The Advertising Butler

You are watching television. The service knows what just broke in your house, finds the obscure spare part, checks that it fits and sorts out the purchase. You did not know the solution existed. The advert feels like a visit from a knowledgeable butler.

Follow the reversal. Advertising businesses become personal-service businesses. People entrust them with responsibility because the help has proved useful, not because a message has been repeated often enough.

Tiny manufacturers become easier to find. A product that is wonderful for one person in a thousand does not have to advertise to the other 999. Specialisation stops being such a handicap.

Then product development reverses direction. A manufacturer is told that thousands of customers are waiting for a particular combination of features. Demand starts telling industry what is missing.

The world begins with a changed audience reaction—from enduring adverts to looking forward to them—and grows into new relationships between customers, intermediaries and production.

“What will the service sort out for me today?”