Idris Mootte blogs at Innovation Playground.  I read his blog regularly because of his broad perspective and intelligent view on the world.  Well, that and he puts great pictures in his posts.  And simple minds…well, I forget the saying.

In a post this week called The Rise And Fall And The Coming Transformation Of Madison Avenue. What About The Future Of Advertising? Idris spins a cautionary tale about the current state of the marketing industry and it’s one worth listening to.

We’re in a time that I’ve repeatedly compared to the golden hour in emergency medicine.

Remember the mid 90s in advertising?  As the internet became a relevant marketing channel, clients asked, so what do we do about the web? and a lot of agencies stared at their feet.  They didn’t have a good answer that really served the client—for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that digital media didn’t fit the traditional agency infrastructure.  As a result, marketing became more fragmented.  Nothing truly integrated, although it was widely promised in many a pitch. 

Digital agencies became adept at analytics and tracking ROI where traditional media just didn’t have the same capability for measurement.  Traditional agencies offered up web “solutions” put through their specific filters.  Web shops tried to work out branding in lieu of traditional agencies and the geeks just didn’t deliver.  So the client was left with competing (and contrasting) advisors each vying for their attention (and their wallets); while customers went off into their own corner and started talking about the brand.

To date, no one’s been able to bring these disparate groups back together; and we’re on a collision course that’s going to fundamentally change the way marketing is done. 

Here are some of Idris’ observations:

In just a few years, you can expect the whole advertising industry to be in full crisis mode, driven by continuous innovation.”

Forward-thinking marketers are embracing new models, which are being shaped by digital media.”

Twenty-first century marketing will instead be only about customer engagement and adaptively integrated marketing (not a new word but hardly delivered by agencies).”

Big marketers such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Unilever are expressing frustration with the way ad and marketing firms are structured.”

Many marketers say it is tough getting different agencies to understand the new world order, let alone [work] together.”

Next week there’s a new series on this blog profiling some agencies who’ve heard these warnings and are doing something about it.

I don’t have a name for it yet, but it was borrowed, with permission from Aaron Strout at Powered and his series called Experts in our Industry.  You can check it out at http://blog.stroutmeister.com/ to see what I ripped off.

And thanks, Aaron for your advice and input on kicking this off!

I hope this new series is useful to you as a reader.  I hope it starts a lot of discussions.  I hope you’ll invite your friends, clients and colleagues to subscribe.  And, most of all, I hope it brings a lot of recognition to some pretty smart people who deserve to be emulated.

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The swoosh.  Possibly the most overused graphic element to come out of advertising in 100 years.

Clients are demanding more from their marketing agency than following the latest trends, and the answer centers around innovation.   Some agencies are listening but others see innovation as a buzzword to be spouted like a talk radio host blabbing about socialism.

Dozens of attendees at the Mirren New Business Conference last week described “innovation” as the missing piece of agency magic that will make all the difference. 

Here are three tweets from the Mirren conference alone:

Clients no longer interested in processes & ‘what we do;’ they are looking for innovation in the service offering”

Are you a commodity or an innovation? The agencies growing the fastest innovate.”

Companies operating in innovation mode 36% – organizational 33% – survival mode 21%.”

How about “Connecting Marketing Innovators”?  Look at the top of this blog.  So am I calling the kettle black?  Not exactly.  Telling real innovation from ad copy is the key to hiring the right marketing agency.

To start, let’s look at a few definitions of innovation:

Innovation can be defined as the act of introducing something new.  Hey, marketers love repackaging!  Put a bright pointy starburst around it and throw in “Improved” while you’re at it!

What’s innovation outside the marketing world?  Botanists define it as a newly formed shoot, or the annually produced addition to the stems of mosses.  Marketers would call this Product Line Extension.  

None of these definitions get to the heart of the real innovation marketers need from their agencies.  Princeton University’s definition comes closest:  a creation (a new device or process) resulting from study and experimentation.

Great.  But marketing generally doesn’t like experimentation.  

Marketers like best practices and quantitative case studies.  Adaptabilty…?  Not so much.  It’s paralyzing when the rules change and as a result many agencies are scrambling for air; while others are the proverbial frog on the stove.    

For ad agencies to innovate they have to step outside the advertising space to look at business problems (and solutions) more broadly.  This is a tactical change that many won’t do because the agency org chart makes no allowances for it.

Innovation means a shift in the agency business model–which calls into question, an agency’s very value to its clients–and that’s a pretty small ledge to be standing on alone.

To be fair, ad agencies, alone, are not to blame.  How many clients have you heard say “not with my budget!”?  

 Innovation requires huge shifts for both marketer and agency, as a Forrester Research study recently showed:

Almost 80% of marketers don’t influence a critical customer interaction like customer service.  To regain effectiveness, marketers must transition to a Customer-Centric Marketing Organization. Doing so requires: 1) redesigning P&Ls and metrics; 2) shifting culture away from marketing communications; 3) investing in a customer relationship infrastructure; and 4) rethinking agency relationships.”

Yes, clients have to support the mindset to innovate and be willing to take the risks, but real innovation has to start with ad agencies.

In the coming weeks on this blog I’ll be interviewing agencies who are rethinking the agency/client relationship; shops with the guts to use their instincts.  With them, I’ll explore how innovation is more than a buzzword–it’s what clients want. 

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In his recent NY Times op-ed piece, Nicolas Kristof said that the internet can cripple us, if we let it.  With our unprecedented ability to filter and customize what we see and hear, we are effectively protecting ourselves from seeing opposing—or  objective—viewpoints.  

There’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather, information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.”

Think this doesn’t apply to you? Well, think about what Google Reader feeds to your computer screen. And what types of folks you are quick to follow on twitter.  What blogs do you comment on, and what websites are you most likely to Digg?

If your day is filled with commentary by people who share your views, then you are participating in what Kristof calls the rise of the Daily Me.

The decline of traditional news media will accelerate the rise of The Daily Me. [As a result] we’ll be irritated less by what we read and find our wisdom confirmed more often. The danger is that this self-selected ‘news’ acts as a narcotic, lulling us into a self-confident stupor through which we will perceive in blacks and whites a world that typically unfolds in grays.”

 

How do we avoid this myopia?  According to Kristof, one way is to “work out intellectually with sparring partners whose views we deplore.”  So we should force ourselves to become self governing critics or even our own worst enemies?  Yes. Staunch conservatives should try to read The Huffington Post, and bleeding heart liberals must at least pass a glance at urbanconservative.com. Try it. And try to stay calm—you want to come through this experiment with your arteries intact.

Or don’t. Read only what appeals to you; follow only those who agree with you. But consider that continuing to operate with blinders intact means doing yourself—and by extension, your clients, partners, or employer—a huge disservice.  

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Razorfish recently published their 2009 Digital Report.  180 pages of forward-looking (and forward-thinking) trends in the digital world.  A few points that stood out:

1.  Emerging technology will not kill advertising but it will change it forever.

2. For a growing number of brands the digital experience is becoming as important as the physical product.”

Then a look at the trades any day of the week and you see their points in action:

Not reading TV Guide:  Mr. Askins said the Air Force will spend at least 85% of its enlistment marketing dollars online, because its target audience of 17- to 27-year-old males is “not reading TV Guide like they used to. They’re living online.” 

Reckitt-Benckiser to Shift $20 Million to Web From TV:  Decision Driven by Need for More-Efficient Ad Rates.”

In the immortal words of a great philosopher, Forsest Gump  ”That’s all I have to say about that”.

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A blog post I read today about the fate of agencies in a digital world sent me scurrying back to my bookmark of the Cluetrain Manifesto I had saved years ago.  

This slideshare I also found will pretty much give you the gist; because if there’s one critcism I’ve heard about Cluetrain, it’s that they could have made their points more succinctly.  This slideshare does that brilliantly.

It reminded me what a forward-looking document the Cluetrain was.  Interesting how it means even more now than when it first came out.  Could it be that so much of it has come true?

What do you think?

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