It's an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World VIII
Responding to a recent Unit of One feature analyzing the state of the advertising industry, Greg Paulhus contends that advertising is networking. "The purpose of a business is to create and retain a customer," he says. "A business creates a customer by making contact with them in some way, whether it's a print ad, a TV ad, a referral, word of mouth, whatever. That contact is a point on the company's network. Companies need to expand and add value to their network. Advertising is a way of making multiple contacts simultaneously across your potential customer network."

While I understand and agree with Greg's initial point that advertising represents the act of reaching out to people, I disagree that it's the same as networking -- unless you relegate it to the traditional, shallow, "Here's my card; I've got to go," approach to networking. To his credit, Greg continues to say that most advertising represents dysfunctional networking and that most companies don't continue the conversation they could start with people via exposure to advertising. His closing statements about cold calls vs. targeted, personalized, relevant information-driven marketing messages resonates slightly with Jacques Werth's work in high-probability selling, but for the most part, I think Greg makes the mistakes many people in marketing make, confusing commercials for communication and customers for a community.