(or are they just asleep?)

Somebody should really wake them up if they’re just sleeping. This is some real Edgar Allan Poe sh*t.

In a rapidly changing world, advertising is always evolving. This isn’t new. It’s not like AI came in and now all of a sudden, for the first time ever, marketing is changing. No, it always has and always will. But what strategies have been left to go by way of the dodo? And is there any hope of bringing them back? (Much like the young dire wolf pups currently flooding my socials. They’re both the cuddliest and most surreal fuzzy friends we’ve ever seen. Seriously, go look them up… After reading this, of course.)

In a recent episode of Content Alchemy, Shelby Hagerdon and Matt Vojacek memorialized the dead advertising strategies of the past while asking the question, “Maybe they were just misunderstood?” In an age of trends, perhaps it’s time to look backwards for inspiration.

And so, without further ado, here are Matt and Shelby’s seven dead strategies.

Blog Posts

The irony of writing this one, huh? Attention span this, attention span that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get it. People don’t read anymore. Or do they? (I’ll guess we’ll find out when we go back and look at the metrics on this post.)

Blog posts used to be able to rely on fluff and brilliant SEO. Get every keyword in there, right? This worked for a while. But audiences caught on and now we’re in a state of just finding another town square pedestal to shout our opinions and puff pieces into the abyss. We need to make better blog posts. Researched blog posts. Human blog posts. We can tell when ChatGPT has written the article we’re reading. And it isn’t because it starts going bee-boop bee-boop (or whatever noises robots make) and rambling like C-3PO. It’s because it lacks personality. An imitation of a personality is still an imitation, and audiences are looking for authenticity. (Look at that, we worked in a buzzword.)

Trying to shrink a well-rounded opinion into a 15-second video isn’t always the best choice. You need the space and time to expand, which a blog post can easily provide.

To make your blog posts stand out, tell a story. Don’t just have a hook, have a purpose. And let your story guide your audience. They want to know the voice behind the data and research. Be sure to share it.

Cable TV Commercials

Ah yes, the traditional commercial standing in between you and the thing you want to see. Honestly, we haven’t seen much cable TV since the last time we visited our grandparents. But that’s a great opportunity! Local TV, news, and sports are all still popular access points to reach your audience – especially if that audience is on the older side. 

While streaming and social media have taken over, it doesn’t make the cable TV commercial any less powerful when directed to the appropriate audience. But with all content strategies, you need to keep it fresh. The car salesman of the past isn’t selling the same way an impactful story does now. Relate to your audience and meet them on their level. 

Like anything, you can’t rely on one piece of content. A potential customer or partner typically needs several points of contact before they make a purchase or even an inquiry. A commercial isn’t the entire sales funnel, it’s merely a portion of it. So keep that in mind as you’re developing your content strategy.

Website Banners

We get it. It’s pretty easy to do a single buy and place a million web ads all over the internet – letting the trail of cookies crumbs lead you to the proper audience. (See what we did there?) But will that audience appreciate when your ad is keeping them from looking at the recipe for real cookies? 

We’ve all experienced the overwhelming clutter of an ad-saturated website. And we’ve all clicked out of a website in frustration. (Really, it’s going to take THIRTY WHOLE SECONDS for a website to load? We’ve all grown to be so spoiled.) But this is a real problem. A website needs to be efficient and ads slow it down. That’s its own problem. But on top of the speed, you also have to face the dreaded response of an angry consumer locked on the other side of a gate, trying desperately to get to the content they want to see. And you? You’re the gate keeping them away.

It’s important to never keep the audience from the thing they want – but you can become more strategic with where and how you’re using those banners. For instance, if you sell almond flour, you may want to spend your time advertising on a recipe website for people who are gluten intolerant. Know your audience and go to them. And become the ad they want to see because they’re about to bake the best gluten-free pie. (Can you tell this writer is anti-gluten? AI isn’t coming up with that. But AI is also probably gluten-free since it can’t eat.)

The Local Newspaper

A calm Sunday with a cup of joe and the weekly reports. (Or, if you’re like us, the comics.) But suddenly, your eyes are confronted with the cluttered sight of 50 ads tightly packed onto a single page. A calm Sunday? More like an attack on the senses.

A lot of folks have moved on from the standard local paper subscription, opting instead to get their news from social media or television. But for the right audience, the local newspaper still makes a lot of sense. In rural areas (especially with older inhabitants), many people still swear by the paper. Small businesses, events, and news live together in harmony… But could they be better?

More and more people are growing tired of the endless scroll and are moving back to physical media. Could this lead to fresh opportunities for newspapers or magazines? Perhaps. We are finally in a technological space to bring tech to the physical world by way of QR codes and augmented reality. A paper that comes alive? Digital media extracted from physical media, combining the forms? Sounds pretty cool to us.

Cold Emails and Freezing Mailboxes

Alright, alright. We’ve all had our information stolen and sold on an email list. We know because we keep getting emails we didn’t ask for. And that’s exactly how a general cold email from a brand can feel – whether we signed up for it or not. 

And that can leave us with two options: let them stack up or unsubscribe. And your brand’s emails should never fall into either category. You need something punchy, engaging, and worthwhile to make your emails land at the top of the inbox. People want to feel connected to the sender, aka the brand. And this goes for physical mail as well. Junk mail isn’t in one place. Oh no, they need to get you in a digital and physical realm. And yet, even with those two touch points, it can still lead to mail landing in the recycling bin. People need to have a reason to open your email and engage with it, just like they need a reason to keep your physical cards and letters around. It’s all about making them feel personal and tying it to the person receiving it, so they may actually want to read on.

Paid Ads with No Strategy

This one should be obvious and self-explanatory. But here we are, still explaining it anyway. Running paid ads without a strategy is like playing pin the tail on the donkey – except the donkey is your customer and the pin is what’s standing between you and your paycheck. You want to be precise, right? 

This means creating a strategy that works and being flexible when it doesn’t. You will learn as you go, but start with an initial strategy that can be adjusted later. Launch, measure, tweak, repeat. It’s a learning process, but it’s a process that can only improve if there is a proper strategy behind it. Through this, you will learn more about your audience and perhaps be able to strategize to try multiple versions that can then be tested against each other.

Low-Quality Content

We know this is subjective, so let’s break this down. Low-quality can mean the literal visual quality of what you’re putting out. Maybe it has outdated graphics or grainy footage. But low-quality can also mean a bad story. Maybe it’s already been done a million times before or maybe there’s no story at all – perhaps it’s just a sales pitch. These can both mean low-quality, but as we’ve learned, you can shoot a commercial on an iPhone and still get good results as long as your story is there. You need to have a message that resonates with your audience. 

However, there is room for “low-quality” content on the visual side, and we’re seeing more and more of it. We’re experiencing a wave of memes and youthful marketing that doesn’t take itself seriously. And that is leading to new genres of content creation, like on Pine-Sol’s TikTok. Clip Art, simple animations, dirty audio, and a silly message… This is the recipe from some original content. And we’re excited to see it. 

Final Thoughts

We know some of this may sound obvious, but thinking about how we can use dead strategies can lead to fresh perspectives and new paths. Just because everyone else says it doesn’t work anymore, doesn’t mean that’s its final ending. Au contraire, it is indeed helpful to look to our past to find opportunities in unexpected places. As Matt says, “Nothing ever just stops working. The rules just change.”

Listen to the full episode and hear all our thoughts on Content Alchemy, available whenever you get your podcasts.