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Ignorance is ...ignorance

I taught a class in advertising at Massey University today.

I showed the Apple 1984 commercial (amongst loads of others).
What shocked me was that the classic Ridley Scott directed commercial had no impact on my students.

They don't know what 1984 is, or what it meant in the context of, well, 1984.

The reason is that every single one of them was born after 1984.
They don't read. (Does that make them illiterate?)

So now 'big brother' means: reality TV show.

I despair.

Comments

  1. Stanley Johnson1:52 pm

    I taught in the Advertising degree at RMIT in Melbourne, so I know exactly what you're taalking about when you say they don't read.

    These kids are a generation unlike any before them. As an industry we need to get to grips with this. I don't believe we are.

    Late last year I worked on a student subscription offer for The Age. I took issue with the brief, the so called insights that lead to the brief and the target demographics in the brief.

    These kids don't read newspapers I said. They get their news from the web.

    Client and respected agency folk all argued that the coverage in the actual paper was broader than what was published on the internet.

    Sounds good says I, but these kids don't read the paper.

    Of course it's a generalisation, but out of the 60 kids who composed the 2 classes that I took only 3 were regular newspaper readers. Of those 3, 2 were regular readers of MX, a free paper!

    When I look at online news sites like NY Times and The Guardian I can see that they get it. Why can't ad agencies?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous1:19 am

    great post! I was at a breakfast thing that jeff jarvis from buzz machine was giving in london, he teaches journalism in new york and was saying similar stuff too!

    ReplyDelete

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