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By Simon Billing

The irritating bit about the certitude of the advertising-is-dead, the-answer-is-awesomeness, canned-peas-are-an-experience, Facebook-is-fab, twitter-is-tops nouvelle vague is that there’s no real evidence to support the prognostications, theories, assured pronouncements from august symposia, and the information ‘broken telephone’ of the blog- and twitter-spheres.

It simply hasn’t been around long enough for reliable data or examples in terms of sales and other value creation over the long term. I’ve yet to see a case study that demonstrates anything other than a one-time effect. Or an example of sustained attititude change among a significant portion of the target. Or anything that relates a social media campaign to sales (other than using it as a straight sales channel which is not the same thing at all).

That’s the frustrating thing about new: it’s untested, has no history, the future is anybody’s and everybody’s best guess.

And yet there are library loads of statistics and case studies for the effects of the now besmirched and discredited use of traditional media advertising. This apparent squandering of funds can be correlated to (inter alia): awareness, trial, repeat purchase, positive attitude shift, brand preference, brand loyalty, creating word of mouth, changing behaviour, creating sustainable competitive advantage, justifying a premium price, extending product use or developing a previously untapped user base, and increasing a company’s stock price.

Then there’s the fact that most social media “successes” are for brands built by advertising, the awkward issue of cause and effect generally being swept away on a wave of triumphal euphoria.

Thousands of campaigns, decades worth of data, and myriad cases of moribund brands getting the Lazarus treatment from which to learn and arrive at informed decisions. All of which some suggest, should be consigned to the shredder or the recycling bin.

It seems a bit silly that the best alternative to not knowing which 50% of your budget is wasted, is potentially wasting 100%.

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I agree with Simon. The hype surrounding Social Media and its subsequent push to the top of the heap of everything marketing is unbelievable and scary. However, social media will develop, hopefully grow up and because of that, holds much promise as an important tool in the marketing kit. It is however, media, in other words, empty space between a brand and its audience. The important thing here, in fact the only thing that matters is the content that fills the space.

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It seems that we’ve fallen into an age of technicians. Or worse, an age of technocrats. The focus of marketing is increasingly about technology, with few hat tips left to creativity. Rather, marketing is now the domain of those who create and promote platforms and apps. It’s the domain of those who herald a new age of conversation and giving goods away free.

These are today’s marketing rock stars. Even though many of them don’t believe in good old fashioned marketing. According to many of them, any prior form of marketing is dead, along with brands and advertising.

The funny thing is the majority of consumers couldn’t care less. Sure, they flock to facebook, use gmail and view videos on YouTube. But to them it doesn’t represent anything other than convenient and free entertainment and communication.

In fact, I’ve never heard anybody outside the hallowed echo chamber of social media actually call it social media. “What are you doing tonight?” “Oh, participating in a little social media, how about you?”

Social media is just another form of media added to the palette. Not the promised land. Neither does it represent the destruction, or replacement of marketing and advertising.

The problem is the barn doors have been kicked open allowing anybody with a social media opinion in. Now everybody is a self-proclaimed marketing expert, guru, or maven. (Oddly enough, ‘maven’ is a word coined by an ad guy in the 1960’s. But like so many things in marketing, you’d have to believe much of the history was invented yesterday).

Over at a blog called The Ad Contrarian, Bob Hoffman says, “The advertising industry, in fact the whole of marketing, is now sinking in the quicksand of complicators. They are in charge. This is the era of the complicator.

He’s right. The influx of complicators has caused confusion, inertia and as a result, some very bad marketing efforts and advertising lately. But, like most things, it’s probably cyclical.

Back in 1947, prior to opening up Doyle Dane Bernbach, Bill Bernbach wrote a letter to his then employer, Grey Advertising. In the letter he expounded on a topic that reflects much of what we’re dealing with today:

I’m worried that we’re going to fall into the trap…that we’re going to worship techniques instead of substance, that we’re going to follow history instead of making it, that we’re going to be drowned by superficialities instead of buoyed up by solid fundamentals. I’m worried lest hardening of the creative arteries begin to set in.

There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this sort or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there’s one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

It’s that creative spark that I’m so jealous of for our agency and that I am so desperately fearful of losing. I don’t want academicians. I don’t want scientists. I don’t want people who do the right things. I want people who do inspiring things.

In the past year I must have interviewed about 80 people – writers and artists. Many of them were from the so-called giants of the agency field. It was appalling to see how few of these people were genuinely creative. Sure, they had advertising know-how. Yes, they were up on advertising technique.

But look beneath the technique and what did you find? A sameness, a mental weariness, a mediocrity of ideas. But they could defend every ad on the basis that it obeyed the rules of advertising. It was like worshiping a ritual instead of the God.

All this is not to say that technique is unimportant. Superior technical skill will man a good man better. But the danger is a preoccupation with technical skill or the mistaking of technical skill for creative ability.

The danger lies in the temptation to buy routinized men who have a formula for advertising. The danger lies In the natural tendency to go after tried-and-true talent that will not make us stand out in competition but rather make us look like all the others.

If we are to advance we must emerge as a distinctive personality. We must develop our own philosophy and not have the advertising philosophy of others imposed on us.

Let us blaze new trails. Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.

Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at Altimeter Group (specializing in research and consulting on digital strategies), wrote a post on his blog, titled: “Scorecard: Does Your Agency Fondle The Hammer?” He too cautions clients away from agencies focused on tools and techniques:

Caution. Agency partners that are focused on technologies –not business needs, can destroy your brand. Although new technologies are emerging at an ever-increasing speed, creating a strategy based on tools will leave you in a churn of change, without anyway to escape. Agency partners that jump from one shiny tool to the next (hammer fondlers) risk poor implementation, not tying efforts to business goals and worst of all confusing your customers as you over-deploy.

Rather than developing a strategy based on the latest tool –focus on the end goal of building a place for your customers to come interact with each other, and your brand.  Look for agency partners that focus on customer behaviors, and business goals as the over-arching goal.

All of this is not to say digital tools and technology are bad.

Social media, is a great and promising new development that requires skill in getting to know how to use it and integrate it into a broader business purpose.

Rather, as science fiction writer, Theodore Sturgeon, so eloquently put it, “Ninety percent of everything is crap.”

Given the ubiquity of communications, hype and along with it - expert opinion – Sturgeon’s law is more true today than ever.

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By Simon Billing

The most interesting thing about McKim Advertising was that Anson McKim, the founder, was killed by a train owned by Canadian Pacific, his largest client.

What was then Canada’s oldest agency was where I started in the business.

The owners were a spectral group of very old, very grey and very rich men who ensconced themselves on one deep carpeted and dark paneled floor, inaccessible to the plebs who kept their coffers from falling below the ‘fill’ line.

McKim was a significant contributor of cash and cannon fodder to the Progressive Conservative Party and it was made clear to me early on that it would be a serious mistake to balk at the opportunity to do my bit should I be called upon come election time. Conformity was the sine qua non for success in those hallowed halls. I never did get a chance to regale them with my very particular views on the Progressive Conservative Party.

I think all agencies should be stuffed with creative thinkers, impassioned people, iconoclasts and social misfits. All departments, not just accounts receivable. Long before email, smart phones and call display, the best account executive I ever worked with was able to seamlessly manage one of the largest accounts in the country from a payphone in the bar where most of the senior players on the account whiled away most afternoons. He was a very resourceful suit. He became a writer and opened his own agency.

These days, there’s a lot of chatter among the conversational classes about personal branding. Because everything you do on the internet has the half life of a spent nuclear fuel rod. This video discussion by the (very smart) chaps at Thornley Fallis examines the issue of the responsibility of employees to manage their personal brands whenever they are online to ensure that it will always reflect well on the company.

It’s an unfortunately valid issue. Unfortunate because I’m not sure the idea of personal branding holds much interest for the type of people so perfectly captured in one of the most beloved of ad campaigns:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine…

You get the picture.

Via Grumpy Brit

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