I listened to an interesting BBC News report this morning. Lord (Maurice) Saatchi is giving a talk later today discussing the “death” of television advertising.

A few key points from the news report (to be expounded upon in today’s talk):

Television advertising is unsuccessful in reaching what he calls “digital natives” -- the group of people under the age of 25 who have grown up with digital technologies. (At 32, according to Saatchi, I am a “digital immigrant.”)

The reason TV advertising is unsuccessful with digital natives is because they are in what he refers to as a state of “constant partial attention” (CPA).

Sounds like multi(media)tasking to me, but “constant partial attention” will work for now.

Saatchi explains that in the span of a 30-second ad, a digital native might check email, send a text message, download a song, etc. -- all while not watching the TV commercial.

Lastly, Saatchi concludes that brands need to focus on “one word equity” – a concept that distills a brand’s essence down to one word. The examples he gave were:

Google = Search
Apple = Innovation

I wonder where that leaves Saatchi’s lovemarks concept?

I’m going to try and track down a podcast of the talk and will post it later with a little more commentary.