Uneven Distribution.

Ad:Tech session: Your Campaign is Irrelevant.

March 17th, 2010

I just finished up my session at Ad:Tech. It was a great session with Dale Cohen from Bigpond, Julian Peterson of TimeOut, and moderated by Tony Palmer of C4. Our topic was “Your Campaign is Irrelevant”, and we framed the discussion around five key questions. We didn’t want this to be a bunch of guys sitting around agreeing with each other, so we all purposely took a fairly radical stance to flare up a bit of debate. I put together a few notes before the session, so thought I’d post them up here for a bit of discussion. Obviously they’re not fully formed ideas, so apologies for not fleshing them out a bit more.

1. Do marketers take advantage of publishers deep knowledge of their audience to ensure their campaign is relevant?

Where once the broadcasters, media and creative didn’t need to share the same insights (because they really didn’t need to), we now should. And as a creative agency, it usually feels a long way between us and the publishers.

We’re getting better at leveraging the knowledge about audiences. Either through closer relationships with our media agencies, or just by sidestepping them altogether and working closely with publishers.

I want to be wary of accepting that publishers actually have such deep knowledge as well. Yes they have audience data, but that doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Without the feedback mechanisms inherent in social technology, publishers need to push forward on getting better and better at knowing their audience.

The onus should not on creative agencies to be pushing publishers (and media) to help us leverage this knowledge. Publishers should be fighting to stay relevant, as digital progresses we have more and more options for how to answer a client’s brief that don’t involve traditional paid media.

2. Are you wasting your money by driving irrelevant traffic to crap websites?

The days of cookie cutter digital strategy are well and truly over. Most digital marketers now are clear about their goals, which has helped overcome the days of tumbleweed microsites.

Platforms are now a key outcome of a campaign, and the reason ‘campaign thinking’ needs to die. Long term platforms are about building an audience for engagement. On this point I’m not sure the value that publisher partnerships really provide. We can build our own platforms or utilise existing ones that aren’t campaign-timed, but I’m yet to see a publisher offer a great solution for ongoing engagement post-campaign.

It’s about moving from interruption based to interaction based. Campaigns running through traditional online models just don’t do this. Publishers offer the same old display formats, and they’re interruption based. Even the innovation evident in the past 12 months has simply increased interuption.

3. So what happens when your campaign is over?

If it’s a publisher partnership, you’ve got nothing. We shouldn’t be ending campaigns, simply changing the frequency or type of communication. Every brand needs to be always on, because the consumer is always there. This is as much a client issue as anything else, but it’s the role of all stakeholders to make this happen.

At this point of the conversation I gave the example of Best Job in The World being a failure in this respect. As I said it I could just picture the comments being taken utterly out of context, but thought it was a point worth making.

With the benefit of hindsight, Tourism Queensland didn’t leverage the huge audience they had anywhere near as well as they could have. They didn’t create a platform to utilise once the campaign was over. The idea could have expanded into other markets (Best Job in Brazil), or more likely just get more granular (Best Pub in the World, Best Beach in the World, Best View in the World).

4. Will brands become publishers and will publishers become irrelevant?

The consumer doesn’t care who the publisher is. So why would I waste money putting my brand on your website when I can just build my own destination? The one answer to that is that brands aren’t willing to outfail each other. Platforms like the ones P&G and Disney own were most often acquired once they had reached a critical mass. For every BabyCentre that gets acquired by a multinational, there’s a hundred similar sites that have failed.

Again, publishers need to be fighting to stay relevant, providing real and useful data about their audience, and offering real value.

The description of a publisher needs to change. Publishers as they stand will become irrelevant, and in their place creative agencies will be leveraging Foursquare or Hulu or other location/social based services. As long as publishers think they are simply competing with other large content providers, they aren’t playing in the right field.

Publishers have their audience because of content. That content is enabled because advertisers put  ads on there. If the publishers can’t move with technology, they will become irrelevant.

5. Is technology the answer to the next big idea?

Technology isn’t the answer, but it is crucial for any big idea to succeed.

You can get caught up in technology, otherwise you will end up creating a great idea that is only relevant and works for 5% of the country. Technology shouldn’t be used until it has reached the level of habit within the audience. Not even ubiquity, but habit.

As a creative agency, we’ve stopped making ads and started solving problems. Technology is often at the heart of this, and this is the reason that everyone involved in this process (creative and media agencies, publishers and clients) all need to be working together better and innovating together.

Comments

Thanks for showing some difference of opinion in the panel today. Did you tell Tourism Queensland what a failure their (non) follow up was?

I have a feeling Mumbrella may be doing that for me shortly.

Interestingly the obvious response is that the actual best job blog was the follow up, but I really don’t think it was anywhere near as engaging or interesting as the initial idea, which could have been extended in the ways I mentioned and probably way more.

I liked your comment on “Best Beach/Bar/View… of the World” etc. It had the potential to be a classic and going for many sequels.
Must say I never went to see the “lucky” pom’s blog posts, tweets or vids. Hearsay or word of mouse was that he didn’t enjoy it as much as he thought he would since he was milked for PR all the time and had tons of engagements.
Which might be wrong and just goes to show that perceptions can blow out positively as well as negatively.

[...] Ad:Tech session: Your Campaign is Irrelevant [...]

Your first point seems to be a hot one. Smart marketers will involve publishers in the process (why not?), but most agencies and marketers need to first learn to relinquish some of the control they famously like to have over an ‘idea’.
I have found over the past couple of years that publishers are always willing to pull out ideas for working with their formats and content. Maybe where they need to learn some control is when they are tempted to drop their pants and let you do just about anything for the sake of SOV.
But as a rule, I say let them surprise us with a fresh way to use their media and if we’re smart we’ll put the social mechanisms in place to work it.
Guess this is why the big media houses are bringing creatives on board too huh?

Good commentary.

It’s easy to be a critic, just one thought, hopefully constructive.
I think that all digital/media purists would prefer all of our clients to commit to long term programs that never expire and continue to evolve. And even finite budgets and dramatic shifts in brand focus aside, I’d say that sometimes a limited time based campaign is the right option for a client.

Why? It comes down to two things, what is the best solution to drive a balance of short-term sales and long-term brand health.

I mostly agreed with but totally enjoyed your commentary around the dynamic shifting in the advertising world across all facets - agency, creative, publisher and client. Nothing ever moves as quickly as an advertising purist would like or even in the “right” way. However it is encouraging to see the effort and methods driving the brave attempts to raise the bar.