A lot of new media and social media evangelists get carried away with their passions and like to see the world entirely in black and white:

“Interruption marketing is dead.”

“TV commercials and billboard ads are the last remains of dinosaurs.”

“The only way to connect with consumers and prospects these days is to engage them with social media, after they have given you permission to talk with them.”

To all of these social media gurus, (who all proclaim the age of gurus is over with the profundity and authority of a, well, guru) I say one word:

Apple.

All of these new media gurus have iPhones, iPods, iPhones and usually love Apple. Guess what? Apple spends hundreds of million of dollars on bad old things known as TV commercials, billboard ads, full page magazine ads, and radio ads. Last I checked, the old-style “interruption” ads hadn’t seemed to hurt Apple.

Clearly, the apostles of new social media are over-stating their case.

However, there is an entire sector, where I believe the new media mavens are on target: small businesses with regional, national or international clientele.

Big businesses can get away with traditional advertising because their infrastructure can absorb the cost and because people aren’t going to invest their free time in websites examining and reviewing the best toilet paper or toothpaste. Small businesses that have just a local audience can also still get away with interruption marketing. If I own a hamburger join and it’s the last stop on I-95 for the next 30 miles, I may well get most of my business form a big old-fashioned billboard near the exit on I-95.

But for other small businesses that have a regional, national or international audience, it is simply no longer effective to build customers through traditional advertising. I wish it were, but it isn’t. Anthony Robbins built his successful personal development empire principally through the shrewd use of infomercials when they first became widely available in the late 1980s. Have you seen any other experts, others or personal development experts rise to prominence and influence via infomercials in the late couple of years? Have you even seen Anthony Robbins on infomercials in the last few years? (I haven’t.)

The problem with infomercials is that you just can’t get enough people to watch yours anymore because there are too many other things for people to look at and watch. Even couch potatoes watching TV at 4 AM are willing and able to switch over to HBO on demand to watch a silly movie.

Traditional advertising just doesn’t work for small companies anymore. Traditional advertising also isn’t working for a lot of big companies anymore either, but many larger companies have problems unrelated to advertising (see Cars-US).
Because traditional advertising isn’t working for many people anymore, traditional media companies aren’t doing well. Major market newspapers are going out of business. As I write this, Newsweek was just sold for one dollar (and the buyer had to agree to pay $70 million in debts as part of the bargain).

In fact even media outlets that are still making money have lost their impact. There was a time when an unknown like a Montel Williams could get a favorable profile on a network evening news program and quickly parley that into an agent and a syndicated TV talk show deal. That happened in the early 90s. I can’t remember it happening in a long time, can you? Do you even watch broadcast network newscast anymore? If you do, you are in a minority.

The new model for small businesses has to e people like Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki. Through their blogs and huge fan bases they write best-selling book after best-selling book and have influence. If this is what you want, there are no longer any “Mad Men” who can make this happen for you at the right price.