granted, in a few select instances disruption has been well concepted, brilliantly executed, and probably actually results in a small increase in sales. wahoo. unfortunately every damn ad agency read this book and thought "damn, we should do this for our brand too. it'll be awesome." now think of every annoying thing you've ever come across. pop-ups, ads at the bottom of your tv guide channel, those radio spots that sound like a song but turn out to be an ad, guerrilla marketing events that shut down stores/streets, anytime you have to watch an ad in order to access "free" content, etc. yeah, that's disruption at work.
i don't know... maybe this was a great amazing novel idea in 1996... when i was in 7th grade. the problem is that it's still in practice today. and it's plain stupid. people are too busy/stressed/overwhlemed today to bother with your ad. especially when it's getting in the way of what they'd really like to be doing. if you're taking up precious time or somehow making their daily experience sub-optimal, you're an annoyance... not a cool opportunity for purchase.
Seth Godin (aka god of marketing) has an interesting little story up on his blog today:
I signed up for the 14 day trial of rhapsody.com ... As I'm enjoying Roxanne by Sting I hear Feliz Navidad playing over the track. I instantly assume that something is wrong with the stream and try to replay the song. It happens again. I then go back to the song list page trying to figure out what the heck is doing that. Then I realize it. It's the Cingular Banner at the top of the page!!! How horrible. I was enjoying rhapsody.com. Now I'm done.it's not the truest for of disruption per se, but the moral of the story still rings true (no pun intended).
my personal favorite online site for disruption is weather.com. wake up in the morning, look out the window, hit up weather.com to see how warm it might get today, and holy crap... that's right! i forgot to book my caribbean vacation/pick up some flu medicine/get a new credit card/buy a new computer. thank heavens (and really smart marketers) i now know that it's 64 degrees out, feels like 60 degrees, there's a 20% chance of rain tonight but right now it's just partly cloudy, and it's always sunny in aruba/airborne is a good at preventing colds/amex gold business is the #1 choice for somebody/the intel q1 is the ultimate mobile pc. my day is complete! what an awesome site.
even better are when the damn pop-ups take over the whole page so i get the ad information before the weather. because i'm totally going to weather.com for the shits and giggles.
* disclaimer: i've placed ads like the above on weather.com for clients. it's an easy sell to marketers who are still in love with this concept instead of actually reaching people when they might seriously be considering purchasing your product/service.
** to his credit Jean-Marie Dru wrote "Beyond Disruption" in 2002, but unfortunately most marketeers are still stuck back in 1996. rockstars.
