{"id":738,"date":"2016-03-24T07:52:08","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T07:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=738"},"modified":"2016-03-24T07:52:08","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T07:52:08","slug":"what-where-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/what-where-who\/","title":{"rendered":"What Where Who"},"content":{"rendered":"

The media business really doesn\u2019t do considered moderation. \u201cTwitter is the marketing tool of the future.\u201d \u201cTwitter is finished.\u201d \u201cSocial media marketing is the answer to all of mankind\u2019s problems.\u201d \u201cSocial media couldn\u2019t sell an iceberg to a polar bear.\u201d \u201cTV is dead\u201d. \u201cTV revenues continue to grow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>And so on.<\/span><\/p>\n

It sometimes seems we swing from an over-inflated enthusiasm for something, to a sense of being underwhelmed almost weekly.<\/span><\/p>\n

So it is on a broader basis too.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth (otherwise known as the full-service agency era) creative work was king. Never mind that we could only afford the odd spot on network TV; never mind that we knew from past experience that campaigns below a minimum threshold didn\u2019t work; off we went anyway and placed our 60-or-30 second masterpieces.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The work\u2019 was what mattered. We decided the \u2018what\u2019 (as in what we said) way ahead of the \u2018where\u2019 (or where we said it). As Bob Hoffman, The Adcontrarian <\/a>has it on his site: “Creative people make the ads. Everyone else makes the arrangements.” <\/span><\/p>\n

How the pendulum has swung. Now it\u2019s the media numbers that exercise the industry; the impressions, the reach, the page views, the clicks. Now it\u2019s the \u2018who\u2019, the \u2018where\u2019 and only then the \u2018what\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Salesmen rule, selling today\u2019s equivalent of snake oil to a market that is both confused and ill-informed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Confused because when it was a question of creativity driving everything at least everyone could have an opinion over what was or was not creative. You knew w<\/span>here you were. Now it seems we can\u2019t even agree what \u2018viewed\u2019 means.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trouble with numbers is they have an air of authority, of broaching no argument. \u2018A\u2019 is bigger than \u2018B\u2019, what could be simpler than that?<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the ill-informed bit comes in, because often \u2018A\u2019 may appear bigger than \u2018B\u2019 but in reality is a lot smaller.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is damaging to the health of the ad business to believe that everything we do has to be measured by short-term effect \u2013 however defined. It\u2019s easy to talk about uplifts in clicks, or likes or retweets as if any of those things actually connected to something real like cash, or profit.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the fact is that advertising can best add value to a business \u2013 real value measured by things like sales or profit or share price \u2013 when used in a combination of long-term brand building activities and short-term activation techniques. Read the evidence. Listen to Binet and Field.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>It is foolish to see the business as engaged in some sort of battle between the brand builders and the activators (or to put it another way between TV and online).<\/span><\/p>\n

It is equally foolish to see the business as a competition between the creatives and the media specialists (in whatever form). Sir Martin Sorrell\u2019s comments about the medium being more important than the message, and his thoughts on how the madmen have been replaced by the mathmen (a line you can bet wasn\u2019t written by an algorithm) only compound this foolishness.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Now more than ever we need delivery mechanisms and creative excellence working hand in glove.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>What we actually need is a new model that brings together the different disciplines in some way that allows them to work seamlessly together in harmony for the ultimate benefit of the client.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Now, who can think of a name for such a forward-thinking, client-facing, fully integrated offering?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The media business really doesn\u2019t do considered moderation. \u201cTwitter is the marketing tool of the future.\u201d \u201cTwitter is finished.\u201d \u201cSocial media marketing is the answer to all of mankind\u2019s problems.\u201d \u201cSocial media couldn\u2019t sell an iceberg to a polar bear.\u201d \u201cTV is dead\u201d. \u201cTV revenues continue to grow.\u201d \u00a0And so on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":740,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions\/740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}