Post-Ad Age Dogma

Listen: just because you put a little lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig, or in this case a new Publicis office. I am beginning to think the big guys keep shuffling their respective decks just to get a little free print space in the trades. This iteration is bringing multiple disciplines (media, creative, digital, promotion) literally under one roof. Ah, the smell of increased overhead in the morning.

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From the self-appointed ad industry bible: This 36,000 foot fly-over for the rationale to invest in holding company stocks ("Is It a Good Time to Buy Holding Co. Stock?") was way up in the clouds for my taste and required a slightly lower altitudinal view. Let’s take a look at the numbers over the past year. The S&P Index has declined by nearly 10% and over the same period the big three advertising holding companies have posted a combined average decline of approximately 23%. Given the fundamentals of the advertising business, the deepest cuts, which are still to come, will inflict the most pain on media spending. The big holding cos. have diversified to some degree (some more so than others), but they still rely heavily on media spending and the production dollars used to create the content for those spends. One of the largest advertising spenders, the automotive industry, declined 8.32% in the first quarter of 2008, which was before horrible Q1 earnings calls. These guys will be taking a bigger axe in short order. The real news is those dollars will not come back into the usual channels, especially big-budget media production and spending.

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NBC's Ben Silverman's comments on network television hit a rare sweet spot: right between the heartwarming and the truly sad. Heartwarming because they came from an old broadcast TV exec and hit the core of what's wrong with television: the programming. And sad because they highlight not only how backwards we view the demise of network television, but also how there is nothing to indicate that we will do it any differently in new media.

The models in old and new media are essentially the same and equally intrusive: Someone shows you something and in return gets to expose you to messages you don't want to see. The content is sub-standard. Even giving it away for free is now hard. And the messaging is not something you want. Why do we need to be bribed with entertainment to see it? As soon as either the sponsorship or content gets to be relevant or good enough to exist independent of the other, the current TV model breaks down. Perfect pairing with Dumb and Dumber.

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I've always been a long tail fan, as it's a powerful, consumer-focused graphic illustration of the end of the broadcast model as it gives way to the proliferation of choice, one of the many welcome developments of the post-advertising age. That's why I felt it necessary to respond to a recent post on Chris Anderson's theLongTail.com.

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An article in the trades last week caught my eye with the words "money back" in the title. Apparently, the next experiment of the post-advertising age, word of mouth (WOM), is not getting any respect. Why else would anyone offer up a money-back GUARANTEE to a marketer for not beating its traditional agency partner? It is clear the group called BzzAgent has some impressive "percentage" growth numbers and a client list of almost 300, but why offer a money-back guarantee?

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Circle the wagons: They’re coming in from corporate to help us...again. In the second part of a never-ending series of corporate musical chairs we take a look at IPG’s latest attempt to right the ship. The script is, as always, effectively the same; just the players are different—

WE INTERRUPT THIS ARTICLE FOR BREAKING NEWS:

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We need to stop helping brands make their communication with the outside world so clean and simple. Yelling desperately for attention for 15 seconds to a numb audience through broadcast television demanded it. But as we consummate the shift toward brand storytelling, the voluntary, committed and less controlled interaction with clients calls for the opposite.

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A day at Intergalactic Post Advertising HQ is quite an experience. I have to admit I don't work from this outpost, but today I thought it was time to spend a while seeing what was brewing at HQ. The stories—post-advertising triumphs and failures both—were flying in from all directions. I was flying under the radar myself, just trying to stay out of the fray when our editor quipped between sips on his late-afternoon latte, “Hey, double-M, it’s been two weeks. How ‘bout an article?”

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As I read about Publicis Groupe’s latest reorg, I thought, wow these guys are embracing the digital age head on. The tail finally is going to wag the dog, but in a good way. So I read a lot on the story, trying to catch all the quotes and angles and so forth. I got a little suspicious when I came across this gem: "unveiling a new corporate-level unit." It reminded me of those suits that say, "I am from corporate and I am here to help you." They rarely ever do—help, that is. That particular article (from the so-called industry bible) went on to say, "that it will be a central hub." The only thing a client service corporate-level unit is the hub of is unnecessary overhead costs.

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And why the perfect bouquet is imperfect

We humans actually do marketing very well when we stay away from trying to do just that: marketing. You see it when you pay attention to the mundane everyday interactions. And it highlights some of the fundamental flaws with the way brands communicate with their audience. Perhaps it's no more complicated than "...should a person talk to you like ads talk to you, you'd punch them." But it's worth a closer look.

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A report on NPR’s Morning Edition about the new movie Kitt Kittredge: An American Girl caught my attention the other morning. The movie is based on the American Girl doll line, which, since its inception, has spawned a book series, a magazine, clothing and accessories, three TV movies and American Girl Place, which is a café, doll hair salon, photo studio, theater and doll hospital (yes, a place where girls take their damaged dollies).

I’d been reading about American Girl and its founder, Pleasant Rowland, in Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods—and How Companies Create Them, a national bestseller that explores an emerging market trend the book’s authors call "new luxury." The authors use the term "new luxury" to describe products that "possess higher levels of quality, taste and aspiration than other goods in the category but are not so expensive as to be out of reach." In addition to the American Girl doll line, the category consists of a diverse set of products: Belvedere Vodka, Callaway Golf, Samuel Adams beer and Whirlpool, among others. American Girl stands out for us here at Intergalactic Post-Advertising HQ because it started with a woman, Pleasant Rowland, who wanted to do nothing more than tell a story. More to the point, she wanted to tell an existing story better.

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Someone gets an idea to harness the power of new technology/thinking to drive NEW sources of revenue to add to the shrinking pie from traditional means. In this great example of getting it backward, Mindshare Interactive is no more.

From last week's AdWeek: "The reorganization eliminated the shop's digital operation, MindShare Interaction, as a separate unit and dispersed its staff throughout the agency as a whole. It also established four key areas of service: client leadership; business planning; 'invention,' including branded content and other creative disciplines; and 'the exchange,' including buying and activation."

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