Have we seen the death of advertising as a viable marketing solution? Study after study has shown that people do not trust ads for reliable information when making a purchase. They trust the opinions of other customers expressed in social media. They trust consumer blogs. They trust the experience of their friends. But an ad trying to sell the best features of your products and services – they mistrust it, thinking of it as pure propaganda. Has advertising gone the way of the Classics – something relegated to the annals of history, never to be influential ever again?

I am not sure advertising has actually died, it has just changed. It has changed mediums. The traditional mass media marketing methods (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines) have been supplanted by new media (websites, blogs, social media). That is nothing new. Before what we call traditional ads were a thing, signs, particularly store window posters, were the main method of advertising. Farmers were paid to allow product advertisements to be painted on their barns. Have you ever heard of the Burma-Shave signs? They were strategically placed along roads to get the attention of consumers. Those mediums aren’t used any longer. Signs and posters had their time as the best mediums to advertise and then they went away for the most part. The same thing is happening today.

But what about the credibility of advertisements? Have we become too skeptical of them for them to have any marketing impact? I believe ads can still have an impact, you just have to be smart in the message you are conveying. For instance, if I claim that a Greek restaurant we will call Pete’s Gyros has the best pita bread in town, I would expect to have some skeptics disbelieve that claim. If I am going to make that assertion, I need to back it up. Traditionally, that meant that if I had some famous person endorse Pete’s Gyros, that was all it would take for people to believe the claim. Does that sort of thing still work? Maybe or maybe not. Here is the lynchpin: it depends upon who your target market trusts. The celebrity endorser may be well known and well liked, but they are being paid to make the claim. Some might find that off-putting. So let’s push a little further. If I know who is influencing my customers and I get them to claim it is the best, then I have something that they will believe. So who do consumers believe today? As I stated earlier, they believe other customers who have expressed their opinions. So if I had an online vote of what people thought of Pete’s Gyros and they all ranked it with 5 stars, I can advertise with confidence because I have the backing of the influencers.

Here is the funny little fact: finding the influencers has always been the key to good advertising, regardless of the medium. That was true when ads were on barns and it is true of social media ads today. Advertising mediums change as technology changes. Credibility remains the constant. If you want to successfully advertise your brand, do a little research with your target market and find out who and what they trust. Stake your advertising claims on the influence of these trusted sources.

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Original painting: The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David, 1787