The King is dead! Long live King!The death of Louis XIV. was announced by captain of bodyguard from a window of state apartment. Raising his truncheon above his head, he broke it in centre, and throwing pieces among crowd, exclaimed in a loud voice, "Le Roi est mort!" Then seizing another staff, he flourished it in air as he shouted, "Vive le Roi!" —Pardoe: Life of Louis XIV., vol. iii. p. 457.
Now I'll be first to admit that I'm not captain of bodygaurd for Advertising, so task of announcing death of advertising is not among my responsibilities. Nor is finding a successor to throne. No, I do less glorious task of search engine marketing. I'm quietly on sidelines as Dot Bomb after Dot Gone pass by in a funeral procession that seems endless. The parade route marching to funeral dirge and drum, glumly trudging through streets to mark passing of online royalty on a weekly basis.
This week we bow our heads in honor of passing of another advertising-reliant giant, HomeStore.com. Before that it was WebVan and WebMD and Wine.com -- I'm starting at bottom of a very long alphabetical list you can see yourself at:
http://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/dotcomlayoffs.htm
The deathmarch itself has been analyzed-to-death by everyone from network news anchors to newspaper commentators and pundits. I won't burden us with another perspective here other than to say that it's big business that has it all wrong in a twisted attempt to apply old models to a new medium. I wonder why it is that each new technology is constantly wedged into wrong shape hole because that is "where money is".
When television was first developed, we didn't know what to do with it because advertising was not so ubiquitous. We had print advertising in magazines and radio advertisement ruled air- waves. But everyone agreed that television was worthless . . .
Not more than 10 per cent of population will take up television permanently. Raymond Postgate, 1935