Comments on: The inversion of advertising

By: Phil13

Phil13 — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:28:05 +0000

my thinking is that e-sponsoring will be a powerful tool for brands & product in t he future. You can check my post here: http://philgalland.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/e-sponsoring-the-most-powerful-tool-of-social-advertising/

By: Fubiz

Fubiz — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:42:03 +0000

Excellent article (and template)

By: Julian Saunders

Julian Saunders — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:10:13 +0000

one of the big issues for digital agencies is to develop their own planning tools and approaches. The first generation of digital agencies have hired ad planners and ended up with versions of ad agency planning tools that are geared towards "the proposition" rather arriving at and proving the effectiveness of many to many communications.
Many to many communications requires a brand to act more like "a good host at a party" rather than a deliverer of consistent messages. So the old ad brief can lead you down the wrong path
Mind you, a lot of media shops still want to do the big volume deal and they bring this attitude to the web.

By: James

James — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 02:43:51 +0000

I see the problem a little simpler (maybe too simply?).

Traditional agencies are built for mass marketing. Their processes, mindset, compensation -- it's all geared toward delivering very few outputs (ads) through a few channels to a large number of people. It's a few-to-many model.

Interactive agencies have inherited many of the traditional processes, structure, pricing, etc. but as soon as they get deep into execution they realize that the model is b0rked. Mass marketing is pretty broken because mass markets no longer exist, except in odd circumstances like live events. The markets have fragmented, even in the massest market of all, TV. On the web there is nothing but fragments.

So a new model has to emerge. I think it'll incorporate a many-to-many approach that we can already see starting to play out online. People make the content (blogs, YouTube, etc.) and people will make the ads for the products and services they believe in.

Before you scoff -- Quality! Amateurs! -- remember that this was exactly the response of traditional media to the web. Turns out the quality matters a lot less than you might think, that people care about the things said by the people they care about, regardless of the quality.

I'm not going to claim that the ad industry is going to die out, but ask yourself how you made your last purchase decision. I asked my friends and sought out the opinions of people with real-world experience. I believe they call it 'word of mouth,' which is a fancy way of saying many-to-many.

By: Toad

Toad — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:46:43 +0000

You (and Brian Morrissey) inspired this post:

http://tangerinetoad.blogspot.com/2008/03/thegreatleapforward.html

By: David Berkowitz

David Berkowitz — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:33:09 +0000

Great post! I've definitely come across a number of these issues.

With GM, yes, there was a lot wrong with that campaign, but they helped define some of the standards of how you can and can't approach social media. Both the successes and the failures delineate how to most effectively use online media.

In any case, yes, an evolution is clearly upon us.

By: bg

bg — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:20:30 +0000

(Long rant with quality typos too.)

...but there are some...

By: bg

bg — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:15:00 +0000

I don't get over here much anymore so I save up for one mega comment, hopefully not longer than the original post. ;-p

Little different POV. Can I have permission to blame the brands?

I know it’s our job to educate them, but I can’t let clients off the hook here. Yes, some agencies are going to be left by the wayside, but here are some REAL naive clients out there, big and small.

There are major brands who don’t get even the basics of the online space, let alone microsites, blogs or full-on integrated online campaigns with virals, mobile ads, etc. They only recently wrapped their heads around microsites and YouTube videos, try explaining guerilla stuff executed online.

Many creative shops haven't even grasped the concept that your messaging does not have to be the same everywhere it appears, that it can tell different parts of the brand story and consumers now dictate how they will engage with a brand, let alone 'sold' to them.

How the hell can we expect brands to be aware?

And so if the question is how do agencies make money in this climate, it seems easy:

Not that I would, but you do it by taking advantage of those same brands who haven't yet learned to consolidate all their efforts among fewer shops. by offering to take on the work that falls through the cracks from the AOR, or the projects too small for them to go after on the interactive side.

(I think this strategy is ultimately doomed as the big shops shore up their capabilities and leave less scraps for the little guy.)

I watched firsthand as a brand recently split the work among a bunch of different shops: search, traditional, promotions, microsites, banner ads, media, PR, IT, virals, etc. One shop for EACH one of those things.

What was that definition of insanity again?

Guaranteed none of those agencies ever said, you know what, we have some obvious overlap here with (X) so we'll just let them handle it. Sure they each may want a bigger piece of the brand pie, but they take what they can get for now.

To Toad’s point, as long as TV is in the mix, there are not many small to mid shops that can handle all this stuff at once for national/global brands, so brands overpay by keeping their offline AOR, taking the campaign for the year and repurposing it online in the form of banner ads with a smaller interactive place.

Or, they take the TV and resize it as a clip for the website. Done. We have interactive now!

Problem is, the interactive shop, (if it has any pride), ain't gonna want to do banner ads for long. They're focused on a killer Flash site that wins awards. But they take the work on because to them, they think they have a foot in the door to bigger and better stuff.

Never happens though.

The client thinks, great, we have our traditional and interactive covered. They could care less about pure creative, they've just solved their problem.

The AOR for offline is not going to concede any of the cooler projects to the interactive shop, so they bring in their own people or partner with someone for that stuff.

Think the brand will let the banner ad place have a shot at TV?

Nope, because in their mind, what does a banner ad shop know about TV? (Btw, notice how they've now gone from being 'interactive’ to being the banner ad shop.)

Oh, let's not forget the media agency who btw, also presented creative on some ads or promotional tie-ins. Did I say promotion?

I forgot about the PR people who want to do a celebrity tie-in, which means of course, they need a microsite. (Sorry banner ad shop, this one gets farmed out to the PR person’s friends.)

Suddenly, everyone but the interactive shop is creative. And everyone in the picture now wants to be thought of as having creative chops.

By now, we’re headed back to creative as commodity again, where you can get a full-on campaign from the planners and designer at the media firm.

Problem is there, I've seen the creative from media shops too, and much of it is first thought syndrome. Stuff that traditional AORs would never present. But the client doesn't care because with all these new channels, they just want to make sense of it all.

And again, you're dealing with the old school mindset that says “my creative must be consistent across all channels,” read: I want the same visual in every place. (Heads nodded in agreement with the TV/Radio/Print DOM who said this to the room as I watched in shock and awe.)

Factor in that younger brand assistant who learned under Mr. TV DOM. You know, the one who you have to deal with regularly who thinks the term 'creative' means the blank ad units on the page the media agency presented? Is it any wonder things are messed up?

So the challenge will be either for big shops to improve their interactive chops, or for the small to mids to get better at the basics. (The latter requires more faith from a client that a younger upstart can handle traditional like TV.)

By: Julian Saunders

Julian Saunders — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:18:51 +0000

Toad makes a good point
both sides need to be open minded.
In truth both are not: admen still feel its about buying eyeballs and entertaining-interrupting people but in a nice way.
Digital folk start from the assumption that it is about engaging people-building relationships through being useful/informative/participative.
Design folk start from the assumption that it is about visual triggers and sub conscious processing.
These are simply different effectiveness models. On a particular brand all may be true. Or the centre of gravity may lay with the people who interrupt or the people who engage or the people who invented a truly attractive identity.
There seem to me to be a few key things to think about and they are both to do with better planning.
-What is the brands problem?
-How do people choose and buy in the category?
(AKA How are people available to influence)
-What is your effectiveness model?
In truth is we all enter rooms with assumptions in our heads about what works,without ever making them explicit so that they can be examined .
The admen may be right some times. After all as someone else in this thread observed the idea that we all have the time or interest to "engage" is as absurb the forlorn belief of many admen that digital is simply another channel for messaging.
The future lies with better planning and the integration of brand planning with smart data planning.

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