The
Battle For Coca-Cola
Rages On.
Ain't
Nothing Like
The Real Thing, Maybe.
I
Don't Mean To Say
I Told You So, But...
Are
Consumers Smarter
Then We Are?.
The
Four Great Myths
Of Global Branding.
Mr
Bevis Butts Heads
At Mitsubishi
The
Best Laid Plans
Of Mice And Men.
Dare
to Be Great:
The Mad Genius of "The Matrix""
Mitsubishi's
New Marketing Boss
Out Of The Frying Pan.
Concept Is Stronger Than Fact.
Value
Perception In A World
Gone Mad With "Cool"
The
Future of Advertising
The Brand
The
Future of Advertising
The Targets
The
Future of Advertising
The Grid
The
Future of Advertising
The Swarm
Technology
Making The Message
Meaningful
The Only Business That Matters Is The One You're In.
What
Ever Happened To The
Big Idea?
The Post-Advertising Era Is Here
Confessions Of A" Liar For Hire"
Good, Bad and Ugly At the Moment of Truth
A Post-Advertising "Big Idea".
The Value Of A Paying Pustomer.
Emergence Of the "Empire of One".
All customers Are Created Equal
Playing God An Other Atrocities
the
City That Spawned
The Age Of Advertising..
Fear And Self Loathing In Advertising.
The Greatest Success Metric Is Sales.
Foot In (Word Of) Mouth Disease
In the Begining, There Was The End.
The Rise And Fall
Of The Creative Class
What's Love Got To Do With It?
Champagne Brand
Beer Marketing Budget
Amtrak: Third World Nation On Wheels.
New Music Means
New Marketing.
Automotive Advertising Hits A Dead End.
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Has Advertising Lost Control Of The Creative Process? Look around you. Remember when there was some semblance of order to the marketing messages we were submitted to? Remember when there were three major television networks, maybe ten national magazines, billboards, a few radio stations in each market, and a morning paper? Now anything goes anywhere. Urinal ads are just the tip of the clutter bin. Who is responsible for all of this visual pollution? Who died and left Godzilla in charge of keeping order? What happened to
the term, "within reason?" Where do we find the "off" button?
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Every time I talk to a client these days, they are looking for some new place to stick their logo. This isn't marketing. It's about real estate. This isn't communications. It's about |
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This is a very exciting time for advertising, don't you think? - Roscoe G, Munich This is a very exciting time for the people who would like to ban all forms of advertising. – hw |
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What the hell is going on around here? When did advertising become a grabfest for the attention of A.D.D. sufferers, to the exclusion of everybody else. I saw Goodby, Silverstein's reel the other day. It was like looking backwards in time. The messages connected. Most of them on an intelligent level. But a number went for pure emotion and got me right between the eyes. I was actually grateful that somebody cared enough NOT to dumb down their sales pitch, but rather craft it lovingly. Then I went back to the real world. The world where most advertising sucks. Most of what passes for television advertising is just plain boring. But what I want to know is why the so-called "creative revolution" never caught on? There have been many, many success stories generated by agencies and clients who did not take the easy way out. There is a Haagen-Das commercial on Goodby's reel that celebrates the idea of simplicity so beautifully it makes me want to stop right here. But I can't. This is not a simple topic. However, it is a question with a simple answer. YES is the answer. Advertising HAS lost control of the creative process. The control is now firmly in the hands of "suits" who want desperately to be "creative." Chief Marketing Directors who used to have only five direct reports: the agency, the promo house, the ethnic agency, the design shop and the research shop now have twenty-five direct reports. Many of them "creative" suppliers. 25 direct reports and an average of 2.5 fiscal years to make "something" happen. So if these CMO's have such a short window of opportunity, why don't we see more daring ideas instead of cheap shots? These guys come in with a fresh broom. They have a mandate to sweep clean. The shot is theirs. But they don't take it. Or they half step it. The results show it. How can I fault them? The company's last CMO put their brand's fate in the hands of the last agency. 12 dancing ducks later, the new CMO's been given her marching orders to dig the brand out of the hole in the next 90 days. Not gonna happen. Of course a trend that found its start on these pages with the Coke "Cool American" campaign and has since been dubbed "open source marketing" claims to put creative control of a given brand's image in the hands of its staunchest consumer advocates. Said advocates create their own version of what the brand "should" be doing and distribute these "virals" across the web. As ambitious as the widespread press coverage has been for our inception of this so-called open source marketing movement, I can't say that I hold much hope for it becoming a meaningful trend, in spite of what the New York Times, Adrants and various other pubs are claiming. Our Friday night crew at our Square Table in the Red Room event at GASP had their own take on the topic. Andreas, our 10th floor neighbor from Anthem Magazine, had real concerns about client attention spans being impacted by so many media choices that the adequate analysis of any one outlet becomes problematic. Rich from Designory told us we ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until all the wireless media platforms spring up. Of course Angela's concerns were practical as always. How will creative people manage to keep up with all of the tools, programs and technologies this insatiable client demand for "new" in media is creating? Ryan, one of our world-class Flash gurus, told us of his early days when he would invest days on end learning the complexities of advanced action scripting so he would be ready for whatever came his way. Of course his buddy Mark, also from Anthem, was quick to lament the other side of that coin. As some of us improve the craft, the Deconstruction movement continues to crush quality under its jackboot and serve up drivel like the point-and-click images of "photographer" Terry Richardson. Ryan was quick to add the dreckvertising done by GoDaddy.com to the list of client-run-amok examples of this tectonic shift in control of the creative process. Mark also made an excellent point that technology has made any place a work place, allowing creative practitioners more freedom of movement than ever before and extending our workday long into the night. All and all it was a great discussion. But the high point of the evening was Angela's introduction of the Red Room Martini, a crimson creation that features pomegranate liqueur and some other stuff I can't remember any more. A red time was had by all. Stay tuned.
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