Banner adds value to Banner Ads

In fact, Rod Banner was exceptionally good value on this panel. He's been to every Etre except the really crazy first one in Opio, near Nice, and said it was the first time there had ever been a panel on marketing.

He said that marketing has no value in the technology space for many companies because the engineers build stuff in labs for other engineers to applaud in some sort of crazed mutual appreciation society.

They build things, he said, that would dazzle people if they ever went out and told anyone about it. He said they behave as if they'd built a fantastic Lamborghini car in a garage and just left it there.

Nobody believes advertising any more, said Banner. You naturally reject it and marketeers need to figure out how to get through to people by building some kind of story.

For example, he said, soap powder consists of largely identical products put in boxes but people still, for some reason have their favourites.

And he said, the same is true of computer notebooks. They're all largely built by the same two or three firms and just have labels stuck on them which mark the products as "different".

He said: "Customers won't talk to you if they don't know about you." No one gives a stuff about a firm throwing out kit made up of unintelligible three letter acronyms, but people do care who you are and what you stand for and how they can relate to you.

Oddly, the guy who thought Rod Banner was a banner ad firm couldn't disagree with Rod more. He has a system that geotargets banner ads, with banner added value, of course.

This lively little panel discussion wasn't left with enough time because they had to wake up countless people from the M&A discussion which preceded it, and the ones they couldn't wake up needed to be carted out of Room B in wheelbarrows. Sort of.