Comments on I, A Bee: Is Marketing a Strategic Resource or a Procured Co...

Randy, clearly I'm a few months late to this comme...

2010-02-18T08:14:01.173-05:00

Randy, clearly I'm a few months late to this comment party, but 'better late than never'. Hopefully some of the agencies out there that have not embraced change yet will have a chance to say the same thing.

If you look at the world from my view, which is a bird’s eye view into digital media operations across agency/publisher landscape, you get to see lots and lots of trends. Knowing in your gut over the last couple of years that the ways agencies and publisher run their businesses operationally (people, processes and technology), fundamentally needs to changes.

When I read this post, it helped to connect the dots and shape the picture that was somewhat unfinished in my mind about what exactly was happening to drive this operational revolution.

By the way, I think we’ve only seen a very tiny glimpse of things to come. That’s exciting.

I enjoyed reading this article but found that it's...

2009-11-29T10:48:21.123-05:00

I enjoyed reading this article but found that it's missing one key point about the agency model and its future. This is the basic distinction between the two types of advertising: display and classified. The former is advertising that goes to people. The latter is advertising that people go to.

In the former, 'ideas' are essential to attract and engage the mass of the audience who are not currently in the market for the product or service brand being promoted, but who will be at some point in the future. In the latter, placing the brand in front of the right person in the right marketplace at the right time (and at the right price) is the key skill.

For most of the period reviewed in the article, agencies were only concerned with display advertising, simply because media owners didn't pay commissions on classified - this huge media segment was a publisher-dominated direct-to-client business.

However this has changed relatively recently with the advent of on-line classified advertising. From the outset Google, like its hard copy antecedents, tried to exclude agencies. But the complexities of their auction model, and the arcane world of search engine optimisation, has enabled a thriving classified advertising agency business to develop. In effect the media market available for agencies to make money in is on the way to doubling as forecast in the Future Foundation report the IPA published in 2007: http://www.ipa.co.uk/Content/THE-FUTURE-OF-ADVERTISING-AND-AGENCIES-REPORT

In this context WPP, like the other holding companies, is very sensible in balancing its portfolio of agencies by acquisition and organic development to ensure it covers off SEO (aka classified)as well as it already does display.

very well done. unfortunately the world went for t...

2009-11-28T06:47:49.840-05:00

very well done. unfortunately the world went for the cheapest of the cheapest for so many years. everybodies translate "buying cheap" as a revenue. It's not in most cases. Now the world is full of "cheap stuff" all over the places.
We should try to revaluate quality. Buy less, but pay for quality.
Let's do it together, for the next generation.

Alberto Baccari
Creative Director
TW2 Milan Italy

Creativity is and always be the great differentiat...

2009-11-23T10:15:49.235-05:00

Creativity is and always be the great differentiator. The moment everything's been whittled down to the it's cheapest, commoditized form, creativity will be what makes something breakout and compete.

I think the future of your business is less about 'hucksterism' with new titles and new disciplines designed to charge us more fees. It's about simple creativity, executed strategically, to stand out.

I'd always pay top dollar for that.

This is so well done. Thanks, Randy. One quest...

2009-11-19T23:59:02.679-05:00

This is so well done. Thanks, Randy.

One question. This quote from Vollmer of Bain: “Advertising has evolved from an interruption—grabbing attention for a product or brand—into an experience, an application, a service that the consumer actually wants. This new marketing model doesn’t shout; it listens and learns. And relevance, interactivity, and accountability are its essential ingredients.”

Hasn't every bit of this - save the last sentence - been true since the term "marketing" came into existence? I guess I'm essentially not in the ad game as much as the lobbying/public affairs game anyway. But hell, pull always works better than push. And if you don't know what your market wants, you haven't done the marketing - you're simply selling, aren't you?

Marketing - at least to me - has always been at least as much about listening as talking since the creation of the first orthodoxies. Yes. those orthodoxies.

Google works less because of its simplicity and more because of the complexity of how it executes on what it learns from how it listens. It upends the direct marketing funnel. Everyone who wants to sell anything - anything - should know as much as possible about their buyer, and tailor their USP to what they learn, no? That's marketing. Everything else - incuding Advertising, PR, DM, Sales, etc. - follows. Maybe this is what interactive is teaching folks. Dialectics can be a beautiful thing.

This was a wonderful piece, thanks for writing it....

2009-11-19T17:39:37.700-05:00

This was a wonderful piece, thanks for writing it. I really enjoyed the historical perspective that sets the entire context.

I agree, that agencies and indeed the agency model itself needs to adapt, and hasn't been doing so fast enough to keep pace with the current changes in the global media and social space.

However, there appears a thread throughout this and too many other articles to count, that I must take issue with.

That is, the implicit insistance that every, or even most, or even more than a few, marketers a) know what to ask for in the first place, b) know how to incentivize for achieving the desired result by paying for it, instead of something else (e.g., paying for brand-lifting creativity being called for, instead of hammering their agencies to minimize media cost) and c) can actually cut through their own instititional inertia and allow great work to be executed on their behalf.

The marketer who has its shit together enough to actually accomplish those 3 things is a rare breed indeed. And the ones who don't, should really stop pointing their fingers at agencies as if the agencies are the barriers to brand success. Fix the brand house, and the success will follow.

I'd wager that the amount of marketing and advertising efficiency that is lost to client-side indecision, controversy, politics, approval timelines and we-can't-do-that-ism outweighs by a long shot that which is lost to having intermediaries in the form of agencies, who are mostly good companies full of mostly, good, mostly knowledgeable people doing their best to get the right thing done.

Holy smokes, this is awesome. Thank you for puttin...

2009-11-19T11:51:27.143-05:00

Holy smokes, this is awesome. Thank you for putting it together.

On a personal note, I hear my boss in a lot of what you're saying, which makes me feel good about where I am in my communications career.

I have many favorite parts, but I think the best part is that as the world moves digital, so must ideas.

Ideas have always helped connect brands to people who aren't looking to buy right then and there.

Good stuff. If I could save this to Delicious 500 times, I would.

Love it, and couldn't agree more! I just wrote a ...

2009-11-19T11:48:16.534-05:00

Love it, and couldn't agree more! I just wrote a piece in ADAGE last week called, "Marketing needs a CMO" -- would love your thoughts! Jeff, Partner & President, McKinney

Hi, Enlightening work on a very relevant subject. ...

2009-11-19T10:20:09.467-05:00

Hi,
Enlightening work on a very relevant subject. Thank you.

Over the last few years, changing circumstances ranging from geography, to technology, and finally the economy, had compelled me to continuously re-assess the role of Creativity in Advertising.

Bill Bernbach perhaps said it best: "Creativity must result in greater sales more economically achieved." That is, Creativity must be able to contribute directly to the client's bottom-line, as well as the agency's.

That is Advertising. And that is what the client ultimately pays for. It has nothing to do with seconds, square centimetres or clicks.

Shanty Mathew
Creative Director
UMS

Randy, This was a great, bold, broad brushstroke ...

2009-11-18T22:10:48.332-05:00

Randy,

This was a great, bold, broad brushstroke overview and to add another 'b' word, it was bracing. I am still trying to digest everything in it, but, if we are merely a commodity, context-peddlars, as it were, a smart content-peddlar should be able to come along and trump us. Steal all the candy. The art of persuasion is as old as conversation -- some people are better at it than others. Those are the facts. What I'd like to bring up here is the technological limitations of our much balleyhooed interactive platform. Reading off a backlit screen on a desk is not like reading a magazine. Seeing Hulu on my desk is not like watching the tube. We have gained more control, but, I really believe, have lost, how can I put it -- comfort? Taste? As the cold plastic box becomes more elegant, maybe the interractive messages on it will also become more human, truly persuasive. I know this is somewhat vague, but the true killer app of the moment, where form really meets function, seems to be text messaging. Nevertheless, great stuff there. Thanks,

Ken Krimstein
Creative Director
Laughlin/Constable

Bravo Randy, nice work. A few areas of disagreeme...

2009-11-16T22:29:01.667-05:00

Bravo Randy, nice work. A few areas of disagreement, hey what else is new when you and I engage but generally first rate and extremely helpful.

Without digging too deep I did want to point out where you and I come out differantly in the end. While I agree that the "procured-commodity experts" will get it...better...perhaps even right, what that will not mean is near zero media costs. I think this is so for the simply reason that the system can not work without localization of eyeballs and interest around quality content areas. Can some of those content areas be produced for little to no money? Perhaps, but not many. At the end of the day, professional content creators are a core part of the value chain. And these people, or rather the organizations that bring them together and put their content in easy to use accessable places, need to get paid. If we do not find a way to pay them (and pay them directly) than they will go away and so then will the aggregation of eyeballs and interest in high value environments. Or put another way, the opportunity for the marketer to have that "conversation" will get overwhelmingly hard to manufacture.

So yes the systems can and will get better and yes some of the costs of doing business will get taken out of the process but as you correctly point to, at the end of the day it will not be about carpet bombing but rather a much more surgical process against mass targets of specific people. Which is to say that while the big three networks do not reach 90% of the country anymore and so we do without question face fragmentation when comparing to the "I Love Lucy" days, we still have vast audiences of defined segments aggregated around specific branded content groups. In fact we will shorlty have much bigger targeted areas then ever before.

I think what this calls for is a re-imaging of what an advertisnig agency is and how it works with a client. Which is again, where we agree...in the end. Which is nice.

Eric, For the record, and for everyone else's...

2009-11-16T15:58:39.769-05:00

Eric,
For the record, and for everyone else's edification, I have to point out to those who might not know you that you are one of the true thought leaders in our business. The only reason I could cite a a (slight) disagreement with you is that you're among the few in our industry who consistently stake out thoughtful, well-researched, rigorous ideas about process and organizational improvement, in your iMedia Connection columns and elsewhere.
My point is not merely to praise you, but to point out to others that out of such debates emerge transformative ideas.

Randy - I have a few thoughts. First - fantastic ...

2009-11-16T13:38:52.853-05:00

Randy - I have a few thoughts. First - fantastic work. Absolutely educational, solid and illuminating work. Digging into the historical basis for where we are now so we don't make uniformed mistakes and repeat past failures is critical (my first undergrad degree is in History).

I agree with your thesis, and I am only a bit annoyed that I was painted as the voice of the mistaken. To be super clear - where you and I slightly diverge is that I tend to bifurcate media and creative fundamentally. They're handled by different groups, have different budgets, and have different KPIs.

Creative teams focus on shifting opinion. On influencing people's decisions.

I see media buying as a mechanism to reach audiences with the message crafted by the creative teams. Ultimately it needs to be done inexpensively and at higher margins for the media agencies, and much more effectively than is possible today. I see this technology driven media buying as a way to turn low value raw materials (commodity impressions) into high value processed goods (targeted and optimized impressions).

As we've flooded the market with vast numbers of impressions, and fragmented the media landscape with increasing numbers of channels and publishers, finding ways to reach large undifferentiated populations has become difficult. And finding exactly the audience you're trying to reach is almost impossible (without the new technologies now arriving on the scene.)

The value proposition of empowering the advertiser review and value each impression before buying it seems fairly difficult to poke holes in. And is orthogonal to the point that you're really making. I work for the worlds largest software company - so when I look at the massive problems in our industry, and my opportunity to help solve those problems - I have to focus on places where we can help. That doesn't mean that's the whole story.

I happen to believe deeply in the value of creative (being a designer and artist by nature and training - my second undergrad and my graduate degrees are in art).

In fact - I called out lack of value to brand advertising and poor creative as the number 1 and 2 problem facing the online ad industry today in "Online advertising's 4 biggest problems": http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/23588.imc

I called out brand advertising and creative issues in 7 out of my 12 articles this year. Most vocally in this little number called "Why online creative stinks so badly" where I publicly called out my support for your point of view: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/22281.asp

But - I've used others as a foil before, and I don't mind that you're using me as one now. Even though you probably can see that I don't like being referred to as an example of smart people gone wrong. :) I supppose it's better than being an example of dumb people succeeding.

Eric