Hasta La Creative!

A decade ago many “digital agencies” were primarily production shops sub-contracting out to the big agencies in big cities. It was a profitable business for several years, but many clients were not fully satisfied. Something was missing. According to Joe Olsen, CEO of Rova, that something was the strategy that would wed digital production to […]

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Snap, Inc., the parent company of SnapChat, self-identifies as a camera company. This new “camera company” is about to unveil its initial public offering and raise billions of dollars in the process. It’s a topic we explored thoroughly on The Bean Cast this week. Snap reported that its messaging service had 158 million daily active […]

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Creativity is subjective, but that’s not a positive for the ad business. For the industry to function properly, creativity needs to be quantifiable and answers to questions like, “What distinguishes a great creative person from a good one?” and “What distinguishes great work from good work?” must be readily and honestly answered. James Robinson, executive […]

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Ad people, like most people, love to bitch and moan. I can hear the collective groan now: Whoa is me, I have another dumbass client with another idiotic demand that subtracts value from ‘the work.’ Maybe there are many good reasons for this sour-faced condition. Or maybe ad people are choking on self-importance. Ask yourself […]

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Titles are superficial. And like so many superficial things, we cling to them dearly. Particularly so in the ego industries where a director is someone with a seat and a say. Hey, I get it. It makes sense. When it takes you 15 years to make it to creative director, you want to revel in […]

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Advertising is alive. As such, the industry evolves, sometimes as dizzying speeds. If you doubt me, please take a look at the following exhibit, a series of Sunbeam Bread TV spots from 50+ years ago. The announcer says, “Buy energy-packed Sunbeam bread” with such enthusiasm, how could our grandmothers have put up any resistance? I […]

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New media is the new buzzword that can mean everything and nothing. It goes largely undefined, but is used as if everyone knows exactly what it means. The term, itself, may even be mildly offensive to the veterans of traditional media. By declaring itself “new”, it is positioning as “old”, that which came before. This rather presumptuous nomenclature begs three questions, which we will consider in turn:

1. What makes new media new?
2. Does new media compete with or complement traditional media?
3. Does new media require different marketing strategies

While addressing these questions, we will also keep an eye on the underlying issue of how new media effects media marketing going forward.

What Makes New Media New?

The term, new media, itself, is a marketing ploy. New media requires one to cast what came before it as old media. New media sounds better than old media. But if you say, traditional media, then anything else would be non-traditional media. Suddenly, it doesn’t sound quite as appealing. Therefore, it is in the best interest of those with new media content to market it as something completely different than what came before. Many are eager to get on the new media bandwagon without ever expressing what is new about what they are doing. Let’s see if we can do better.

To do this, we need to narrow our focus to one form of media, in this case, music. The end result of “old” media music was that a person would buy their favorite music in a form they could enjoy, and listen to it in a way that brought them the greatest emotional satisfaction. If they really enjoyed it, they would share it with a friend. There were ways they could enjoy it for free, or purchase it. The exact same thing can be said about new media music.

What’s radically different is how we get to the end result. The three major tent poles of the music industry are production, marketing, and distribution. This is actually applicable to all media. All of these aspects of the process have changed.

There was a time when production could only be done by big studios with deep pockets. Now, anyone with $1,000 worth of hardware and software can rival the big studios in production value. That means big studios are no longer the production gatekeepers of the music world.

Similarly, marketing on a massive scale could only be done by gatekeepers with deep pockets. The primary method of marketing was through radio play. If you were not played on the radio, you did not exist. Today, many music listeners do not even own a radio save the one that came in their car.

Distribution was the leg of the stool represented by the big music retailers. Companies like Tower Records and Sam Goody wielded a lot of power in determining which acts would be successful, and to what degree. Now, locked down retail distribution has been upstaged by more open Internet distribution and the question of how to distribute music has gotten trickier.

A big part of the shift in distribution is due to new types of licensing agreements. Traditionally, the draconian licenses were held by the studios. Performers rarely owned their own music, and had little say over how to distribute music in general. Today, companies like TuneCore provide artists with new types of licenses that give the artists much more control, and opens their work to a wider audience.

In summary, new media democratizes the media process.

Does New Media Compete with or Complement Traditional Media

The short answer is yes, and yes. It does both, the same way that any evolutionary process does. Internet-based entertainment is in fierce competition with traditional television and radio programming. Though, in the end, it is hard to tell why it should matter which box from which content is enjoyed. In the case of Netflix and Hulu, we are watching the same content presented by television, except on computers and devices without TV tuners. These days, cable and satellite providers have their own on-demand options. Just choose your delivery system. The media is the same.

The business models are also slowly converging. Netflix offers unlimited streaming for about $10 per month. Dish offers the same thing through their Blockbuster partnership. They can both be experienced on Internet-connected devices. While Netflix offers all content ad free. the same cannot be said for other new-media services like Hulu, which is loaded with ads.

Even podcasts have lengthy ad breaks that make users reach for the Fast-Forward button. TV shows are promoted on Podcasts, and apps are promoted on TV. They are competing. They are partners. There is no clear winner, and both may yet fall to something new just around the corner. The freedom TuneCore provides musicians might be offer a glimpse into that future.

Does New Media Require Different Marketing Strategies

Absolutely! There was a time when marketing was almost unnecessary for media. Marketing was just a matter of which media the gatekeepers would present. There were only a handful of stations, genres, and major artists. Elvis didn’t need to market. He just needed to show up.

Eliminating the gatekeeper means that almost anyone can produce media. That means that everyone has to try a lot harder to rise to the top and be heard over the noise. These days, you can’t just hand someone a pile of money, be played over the radio more times than everyone else, and succeed.

You have to appeal to a highly engaged niche. Generalists do not do well in a democratized system. There are no longer three genres of music but dozens, if not hundreds. Pick one and super serve it.

Finally, you have to elevate your game. Before, just getting in the door meant success. People would be forced to buy an album full of garbage because that was all that was on offer. Today, there are a lot more artists to choose from, and you can buy the songs you like while ignoring the rest. That means that you actually have to earn it. Your audience has more options than just you.

At the end of the day, new media is just a fusion of the current and the traditional. Tomorrow, it will all be old media.

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Editor’s note: Please welcome Nathan Archambault of AKQA in NYC to AdPulp. An earlier version of this article appeared on Maybe I’m Gravy.

The old advertising agency model, the one where Madison Avenue agencies took their sweet and expensive time, isn’t working anymore.

It’s time for a forced retirement.

Sorry, old model. The nature of the business has changed. Client relationships have splintered and the traditional methods by which agencies profited are shrinking or disappearing. Clients want more effective work and they want it faster and cheaper.

Agencies are left with a clear choice: become more nimble, flexible and cost-effective or fade away. As Jeff Goodby recently admitted, we’re past the time for quick fixes.

It’s time to build a more agile agency. Here are a few things agency leaders can do.

Reduce logistics.

Today’s agency doesn’t need the same departments that were once a centerpiece to the creative offering. Goodby folded project management into account management and scaled back in-house production, opting to work with more outside vendors. Other agencies have eliminated the studio department, instead leaving final design responsibilities to creative instead of to a separate department.

Ask your agency: What departments are redundant, outdated or inefficient?

Operate like a newsroom.

It’s time for agencies to get out of the meeting business and get into the making business. The old model has too much overhead, too much process and too many barriers getting in the way of the work. An agency should feel like a living organism with the sole goal of producing great work, and nothing else should matter or get in the way. Oreo operated like a newsroom during last year’s Super Bowl and we all know how that turned out.

Ask your agency: What can we do to get out of the way of the work?

Replace perfection with experimentation.

In the past, clients demanded perfection and the agencies that delivered it thrived. These days, experimentation returns more on investment. Google launches everything in beta and future updates are expected and (mostly) welcome. The important thing today is getting your product, service or campaign idea to market. Once people have access to it, you can gather feedback, revise and repeat. This is what successful startups like Instagram, Foursquare and Path do and it works pretty well for them.

Ask your agency: What can we make today and worry about making better tomorrow?

Hire doers, not thinkers.

Agencies used to be able to hire creative teams to sit around and think up big ideas. But teams that lack the craft to build the ideas they come up with aren’t pulling their weight today. They’re requiring the agency to hire someone else to execute and bring the vision to life. The jig is up, big thinkers: Being clever and having good taste is no longer a job. That’s why side projects are the new main course – they’re the work of a doer.

Ask your agency: Who actually makes things around here?

Cast for talent.

Interpersonal relationships and unique skills matter more than staffing plans. The need may be for an ACD-level copywriter, but it’s important to be open to creative solutions when filling this or any position. An agile agency wants to find people with the right mindset, regardless of whether or how they fit into a particular department or job title. With the right people in place, an agency can cast for projects, not staff for them.

Ask your agency: Are we hiring the best people first and determining their role later?

Deconstruct the process.

It doesn’t make sense to implement the same process for every project. These days, unlike when advertising was mostly made of TV and print, each project is different from the last. Michael Lebowitz, Founder and CEO of Big Spaceship, gives his teams a framework instead of a process. This allows each team, each operating as mini-agenices, to bubble up a unique process that leads to more unique work.

Ask your agency: Are we finding new paths to the end goal of creativity?

Integrate every department.

The different stages of any given project shouldn’t feel like a baton pass. The brief can’t spend weeks with strategy before being handed off to the creative department, and later to production. AKQA CCO Rei Inamoto believes that agencies need to combine strategy, storytelling and software in order to build emotional and useful connections with people. This means that creative, strategy and technology work together from the start, making each team more invested at every stage of the process.

Ask your agency: Is each team member a stakeholder from the beginning?

Maybe you’re not in a position to change the way your agency operates. But there is something you can do: you can join an agency that believes in the game-changing power of agility.

In this agile age, one thing is for certain: the inflexible will be left behind.

Previously on AdPulp: The Google To Adlandia: Be Lean And Agile Like Us, And You’ll Be Rich Like Us

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Media is powerful. In fact, just one potent article in a trusted magazine or newspaper has the power to inspire us, shape us and lead us to new places. Take “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters. The article first appeared in Fast Company on August 31, 1997.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

How many believers has Peters reached in the last 16 years? Millions. For the author pours a particularly seductive nectar into Fast Company’s crystal glass.

Naturally, there is truth in Peters words, but how much truth?

I read a great rebuttal this morning to the mountain of bullshit sometimes known as the literature of creativity. Let’s listen to wonderfully critical Thomas Frank on the topic:

Consider, then, the narrative daisy chain that makes up the literature of creativity. It is the story of brilliant people, often in the arts or humanities, who are studied by other brilliant people, often in the sciences, finance, or marketing. The readership is made up of us — members of the professional-managerial class — each of whom harbors a powerful suspicion that he or she is pretty brilliant as well… And what this complacent literature purrs into their ears is that creativity is their property, their competitive advantage, their class virtue. Creativity is what they bring to the national economic effort, these books reassure them — and it’s also the benevolent doctrine under which they rightly rule the world.

Are you familiar with the self-satisfied “creative people” Frank describes? If you work in advertising, you are. Our profession is full of people who mindlessly spew their recipes for brand success, but sadly most of what the poseurs say (and do) is total garbage.

I’m not just pointing fingers here. If I were to open a deck of my own making from a few years ago, I would likely be appalled at the tortured logic and language of my arguments.

The reality is marketing isn’t all that complex. Are you creating compelling brand experiences for prospects and customers? Yes or no? This is how simple MarCom is at its core. The hard part for most practitioners is coming to this conclusion and then choosing to live by it. We want so badly to believe our ideas separate us from the pack. That our ideas above all else are the real difference maker. Yet, I think the evidence points to execution. The ability to make mundane things like advertising into something artful (that also builds the brand and moves product) — that’s the difference maker.

The post Come On Down, Everyone Is Welcome At The Altar of Creativity appeared first on AdPulp.

Chew on this…the act of chewing negates the efficacy of adverts, particularly in movie theater settings.

According to a new study by a group of researchers from Cologne University, the reason why adverts manage to imprint brand names on our brains is that our lips and the tongue automatically simulate the pronunciation of a new name when we first hear it. Every time we re-encounter the name, our mouth subconsciously practices its pronunciation.

However, according to the study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, this “inner speech” can be disturbed by chewing, rendering the repetition effect redundant.

The researches conducted their experiments on movie theater goers, giving one group popcorn and another group a dissolvable sugar cube. The popcorn eaters had little to no brand recall following the filming, unlike the other group which absorbed and retained the ad messages shown prior to the feature.

Source: The Guardian

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