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.
Now that the dust has settled a bit in the wake of Google’s announcement of AdPlanner (apologies for the mixed metaphor), I thought I’d circle back and provide the following additional thoughts.
- The measurement companies are whistling past the graveyard on this I believe. To wit, check out this MediaWeek article from this morning. While it’s clear Google made this announcement early given the maturity of the product, it’s also clear that the longterm play here is to vertically integrate every step along the online advertising value chain starting with research and planning. It’s less about the tail and more about the efficiencies to be gained by streamlining the process for advertisers. All other things being equal which given the notoriously variable results from the measurement companies is a stretch, if Google can get the perception of their measurement to pass over the “good enough” test, then the value-add of an integrated solution will enable the GOOG to move upmarket with greater purpose.
- Now that I’ve had a chance to see and play with AdPlanner a bit, I don’t understand why the company chose to announce the product now. Some of its shortcomings /wrt features and functions are commented on in the Mediaweek story I linked to above. The announcement seems a little premature (much like the product). Is there another shoe that’s about to drop?
- This announcement was/is welcome news for us. We’ve been saying for a couple of years now that the standard online media research-planning-buying methodology is fundamentally flawed and that the technologies used to practice each step in the process are limited as a result. This announcement is strong validation of point of view but as I said in my previous post, there is a lot more room for innovation in this space and Google, surprisingly, hasn’t really innovated anything yet other than shipped a basic media planning tool that will be useful and extremely price competitive within the SMB market segment. Integrated into AdWords, the tool could be quite useful.
The coverage of Google’s announcement of their AdPlanner application for media buyers has by and large buried the lede. The real story here is that Google is attempting to disintermediate “traditional” media planning from the management of online marketing campaigns. It is also integrating its own brand of audience measurement into the process thereby undermining the primary value proposition offered by the likes of comScore, NNR, Quantcast, and others. The online research and audience measurement companies have reason to be very, very concerned about this development. So too should the media teams of interactive agencies view this news with a reasonable degree of trepidation.
Another group of companies that should consider this move as a strategic threat are the ad networks. In making this move, it appears that Google has joined the team here at Reach Machines in the belief that the most efficient way to research and plan media is to take a platform and network agnostic view of the Web at the outset and utilize relevance, reach, and engagement data to identify the optimal online properties for specific ads and messages. Isn’t that precisely the ad network value proposition in a nut shell? They do the hard work of bundling the “best” sites into channels so the planners don’t have to? It is not a question of “if” but when Google announces the integration of ad buying with their AdPlanner tool. At that point, all bets are off as to what value all but the very largest ad networks can bring to the table.
For years, we’ve struggled on the client side to accept plans that on their face were too limited in scope and reflected the obvious. $1MM buys spread across four properties and maybe a network channel or two just don’t cut it anymore. In a world of ever more fragmented consumer attention and content, marketers not only want audience reach but also placements that are on message and offer an engaged userbase. Current planning tools, methodologies, and network buys (regardless of how “vertical ” they might be) simply don’t meet this fundamental requirement because they ignore these critical dimensions and instead steer marketers in the direction of targeting by demographics and psychographics. Those are poor proxies for consumer behavior and purchase intent. As a consequence, this methodology consistently underperforms compared to platforms and methodologies that target actual consumer behavior and purchase intent. Perhaps this is a big part of the reason why display campaigns rarely deliver the kinds of results savvy marketers expect and why marketers consistently flee to quality in the form of search campaigns and lead generation (where someone else owns the downside performance risk).
While Google’s approach to improving the efficiency of the media research and planning process makes a lot of strategic sense for the company (continuing to vertically integrate along the online advertising value chain), it does not go nearly far enough in moving the industry away from the antiquated approach of audience segmentation by poor proxies for consumer intent: demographics and psychographics. In this regard, the present incarnation of AdPlanner represents an evolution of the media research and planning process rather than the revolution that is required.
For more background and a review of AdPlanner, check out Danny Sullivan’s write-up over at Search Engine Land.
iMedia Connection has an interesting post about the value of vertical niche sites to online marketing campaigns. In the piece, Russ Fradin makes the excellent point that media buys that include a substantial number of niche sites can significantly improve campaign performance.
We couldn’t agree more as our flagship service identifies the richest marketing opportunities across the Web and through the tail.
A few comments on the underlying drivers of the changes that are necessitating a new, more nuanced approach to online media planning and buying:
1. Consumers are in control. They seek, find, and share valuable content on multiple sites and in a variety of formats. Oftentimes, the most engaging and popular spots are created by the audiences themselves: see MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook.
2. Costs to produce and maintain sites and content continue to decline. As a result, barriers to create a publishing enterprise are insignificant.
3. Means of monetization are ubiquitous. Thanks to Overture, AdSense, and the too-numerous-to-name self-service ad platforms, it is possible for anyone to earn advertising revenue. I say possible because it’s a lot harder than it might seem to generate more than a few bucks a month in advertising revenue but that reality isn’t stopping millions from having a go.
4. Campaign measurement begets campaign management. Advertisers can now measure the effectiveness of a campaign down to the impression and can optimize accordingly.
Given these market dynamics, niche sites are a critical component of any media plan because they offer the best combination of relevant content and publisher incentives. The former is important because the relevance of not only the content but the site itself lends credibility to an advertiser’s message (provided the message is equally relevant). The latter matters because the greater the incentive for the publisher to run your ad, the more likely the placement will be cost-effective.
While there are significant structural and technological barriers to making it efficient to buy 100% of one’s advertising at the site level, planners need to be aware of the properties further down the tail that could move the needle for their campaigns. There are powerful incentives for doing so and using tools like Reach Machines to help them along the way.
![[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)