would still be dirty.

A more effective solution would be to clean up the room. That requires work, but it results in a clean room. Requiring the teen to clean the room solves the problem and improves the teen as well, but someone else cleaning it produces the same effect - on the room. We take subsequent cleanings for granted.

Perhaps scientific and government resources should be applied to cleaning "the room" - the environment, instead of reducing the activities that cause pollution. We can condition/purify the air in a room, home and convention center. Why not clean the air in a city, state and country? We routinely purify water for entire cities. Why not clean lakes and oceans?

Somewhere, someone is working on "CleanTech" to replace "GreenTech". Selling that to the public will be an interesting and probably lucrative exercise after green advertising has gone the way of L.S.M.F.T. and Burma-Shave.