responding to the agency of the future

09 Feb, 2010 • posts i've written • 5 comments

Yesterday I posted a little… tiny… miniscule really, tome of my personal prognostications on the future of the advertising agency, entitled who says the future needs an advertising agency?

And I was honestly and completely taken by surprise at the amount of interest and attention the post received (more than 400 retweets as of last night) – along with the many, many, brilliant comments left by old and new friends across the web.

The commenters did an excellent job of sniffing out questions I forgot to ask myself, pointing out avenues I left unexplored, and calling me out where they think the pooch was screwed. Below you’ll find excerpts from a few of those comments and a reply or two from me – apologies for not including more of the comment itself or more comments from the post (I had to leave room for a few hours of sleep last night) – I highly suggest digging in to the original article and the thoughtful comments that follow. In all seriousness, I’ve never posted anything that received such a high quality and quantity of responses together. Thank you, everyone.

Many people echoed the sentiment of this comment left by Steve Poppe:

Perhaps I’m personalizing a bit, but good agency thinkers “only care about the brand.” If you have lived and breathed a brand for years, you know that losing the business is like losing a pet (didn’t want to say child). I’m still pissed off about poor brand decisions and missteps made by clients who moved on years ago. Good agencies take their brands personally. They may not like the clients and kvetch a lot, but they do like the brands. The good agencies (trad., dig, other) get close to the product and the consumer — and it is this closeness that creates work that really sells.

Steve, I have no doubt that there are people in the industry that truly do feel empathy for their clients and their companies as you clearly do – and if I did have any such silly doubts before, plenty of other commenters have attempted to relieve me of such an ignorant belief. My original statement was probably too incendiary for the sake alone. I’m reminded of a boss I once had: Jim Meyers, President of Imagination Publishing in Chicago. Jim has an amazing curiosity for his client’s business – from the industry they operate in to the names of everyone in the organization. Moreover, I find myself these days working alongside very young and very brilliant thinkers who seem to have their very self-worth entwined with the health of their client. Maybe it’s those I keep running into from the middle lane, that have been working away for too long for the wrong reasons (simply for the paycheck) that have lost that ability to empathize. Thanks for the comment.

Christian reminds agencies to ask the very smart question of what business are we in again?

Change your mission statement. The mission statement of the GM was “We build cars.”
That’s not a mission statement that would have allowed for the innovation that is needed now. Their mission statement should have been “We bring people from A to B.”

Regarding the notion of the agency as a data collector and insights engine for the brand, James Cooper admitted with a bit of frustration,

The trouble is that’s really hard work, and *really* boring. And for the most part people got into the business because they like having fun and can get away with being lazy.

Alan Wolk asked:

As for your idea about platforms: it’s intriguing and certainly a more interesting future than being an executioner. But here’s a question for you and everyone else: Is there a danger of overload with platforms? Will there be a point where we so saturated with platforms that the cost of getting a new one in front of people and getting them to interact with it becomes prohibitive?

Great question Alan, and one you ultimately answer in your comment when you say, “it may mean we’re looking at a marketplace similar to the current TV landscape, where shows become hits for a brief period of time before fading off and being replaced by the new new thing, which everyone accepts as the natural order of things.” Isn’t it funny how we accept the natural order of things right up until the point where we start profiting from the thing? By definition, gold rushes end – if not, we’d call them gold endurances. Bad pun, I apologize.

Edward Boches on conversation strategy:

Good points (though your strings are showing a little bit) that agencies have to change. It seems to me that most, other than the big, fat ones are, however. I am in Minneapolis right now at a small digital shop Hello Viking. They are building platforms, writing software, etc. One thing is that not all clients are here yet. The smart ones, PG, etc are. In fact Facebook has told me that they are getting the idea of conversation strategy way before agencies get it. So you are right about that incredibly important point. One thing I think you miss, however, is the need for that aforementioned conversation strategy. It is important as the platform you refer to. And that means agencies, who have always shat on the PR folks who know how to engage and influence through conversation and interaction, better open their eyes on that front, too. No way a digital developer or a creative team will have either the knowledge or the confidence from a client necessary to do that job.

Edward, I bet we’ve had the same conversations with Facebook – that’s one of the examples I was drawing from as well. You’ve mentioned my strings in your comment and on your posterous account, and I just want to be very open and direct with you because I take that kind of accusation very seriously… Frankly, I’m a much more advanced model of puppet than you’ve come to suspect. Batteries, my dear friend, are the way of the future. Strings are soooooo one-point-oh.

In all seriousness, I have nothing to gain by writing my post other than the attention of smart people like yourself (and your delicious brain that comes with you), a bit of attention for myself and the rest of my thoughts here (may I suggest collecting them like Pokemon?), and the opportunity to go deep on a topic with my obsessive compulsive mind (which keeps it away from assessing the thread count of my sheets at night). Alright, so I do have a bit to gain, but unfortunately, Undercurrent nor I have figured out a way to monetize this blog… yet. But I get what you mean though – and I do hope I can rally a few more likeminded people over to my side of the fence, maybe a new client too, and therefore sustain the place I like to spend the hours between 10am and 6pm everyday. That wouldn’t be bad, no?

Mark Lewis nails the campaign to the wall:

Another point you did not mention is the campaign focus of agencies. Because of their reliance on old marketing models, agencies tend to look for one big answer which can be replicated across many channels. I would argue that modern, web enabled commerce demands many smaller efforts. This takes a different model in terms of payment and organization.

Rayna offers a perspective from the client-side:

I’ve worked for large CPG brands, in the position of working with outside agency partners of all specialities (i.e., digital, media, traditional, PR, and the ‘full service’) and have to admit that some brands create some of the challenges for agencies that you speak of. Larger brands tend to hire a ‘cast of thousands’ when it comes to agencies — dividing work amongst numerous companies (that are not related)– and most don’t play well. Further, many brand managers are not always knowledgable about how best to work with agencies and get the best work from their partners.

Rayna’s absolutely right, the brand plays a significant part in today’s troubles. It’s a market after all, and maladies exist equally on the sides of supply and demand here. I would have liked to address this more in the post, if only I had had another week dedicated to writing it.

Internet friend and fellow Mad Person, Helen Klein Ross aka Ad Broad weighs in, too (her full comment is worth the click over to the post):

Agree with you that agencies are still dissing digital, what could be clearer proof of this than the parade last night of $3 million URL-less spots?

And I think David Gillespie provides a nice statement to close the comments out with:

All I can say is bring it on; advertising has had it too easy for too long.

When we envision the future, we confront ourselves with our own estimations of fate – and we can either choose to work towards or against this fate in front of us. Whether you agree or disagree with my personal reflection on the future, I think we can agree that both of us have a good deal of work ahead. The passionate exchange on the original post (and hopefully this post, too) seems like a great way to revive our spirits and begin the work again.

Thank you for inspiring me.

who says the future needs an advertising agency?

08 Feb, 2010 • posts i've written • 120 comments

the agency of the future can’t be built by just adding tail fins and Goofy’s nose

A quick disclaimer: the views expressed here are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

Apparently there’s a roaring interest in a model for the advertising agency of the future. My aim for this post is to address some of the ideas put forth by others, weigh the usefulness of today’s agency objectively, and make a bit of a prediction myself. There’s little fun in making bold predictions about the future without a debate – so dig in and offer up a point of view in the comments, if you please.

Some smart ideas already presented:

• Joseph Jaffe says the future will be made up of two kinds of agencies: the idea generators and the executors of those ideas.
• Bob Greenberg, who has a considerable interest in his own agency, R/GA, looking like the agency of the future, thinks that the agency of the future will hold court over digital technologies and interactions for the brand.
• Ben Malbon, the nice chap who heads up BBH Labs, a sweet future-y morsel nestled inside BBH, believes that crowdsourcing, or some kind of permeable relationship with creative talent outside the agency, is a necessity for the agency of the future.
• Tim Malbon at Made By Many, who shares some DNA with Ben from BBH Labs, thinks we should be asking what an agile advertising agency looks like.
• Putting some of these ideas to the test – new agency models are already being implemented by IDEO, Agency Nil, and Victor & Spoils just to name a few…
• What about an advertising agency that launches its own brands? Both Coudal Partners in Chicago and Anomaly out of NY and London tinker and toil with this model to varying degrees of success.
• And all of this discussion and activity even has Forrester primed to release a report on the topic soon. It’s sure to be short, expensive, and oft-quoted.

I can’t really argue with any of the points or models above – they’re all insightful and interesting – but they’re pontifications on what agencies should be doing right now. To say these are models for the future is the equivalent of attaching tail fins to a sedan. All of the above examples seem to be creative ways to sidestep current problems with the industry instead of addressing them directly (and to be fair to the authors/creators cited above, I doubt they meant their posts to be that forward looking).

Who says the future needs an agency, anyway?

Advertising agency of the future sounds a bit like horse drawn carriage of the future.

I’m not saying for certain that there won’t be agencies in the future, only that the future doesn’t necessarily need agencies. Just like the future doesn’t need printed news but it needs journalism; the future needs commercial communications, but who creates them, the agency or the brand or someone else, is unwritten.

And though the future of the agency is unwritten, I have real doubts that agencies will survive or should survive: Read more »

mexican billboards

13 Jan, 2010 • posts i've written • 5 comments

CUT-UP MX is a blog run by Norman Palm that catalogs the curiosity that is the Mexican billboard.

Chopped up, partly exchanged and randomly assembled they often become exciting commercial collages. Rumors say that once a company’s advertising time is over and a new hirer is still to be found, the pieces are mixed up to disguise the sales message.

I find it wonderful that a scheme concocted to ensure that advertisers don’t gain extra impressions has been turned into an art and photography project.

But I also wonder…

Remnant banner space on the web is usually filled by some random Google Adwords unit selling something no one wants to buy in an aesthetic you’ll never want to click on. So what happens? You learn to ignore those ad units of a site. Banner blindness.

What if unsold banner space contained something like the Mexican billboard – a creative collage or artistic bit of nonsense?

What if instead of trying to squeeze one more penny out of an advertiser, Google decided to preserve those placements (and your focus on them) by serving art when an ad couldn’t be found?

advertising technology: peruse the product or wax poetic

07 Jul, 2009 • posts i've written • 4 comments

Sure, sure, “advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking.” But with a recent surge in personal TV viewing, I’ve been mulling over how we advertise technology.

Consider this new Palm Pre ad, “Flow”

Pretty weighty stuff, eh? Your phone is your connection to the spiritual world (monks!). It reminded me of a new ad for Scientology I caught while watching CNN…

Now compare that ad to one of the traditional ads by Apple for the iPhone…

Apple’s ads are far more akin to the early days of cellphone ads…

What all of this got me thinking about is the choice between marketing the product and its features vs its place in the world and its meaning to culture at large. It seems for technology, everyone chooses one of these two roads. We either show off the product or wax poetic about the world at large. One involves presenting context and situations, the other involves lots of copy that starts with “It’s about.. it’s about.. it’s about….. the new _______.”

Which do you think is the strongest sell, or when should either be chosen?

keep it remixable, stupid

15 Jun, 2009 • posts i've written • 4 comments

Most advertising should work on three chords and twelve bars.

I’ve been a student of the blues for the last decade and change. What I’ve learned is that the simple construction of a blues song allows the artist, the time, and the place to not only imbue meaning and context, but to easily remix the form for whatever purpose serves the artist. That simple formula has given birth to almost every type of popular music downloaded today.

Until recently, Apple understood how to build a simple rhythm and melody with their advertising.

The immediate benefit of such a simple form in our modern world is that these ads create a platform for remixing.

By creating something so simple, they’ve made it easier for culture to dissect it and do with it what it will. Ultimately, the thing itself spreads and the devices within the ad (the voiceover, the music, the product shots) become a common language. A :30 spot that cost you millions of dollars to interrupt people suddenly becomes the means to earn and spread social currency for the entire web. (Hooray!) (Cadburry has also done this quite well)

But then Apple went and gave up the ghost.

I like David Fincher, but this ad makes no sense whatsoever and in one :30 spot, tosses away everything that made Apple’s advertising so successful.

It’s telling that this video has so few views and absolutely no spoofs or parodies.

Someone probably told Fincher that they wanted something new, something to disrupt their current rhythm – probably because they’ve got a new phone, this one has an S at the end, duh. But instead, they’ve created a complete orphan that feels like and looks like an LG or Sprint ad.

an existing business model for digital agencies

13 May, 2009 • posts i've written • 10 comments

Mike just wrote a post on a new business model for digital agencies that’s getting a ton of great feedback.

Here’s Mike’s basic idea:

I want to see a new digital agency model that sells a package of 100 small digital experiences, that can each be executed quickly and cheaply, instead of selling the 1 big digital experience.

When this agency pitches clients, you don’t pitch one big idea, you pitch the first 10 small ideas. You say these are the first 10 ideas we’re going to build, and there are 90 more where that came from. For $500,000, we will concept and execute 100 ideas over 10 weeks. These ideas will each be designed to spread your message, attract the attention of your desired audience, build relationships, and compel action, if applicable.

It’s a brave idea, but one I think would be impossible to scale. When you have 5 clients, you’re expected to dream up and build fifty fairly unique ideas per week. With the way design and development is often highly fractured in most agencies, the time it would take to communicate a vision (even for the slimmest experience) would halt this kind of rapid process. Also, the output here would create 100 floating corpses by the end of the 10 weeks; there’s no demand on continual refinement and evolution, something that is absolutely necessary for building interactions, engagement, and ultimately relationships. (I’ve learned this bit the hard way)

Even though I take issue with Mike’s plan, I agree with the spirit of the idea. Agencies should be creating more. The relationship between agency and brand should extract the full talent of the creative team for the price being paid – which almost never happens. Hungry agencies charge too little for brilliant execution and lazy agencies charge too much for mediocre drivel. Meanwhile, the talent of the best people is being wasted.

Here’s the good news: there is an existing business model for digital agencies that rocks – it’s the model of building your own brands and products. Companies like Coudal Partners in Chicago, and Anomaly here in NYC, are practiced at testing the mettle of their own ideas by actually launching them.

Layer Tennis, by Coudal, is a perfect example to dissect. Layer Tennis is basically two designers passing back and forth a Photoshop file in 15 minute intervals, trying to one up each other. That’s how it started anyway. It has since grown a bit in terms of media (now there’s animation, too), and it has certainly become a big draw for the design audience every Friday. Layer Tennis seemed like a good idea, so Jim and the crew just did it. Adobe took notice and brought some advertising/sponsorship dollars to the table. (Any of Anomaly’s projects are great case studies, too)

A lot of agencies seem to be adopting this practice, and I’m happy to see it. When the vision for something comes from within an agency, I trust the care and feeding of that idea to the originator for as long as possible. Layer Tennis could have been ruined if it had been handed off directly to Adobe from day one.

Thoughts? leave em below. Also, drop a line on any project you’re currently incubating.

nike+ trash talk banner

03 May, 2009 • posts i've written • 2 comments

If it’s on the web, it better not be static. And if you want people to care, you gotta be willing to piss someone off. If every brand advertised by those two tiny rules, online advertising wouldn’t be nearly the flea circus act it is.

via Rick Williams

digital media isn’t mass media for cheap

09 Mar, 2009 • posts i've written • 2 comments

The truth is, most brands use the web in superficial ways. And our favorite place is becoming littered with pointless Facebook apps, ‘viral’ videos and widgets (whatever those are). Brands chase hits because they fundamentally ‘misunderestimate’ the power of this medium. They look for whatever sounds popular, hoping for rapid and mass adoption; the kind of curve they’re used to seeing through TV advertising.

Please drop me a comment below so I can discuss it in more detail.

And really, this deck is just an appetizer for Mike’s latest thoughts on desire paths. Give em both a read.

the fan economy

17 Feb, 2009 • posts i've written • 2 comments

I’ve been cobbling this presentation together for some time, even back when I was a Mad Man this was bouncing around this inside of my skull. Take a spin through and leave me any comments or concerns (either here or on Slideshare). If you enjoy it, please spread it. I’ll be expounding on this a bit in further posts coming to a blog near you.

branding in the era of the remix

23 Jan, 2009 • posts i've written • No comments

Mike, Faris and I were all contacted by Ben Alter, a grad student at the VCU Brandcenter to help answer one huge question:

Do you think there are any major ramifications for companies/brands knowing that the next generations connective tissue is this sharing, participating, and remixing of ideas?

Ben, my answer is yes. Thanks for the question. Now here’s a funny video.

I kid. I kid. Mike and Faris both took an eloquent stab at an answer, so I’ll do my best not to simply repeat them.

Recombinance is not a marketing strategy. Recombinance is a behavior. And it’s how culture advances. Technology has only further enabled remixing of content; but it’s less important how and more important why.

If you stand for nothing, no one will stand with you. Remixing is a form of personal expression in relation to something else. If you provide no stimuli, you can’t expect the behavior. From time to time, novelty can stand in for a lack of belief or values. But novelty is a diminishing resource by definition.

Brands have a myopic fascination with the effect, while they ignore the cause. Faris made the excellent point that remixes are sexy to brands because they’re a form of media that gets shared (and we like for the word to be spread). And brands are practiced at creating content that would never be spread by actual non-zombies: the dreaded press release, or a shallow micro-site, or banner ad, or interstitial video ad. Brands have perfected a model that is unremarkable. Instead of building a strategy around being remixed, brands should dedicate themselves to being remarkable.

Trying to control digital manipulation is the new tilting at windmills. You can’t influence culture without influencing culture. Certainly not all remixes are positive, so again, focus on your brand and what you stand for.

The rate of change will only increase. Having the ability to drag and drop pre-made elements to create something unique means that creation is more accessible and rapid. The pace also applies to building things like interactions: kids are out there building the next Facebook while brand managers review their :30 spots.

It’s time to create or capture more content, and distribute it more quickly. By spreading a wide net of content, your audience will stumble across it as they like and craft their own personal story of your brand.

Whew, that’s enough for now. Mike, Faris, your serve.