Have you heard the one about Super-bowl Ads?

Too many ads were so complicated and elaborate that you couldn't tell what the product was trying to say. And running a Super-Bowl spot should be an opportunity to forge connections with millions of people who don't feel one way or another about your brand. It's an opportunity to start a relationship. Brands used to buy spots on the Super-bowl to be perceived as more relevant. This year they just looked out of touch by ignoring the medium that many people are using just as much as TV.

And I've been reliably informed that most of us have already forgotten the brands the commercials were advertising! I will not waste your time talking about ROI because it simply doesn't add up. Back when it was OK to admit that marketing was intended to sell, now billions of Client dollars every year are being squandered by narcissists, Con men, Naifs and a number of blithering morons. Frankly the ads didn't tell consumers anything that mattered, what they all seem to forget is this, if your advertising isn't supposed to sell. You're not supposed to pay for it. It's as simple as that!

The fact of the matter is minor differences between brands are generally deemed not important enough to be mentioned in advertising. And markets continue to show that competitive brands are mostly very similar, consumers are left to choose between what seems like largely substitutable, similar offerings.

The romantic view is that advertising is powerful, it is supposed to persuade people to change what they feel, think or do. Otherwise why spend billions on advertising...even on Super-bowl?

Yet in practice this isn't the case, there is no evidence on the (supposedly) many lasting, persuasive effects of advertising- at least not enough to justify a global spend of billions!

Brands need to take notice of the amazing opportunities available to them right now, opportunities that have laid dormant because of the strangle hold ad agencies have had on the marketing communications process until very recently.

All advertising is a form of learning and education and game playing should become the new promotion.

Consumers have a huge desire for brand knowledge and learning, and far prefer facts and storytelling, this mean more to them than a celebrity spokesperson or a catchy tag line.

This allows your customer to exercise their own “personal discovery” on their chosen brand.

Another problem facing Brands is the fact that marketers tend to overestimate the value of what they already have and have, as a result, become loss averse, this makes them overestimate the value of what they have and support the status quo together with stability! So marketers need to sharpen their act, check their egos, open their minds and embrace new ways of marketing communication – it will be well worthwhile.

Internet Advertising will rapidly lose its value and its impact, for easily understood reasons. Pushing a message at a potential customer when it has not been requested and when the customer is in the middle of something else on the Net, will fail as a major source of revenue for most internet sites. The Internet is participatory, like exchanging stories around a camp fire.

The problem is not the medium, the problem is the message and the fact that it is not trusted, not wanted, and not needed. There are vast amounts of literature to support this.

Customers do not trust advertising. Research has shown that messages attributed to a commercial source have a much lower impact. Research has also show that advertising is the least-trusted source of information on products and services. The fact is consumers do not want to view advertising, and mostly consumers do not need advertising.

The internet is all about freedom. A free population will not be held captive and forced to watch ads.