I came across this speech given a few years back by Dan Wieden and wanted to pass it along. In a day and age where we in the fields of marketing and advertising increasingly rely upon machines to give us the what’s, why’s, where’s, and how’s of things, we sometimes forget that all of this automation is creating the space and opportunities for us to be creative. What a concept.
W+K company rules:
Don’t act big. No sharp stuff. Follow directions. And shut up when someone is talking.
W+K’s priorities
The work
The client/agency relationship
Yourself
Why put the work first? Well…
In big agencies, the client/agency relationship is the most sacred thing. The difficulty seems to be that the work then serves the relationship, and everything becomes political. And when things get political, the work suffers. And when the work suffers, the business suffers, then the client agency relationship suffers, and you suffer.
Wieden on chaos:
Chaos does this amazing thing that order can’t: it engages you. It gets right in your face and with freakish breath issues a challenge. It asks stuff of you, order never will. And it shows you stuff, all the weird shit, that order tries to hide. Chaos is the only thing that honestly wants you to grow. The only friend who really helps you be creative. Demands that you be creative…
The other thing chaos does is challenge authority. It cares more about truth than power.
If you get the chance, read the entire thing. It’s pretty inspiring.
The title of this post caught my eye the other day:
What Do You Do When Old Media Vehicles Are Losing Effectiveness And New Media Vehicles Are Not Proven And Generally Lack Measurement?
What’s interesting about it is the implication that “old media vehicles” can be measured effectively in contrast to the “unproven” online methods of today and tomorrow.
The author has it exactly backwards. The effectiveness of brand marketing via TV, radio, and print has never been something that could be cost-effectively measured. Even when metrics like “unaided awareness” are computed from costly survey data, one heavily discounts the value of this metric as a predictor of marketing spend ROI.
The ability to record, in theory, every impression and every action exists today on the Web, something never before possible with old media vehicles. As a consequence, the online advertising value chain can be constructed with far greater precision and at dramatically reduced cost than anything one could do with off-line media. The issue then isn’t that the data and metrics do not exist for marketers to quantify ROI and justify increasing spend on online marketing initiatives, it’s that “traditional” marketers and their agencies generally do not have the skills or experience required to construct the performance measurement and financial models that transform the presently available marketing data into information and knowledge that can be consumed and acted upon by upper management.
The fact is that the availability of all of this data is creating new responsibilities and opportunities for marketers to measure the effectiveness of their efforts, spot opportunities to increase performance, and optimize accordingly. This approach to marketing and promotion is in the DNA of every successful online merchant today starting with Amazon, Ebay, and Google. They measure and test everything they do and use the results to shape and guide their communications and promotions planning. It is also the way more and more boutique online advertising and marketing agencies combine the science and craft of marketing on the Web.
Going forward, marketing effectiveness will be driven by four things:
Strategy - The goals and objectives of the marketing plan must be closely aligned with the overall strategic plan of the organization?
Creative - The message, who it’s for, how it’s packaged, when/where it’s delivered, etc.
Technology - The effective use of technology to drive expanded breadth and depth (aka scale) of your marketing programs.
Management Methodology - Is everything being measured and is the data being transformed effectively into actionable information and insights?
Does your agency of record, or if you don’t have one the team you use internally, posses these three capabilities in sufficient strength to deliver the bottom line results your success requires?
Many of you have no doubt heard of or seen the following video by now. Pretty captivating.
Beyond the fact that it’s fun to watch and more than a little uplifting, it’s also a terrific example of how brand marketing can/should operate on the Web. Find innovative content that’s consistent with brand values and messages and sponsor the creation of more of it. The creative ideas are out there and it’s the job of the agency of tomorrow to source and amplify them.
I missed these articles when they were originally published in April. The collection provides some useful stats and perspective from folks on both the buy and sell sides.
See, even the terminology we’re using is sounding more and more like Wall Street traders…
![[Ask]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/ask.png)
![[Bloglines]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/bloglines.png)
![[del.icio.us]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Furl]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/furl.png)
![[Google]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[Reddit]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/reddit.png)
![[Sphere]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/sphere.png)
![[Sphinn]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/sphinn.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Technorati]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/technorati.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://blog.reachmachines.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)