What is advertising?

Say the word advertising and people will imagine

TV spots
Bill Boards
Classifieds
Banner ads
Direct Mail

and so on. I think these are but the furniture of advertising.

Robin Good has made a great post on the Brand Ambassador

Robins treatise

The brand ambassador is an advertising model that leverages the authority and credibility of online personalities to create a powerful direct marketing strategy. A respected followed authority, a blogger or small publisher targeting a specific audience niche can be a much more effective vehicle for marketing communication that the most expensive advertising campaign.

Robin also believes

We have been using traditional mass communication marketing approaches for so long, it is very hard to start thinking and acting in new ways. Most companies simply innovate their marketing approach by superimposing the facade of new direct marketing approaches to their traditional communication strategy. They open a blog, a web site, but they smell as fake or more than they did before.

A great deal of Robins theory is based upon flows of trust and connectivity. Just look at the mountain of negative equity US Airways gets All started when I wrote a simple open letter to US Airways CEO Doug Parker.

Further we looked at Reputation: the growing importance of trust in our digital world and in What does the company of the future look like?

We mentioned John Hagel

The job of leadership today is not just to make money. Its to make meaning

Indeed Customer Advocacy = A new era in marketing