Dennis Ryan, Chief Creative Officer, Element 79
I’ve been in this business for twenty-five years. I’ve witnessed the rise and fall of Superbowl advertising, the transition from the chocolate-filtered skies of Top Gun era Ridley Scott to the flat-lit look of reality programming…and now, I’ve got ringside seats to the mammoth struggle between off-line and on-line, paid and earned media, marketing and P.R. as we all learn to navigate the tricky currents of convergence. With technology re-inventing itself on a six month cycle, information no longer travels a super-highway, it lives in a super-collider. With the stunning rise of social networking and technology-enabled personalization, the time-honored discipline of marketing integration alone can no longer reach empowered consumers hell bent on media dis-integration. Brands are opinions, and our viral, networked world now provides personal opinion a mass channel, exponentially expanding the time-honored Dunbar number and requiring marketers to think of advertising as a verb: an active, ongoing, moving pursuit. Instead of brand executions, we must think brand missions. Brand missions travel further and when they’re compelling, they inspire consumers to adopt them as their own to share and spread them virally. Brand opinion now grows and changes 24/7/365. And rarely takes its given two weeks of vacation.
To get a sense of my creative work, visit here. If you have an opinion or POV you’d like to share on anything remotely marketing related, contact me and I will consider posting it. And thanks for reading.
Hi Dennis,
Are you open for questions should they come up later in the semester?
Hopefully… yes!
Thanks again,
Julia
Great blog dennis!
Dennis,
I have really enjoyed reading your daily blog, Collective-Thinking! And it reaffirms to me that you were born to do this. Of all the witty and funny people at ND, you could always crack me up with a hilarious take on something that was right in front of all of us. True comedic genius and essential for advertising. I have to agree with your question: Why did the jingles die? I have to admit that if I remembered half of the medical information on diseases as well as I remember “Who wears short shorts or Where’s the Beef? or It’s raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so wonderful!” I would be a much better doctor. There is something medical to reinforcing the message with music. It has to be processed and stored in different areas of the brain and linked – so it becomes a much more reinforced memory. It’s just like people that stutter – but when they sing, they don’t stutter. By incorporating those different areas of the brain, they can bypass the problem. It is curious why companies have seemed to move away from this powerful tool of reinforcement. I know that no matter how hard I try to purge my cerebral cortex, I can’t forget old Air Supply songs because of the excessive air play in South Bend. I guess that shows that even a terrible brand can be successfully ingrained if you flood the market or have crappy radio stations. Your amazing success is exciting to see, but to me it was inevitable. You were born to do this and the world of advertising is better because of your creative mind and sense of humor. Keep up the great work!
Steve