In times of great flux like we now see with media, entertainment, and the advertising business there’s nothing I like to see more than debate, questioning of the status quo and comrades along with competitors hashing out the details of our future. This is what attracted me not only to the marketing communication biz a long time ago and but even more so account planning. Open debate, creative-intellectual thinking and a bit of rebellion.
That said, I do believe at times our high minded thinking, rebellious streak, and preservation of the “artful” side of advertising (even if we no longer place ourselves in agency creds as in the “ad biz”) gets a bit out of hand. I’ll respectfully call out two posts from planners-from-the-sphere that I admire to a huge degree -Adrian & Mark- , but in this case think both are teetering on the edge of being full of shite.
Of course we likely agree on many points:
that we now need to be more inclined to create experiences not messages, or one way “communications”.
that a new form of advertising is emerging that is as much about creating utility, interaction, and provoking engagement for people to participate, play, and get usefulness from, as it is about selling things.
that bullsh*t image building is no longer an option, but transparency and authenticity is.
Where my bullsh*t meter rages to the nth degree is the presumption that we are in the business of creating art. This notion is what has kept much of our work far from being useful and created a culture of close-minded snobbery among many of us. So much so that we’ve trapped ourselves in bubble of near obsolescence. Further, the idea that we are now purely in the business of creating interaction and utility alone, embedding into communities or riding the bright and shiny new objects of social media, is also short sighted.
The fact of the matter is that we are now required and set up to substantively fulfill a place in the marketing business. It’s much more complicated than “communications” and advertising of old, and entirely more creative and demanding than “integration”. Though the classic definition of marketing is in need of an update, it’s still what our clients demand. And despite marketing clearly having its own semantic baggage, the principles of the practice are much closer to the new reality than advertising has been for years. Contextual targeting, inspired experiential marketing, creative promotion, content creation, community engagement, authentic social missions, and even the often maligned but effective “relationship marketing”are much more part of the real world of what makes our clients successful. And thankfully we now have more effective, relevant ways to go about marketing with the precision of technology, so we are not obnoxious or wasteful of people’s time.
So it’s not just art, or utility, or interaction, or community. It’s about ALL of these things. And that’s why the concept of connections planning resonates so much with me. And why I’ve tried to apply it thinking of real people first, and doing so in a way that inspires creativity and even artful work that makes creative folks from all agency walks AND clients smile. Working the new with the old, and discarding the useless.
If we choose otherwise, we’re simply in the advertising 2.0 biz.
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We must be exceptionally careful about how we go about reengineering our agencies and presenting new marketing theories. Account planning shot itself in the foot about a decade ago and this lesson should remain fresh in everyone’s head. I remember entering the agency world, feeling as though all of us in planning were pretty hot shit. A few years later, however, we were all meeting for conferences to contemplate our very own existence.
The bottom line, whether through arrogance or simple misunderstanding, account planners pissed off a lot of people who were put off by some of our attitudes and ill-prepared for our overall perspective. All connection planners and especially the thought leaders of “the new creative” should periodically take a step out of their element and reevaluate what they are doing and saying.
Truthfully, only a handful of clients and agencies are ready for this line of thinking. We should all be striving for it. But I fear a large chunk, if not most media planners, still aren’t even aware of what it means to be media neutral… a philosophy that is in so many ways already outdated. Very few clients are ready for such changes and radically different theories, as well. Agencies are big ships to turn, industries are even bigger. Until a lot of people die, retire, or change careers, new theories will be taking many an agency/client to old solutions for a long time to come.
Nice post. Agree with much of what you say.
However, think you’re slightly misrepresenting what I think/say.
My point is not to separate what we do from commercial reality - quite the opposite: we need to connect it back and discard many of the practices and much of the theory that gets in the way.
As for the point about art, what I meant was to draw a comparison with
i. art tends to be created in/for and consumed in public contexts (though the same is true of circuses)
ii. reducing any work of art to what it says - what message is contained/encoded in it - is missing much of the point of it
In no way am I advocating art-for-art’s-sake advertising/marketing. Part of the bigger problem that Marketing in general faces is that it has disconnected itself from the reality of business (contrary to the ambitions of the founders of the discipline - they wanted to transform the entire organisation not create a department of their own).
agreed mark.. and thanks for indulging the off the cuff rant.
the provocation of an artful approach, a spectacle or communal entertainment experience, and even more so thought that (as a great artwork) a brand engagement should be one that inspires interpretation or interaction in a way thats not literal, is something I very much believe in.
the nerve struck came from the classic planner dilemma: the struggle to support those that desire to “be artful” with good intentions for the best work, but find it difficult to dimensionalize (or would rather avoid the exploration) of other areas. i know you don’t fall into that camp.
i’m yearning for the breakthrough (as dave armano talks about: “the new creative mind”) that can help folks rewire their thinking to toggle across all these artful, analytical, aesthetic, conversational, and immersive elements.
til then I’ll keep my garfield-esque rants to a minimum, it was quite cathartic though…thanks for the conversation ;)