Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
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 www.ideavirus.com
So if advertising is such a crap shoot, such a dangerous venture, why do it? Because for the
last 100 years, the single best way to determine whether a company was going to get big or
stay small was to look at its advertising. Time and time again, aggressive companies with
great advertising—regardless of their industry—have managed to make the ads pay and to
grow and become profitable.
So what changed?
A few things. First, the clutter in the marketplace has finally made advertising even less
effective. A threshold has been crossed, and with hundreds of TV channels, thousands of
magazines and literally millions of websites, there’s just too much clutter to reliably interrupt
people. Add to this the “consumerization” of business-to-business sales (with more ads
directed at businesses than ever before) and the explosion of dot-com advertising, and it’s
easy to see that the game is fundamentally different.
So, what should we do about it? Consider the ironic situation that MarchFirst, Inc. finds
itself in. MarchFirst was formed in 2000, the result of a merger between USWeb/CKS,
which does websites and consulting and advertising, and Whittman-Hart, an Internet
consulting firm.
According to the 
New York Times
, MarchFirst wants to launch with a bang, so they’ve
announced a $50,000,000 advertising campaign designed to “cut through the clutter” and to
“get the name out there, to create strong brand awareness,” according to Robert Bernard,
their CEO.
How are they going to do this? By buying full-page ads in newspapers and Internet trade
magazines, by running TV commercials during sporting events, and even running ads in
lifestyle magazines.
Now, be honest. If you’re flipping through a magazine or surfing through channels on TV
and you come across an ad that is based on “the human desire to be first,” will you stop and
pay attention? Will the slogan “a new company for the new economy” make you sit up and
take notice? Will you give up a few minutes of your precious time to read an ad about a

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