Dave Trott's blogs on Brand Republic are always interesting and today's was no exception - in it he recounted how a tube driver's amusing announcements cheered up his day and outshone the majority of D&AD ad entries that he reviewed that day - in his words "What he did started my day off really nicely. There was no reason to do it. He wouldn’t get paid anymore for it. None of us would buy more tube tickets because of it. There was no financial benefit. No material incentive. So, in advertising terms, why do it? It couldn’t be justified. And we don’t do anything that can’t be justified, ultimately, in financial terms" His point was that maybe is not always about selling but rather that "word-of-mouth is the best media you can get".

Shock horror .....an advertising God acknowledges that there are often stronger routes than advertising.- albeit unknowingly. It reminded of a quote from another Ad God -Don Draper in Mad Men - ""I sell products not advertising" - back in those days there were only a small number of channels to reach an audience and advertising was about shouting at people to buy a product - whilst this has changed beyond all recognition the objective is still the same ultimately we do always sell it is just about considering the channel for delivering the message. This is precisely why it is not always about shouting at people but rather a considered and consultative approach relying on the understanding and subtley of the messenger. Call me a cynic ..who knows? maybe the tube driver was told to cheer people up to deliver better customer service and extol the virtues of the much derided tube or maybe he had a postive feeling about TfL because of better HR - the point is now we need to consider every touchpoint to ensure that the consumer has no reason for negativity and that includes every level of the chain - after all the new World of Marketing means there are now so many places to talk positively or negatively about a brand maybe even the great Don would be presenting a WOM campaign !

Do you think your time online has increased over the last few years ? I am sure that the answer will be a resounding "OF COURSE!" and I am sure that when asked what you were doing I am sure the answer will be "Durr social media stupid" (or similar) BUT have you ever stopped to consider the effect on your online behaviour elsewhere ?

I always assumed that the rise in time spent online had a knock on effect to other sites from news to information based to educative or fun but apparently this is not the case.

A recent post on Supercollider that was highlighted on http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/ talked about "the end of the destination web and how the times are fading for websites and microsites are dead" In the post there are some great Google trends graphs that show that some of the best known brands in the World are losing visitors at a rate of knots - see ehere the example fo Disney.

Digitalbuzzblog have cited 2 reasons why they believe that website traffic is declining, firstly that social networks (obviously) are growing and most people prefer to hang out there instead of searching the big brands websites for content to interact with and secondly that off-site content distribution is rapidly growing so naturally this removes unique visitors from their main sites. I would add that the main reason is that brands have not fundamentally grasped the reason why people use the web - for entertainment, information, conversation and participation - 90% of sites out there don't deliver on this - they are simply brochurewear, a brand information depository that adds no value to the user and hence provides no reason to visit in the first place or come back.

Some brands are, of course, acknowledging this - we always use Nike as the best wayof creating social utility with sites such as Nikeplus and the Ballers network - both great examples of a fantastic insight flawlessly delivered.

The sooner that brands understand and embrace this the sooner they will start becoming relevant to their bread and butter consumer.