“When I’ve had my fun I will give my inventions to everybody. That way everyone can be super, and when everyone is super…no one will be.” - Syndrome (paraphrased)

Trevor is a young designer in his early 20s (I believe). He designs characters, logos, traditional media, and interactive. Trevor is a phenomenal illustrator. Trevor works at Henderson Bas as a designer. He does not code sites for a living.  But he could.

At age 14, Trevor built a website with a forum so he could play Counter-Strike (an addictive first-person shooter game) with his circle of online friends. Experiences like these, coupled with inherent understanding of the online world, mean that Trevor has second nature familiarity with PHP and front-end HTML. Possibly as much as someone twice his age entering the interactive workforce. Knowing, understanding, and engaging with the digital and social spaces is almost instinctual to those currently growing up in a developed country.

This shift has profound consequences to the current generation of digital professionals. Knowing the ins and outs of Facebook is common knowledge for 14-year-olds. Building, skinning, and maintaining CMS systems (such as WordPress) is something commonly done by young mothers.

To my mind, this begs one question: “What defines a digital professional when their skillset has become ubiquitous?”

The answer needs to be experience and expertise. It is up to those of us in the digital profession to take things to the next level. We need to invent new techniques and channels in the digital space. We need to take the knowledge we hold and apply it to the analog world. We need to think beyond the computer, or smart-phone screen, and apply that unique form of binary logic problem-solving to larger brand and global issues.

What we are striving to learn now will be common knowledge to the next generation. To remain relevant, we need to ensure that we have the creativity and insight to stay two steps ahead of ubiquity. Just as carpentry and building turned from an art form to a skilled trade, so too will the digital profession move from a theory-based creative profession to a skilled trade.

And while I would like to consider myself and my colleagues partial artists, in accordance with Marshall McLuhan’s comment that “advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.” Innovation is key if we want to keep it that way in the 21st.

A recent article on Tech Crunch boldly proclaims: “Advertising will fail.” Written by Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the main argument hinges on the idea that the Internet’s participatory nature is fundamentally undermining what we know as advertising.

I agree that the Internet is participatory, however Clemons’s base premise is flawed. Here it is:

“Advertising is using sponsored commercial messages to build a brand and paying to locate these messages where they will be observed by potential customers performing other activities; these messages describe a product or service, its price or fundamental attributes, where it can be found, its explicit advantages, or the implicit benefits from its use.”

Clearly, Prof. Clemons has not read “The digital why,” where I argued that in the digital space, you need to create value for the consumer to interact with your brand.

Advertising is not dead. It’s not dying. It’s in a state of evolution. Advertising will endure. Here’s why:

1) Advertising is full of smart people.
Adverting is not an industry for the dim-witted. Every day, regardless of your specific role in this business, you are faced with a unique set of problems and challenges. Every day you need to come up with strategic and creative solutions to these issues. Advertising counts among its numbers some of the world’s greatest linguists, artists, strategists, and technologists. All of them explore and learn about the channels available to them, and use them in new and exciting ways. One of these smart people is Dondy Razon. Dondy is ACD at Nurun, here in Toronto. One of the things he is doing is changing the focus of the advertising they do for their customers:

“What if we made ideas that make life easier, that teach and inspire, that give people control of what they experience?”

We call it digital platforms, he calls it digital utility. Which brings me to my second point …

2) Advertising is not just TV anymore.
Good advertisers and agencies know that the Internet is participatory. Armed with that knowledge, they come up with solutions that fit.

Social media is being used by brands to have meaningful conversations with their customers. In that venue they can get instant feedback, and promote their products and services in increasingly human and genuine ways.

Other advertisers create branded content, like the Old Spice guy. Smart marketers are starting to realize that on the net, advertising doesn’t subsidize entertainment – it is the entertainment.

Digital utilities/platforms support a product, service or brand in a way that is useful to the consumer. Nike+, for example, is a run-tracking program that lives online. With a pair of Nike shoes and a $30 Apple sensor you can track almost all relevant information about your runs, and share it with other runners in the community. It is an incredibly robust tool that has one final objective: to sell more shoes.

3) Channels don’t die, they evolve.
When radio came out, print was supposed to die. When TV came out, radio was supposed to die. When the inter-webs were born, TV was supposed to die. The reality is with every new medium, or adjustment to a medium, new tools become available to advertisers. Advertising, being full of smart people, will find new and exciting ways to use all of these channels to solve the business problems of the brands they represent. And it will work.

I’ve seen quite a few articles and videos talking about the end of advertising. Most of them are based on false premises. Here’s another one: “The Information Management program at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania teaches outdated concepts.” Therefore, Prof. Clemons is grossly misinformed.

The iPhone 4 has a major problem. And therefore Apple has a major problem. As many people are already aware, the iPhone 4’s revolutionary dual-antenna fails if you hold the phone in your left hand. The obvious problem being that most right-handed people hold their phone in their left.

Apple’s response to this engineering mishap has been comical at best. First they said consumers were holding it wrong. Next they said there actually is no reception problem, and they were just fabricating signal strength on the phone. (Though I’m not entirely sure why that is less of an issue.) Now it has gotten past the point of funny to downright aggravating.

Recently, consumer reports gave the iPhone 4 a “not recommended” rating after testing the reception issue.  The not-funny part isn’t necessarily Apple’s lack of response. The not-funny part is Apple actively censoring its customers from discussing the validity of the report.

Because of the antenna issue, a looming recall, and consumer censorship, Apple stocks are starting to dip. Apple, if they do not right this course, will soon learn what other companies that don’t own up to their mistakes learn: Consumers want accountability.

Now we could pick at the low-hanging brand accountability fruit – whether its BP passing blame on the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, or Toyota with its flip-floppy response to its various recall woes – in not being open or honest about the extent of a problem.

Perhaps they all need to take a lesson from Google. Here’s a company that knows how to screw up gracefully. First Google’s invasion of privacy by spying on the mass public during its street view expansion. And let’s not forget the very invasive initial launch of Buzz.

In both instances Google immediately took responsibility, gave no excuses, and worked to correct the issues they caused. The result is a virtually unscathed reputation, and no loss of company value. As I have written before, “One would be surprised how forgiving consumers can and will be . . .”

But then the question becomes: Is it better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission?

What happened to movie posters? They used to be beautiful works of art. It seems like these days, movie posters, for the most part, have been distilled into Trajan Pro and a bunch of floating heads.

But just when I thought all hope was lost, I saw this poster on Toronto public transit. Now granted syphilis isn’t something I’d want to check out, but it’s nice to see that the art of the movie poster is not completely dead. Who knows where good old fashioned movie poster design will show up next.

Incidentally, James White at SignalNoise.com talks about and uses old movie posters as inspiration for his art all the time. (If don’t follow White’s work, you should. You can follow him on Twitter, here: @Signalnoise.)

I was raised in the Ottawa area. We moved around a little bit, but the majority of my youth was spent in Smiths Falls and Perth, Ontario, two very small towns about 40 minutes south of Ottawa. I was born in the ’70s and became of age to choose a favourite hockey team in 1983.

I was 4 years old. It was a crisp fall morning and a bunch of us were playing on the concrete playground at St. Francis De Sales school, when a debate broke out. Which team was better, the Montreal Canadiens, or the Toronto Maple Leafs. Remember, this was years before the Ottawa Senators (*spit* hutzpah) became a team. The yard quickly divided into the two, equal in number, factions. I, being the son of immigrants, did not have a favourite hockey team. The closest thing to a sport my father was into was watching Monica Seles grunt suggestively during her tennis matches. I was a clean slate. I had never seen a hockey game, and knew nothing of the teams, or the star players of that time.

The two groups noticed me in the middle, and they approached. I was the tie breaker. My vote would decide once and for all which team reigned supreme on the St. Francis playground. Jeff Carroll, a boy tall for his age, questioned: “who’s better?” Jeff was wearing a Maple Leafs hat with their logo prominently displayed in the front.

“Ya, you need to decide! Who do you like better?” added Nick Feeley. Nick was an average-sized boy donning a Montreal Canadiens hat.

I felt immense pressure as the two groups of boys hung on my next words. I knew nothing of these teams, I didn’t even know which logo belonged to what team. But I do know which one I liked better. I pointed at Nick’s hat. “Which team is that?” I asked. “The Habs” one voice replied.

“Ya, the Canadiens,” another said. “I like them better,” I said.

One group erupted with jubilation, the other with disgust. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is from that moment on I was a Habs fan. That year I watched as Patrick Roy led the Habs to a cup. I’ve watched them religiously since. I have bought tickets to their games. I have bought their merchandise. Now my children are Habs fans, and they watch the games with me. With the same fervour and excitement they stare at the screen, wearing their Habs sweaters.

Two generations, sure to turn to three and four, consume the product that is the Montreal Canadiens. All due to effective branding . . . and a Hall of Fame goaltender.

Welcome to Part 4 in our series on “How to be Social.” Part 1 covered the basic rules of social interaction for brands. Part 1.5 looked at a recent incident where a brand didn’t follow the rules, and the consequences of that decision. Part 2 was an intro to Twitter. Part 3 was a primer on Facebook. The final part of this series is on word-of-mouth marketing.

“Word-of-mouth is the best medium of all” – Bill Bernbach, founder, DDB
First there was print, in which potential customers could read about your product. Then there was radio, where you could tell customers about your brand. Television allowed brands to show their products to customers. Then the Internet allowed customers to interact with brands. All of these channels have been used to communicate a brand’s strengths to customers directly. Word-of-mouth has always been a by-product of two things: advertising and the customer’s experience with the brand. Word-of-mouth has always been the most successful, though most intangible, advertising channel.

In the article “Studies show effectiveness of word-of-mouth” James Pethokoukis reports that “76% of United Kingdom consumers in 2004 said a friend’s recommendation made them feel most comfortable about a product and service versus 15% who said advertising.”

In “TV Ad Effectiveness Much Less by 2010” Marketing Vox online reports that, according to McKinsey & Company research, “real ad spending on prime-time broadcast TV has increased over the last decade by about 40 percent even as viewers have dropped almost 50 percent. But a drop in teen viewing is a major reason the future looks bleak. Teens spend less than half as much time watching TV as typical adults do. Teens also spend 600 percent more time online.”

Bill Bernbach was onto something with this whole word-of-mouth thing. But what does that have to do with social media? Social media, as a platform, is the word-of-mouth media. Social media is a channel where you can not only tell, show, and interact, but you can facilitate word-of-mouth conversations on a mass scale. But social media is only effective when used properly. Our own Dave Hamilton writes in reference to a drop in consumer’s trust of friend’s opinions on brands:

“There are several we can speculate about: economic doom and gloom, a proliferation of empty “fan grab” programs on Facebook, the devolution (in many people’s minds) of FB, Twitter, etc. into mass media, or those suspiciously padded friend lists that number into the thousands.”

Here’s my take on it: As a brand you can not maintain the status quo entering the social media realm. Many brands throw promotions and advertisements into the social space and expect huge returns. Its not going to happen. Simple volleys into the social channel like these will produce similar ROI to standard web ads and interactive initiatives. The key work in social media is social. You can no longer talk at your customers, you have to talk with them, and listen, REALLY listen.

Social Media as customer feedback and service
Good brands do research. They are either trying to improve existing products or services, or trying to create new ones. If a brand has a good social media strategy and structure, then they can leverage feedback from their customer base, while strengthening the relationship between them and their brand stewards. By creating a real communication line between the customers in your social media space to the decision making mechanisms of the brand, they show their stewards a genuine desire to engage with them.

Zappos has long been heralded as an online retailer with the best customer service, period. Just a trip to Zappos.com shows they have earned a Stella Service Elite Award, Business Week’s 2009 Customer Service Champ Award, and many others. Social media is their primary tool for customer service, and has generated their entire customer service policy. Here are some other social policies as reported by Mashable.

Every point counts
This segues nicely to my next point, which is every point of customer interaction is/should be part of your social media strategy. Social media, being the word-of-mouth channel, does not negate the other ways customers and stewards share their experiences with other customers. If a customer gets on the phone with a customer service representative and has a great experience, they are going to tell someone. If they go to a store and have a brilliant experience with a sales representative, they are going to tell somebody. If they have a Twitter account, or a Facebook account, they will tell many people, possibly thousands. This unprompted brand evangelism from regular customers and stewards will have a much higher efficacy rate than social engagement generated by promotion.

The whole brand can be social
In the current socio-economic environment, it is easy for the average consumer to see corporations as faceless, ruthless, even moral-less. What should be an easy sell is reminding customers that every brand and company is made up of everyday people. But parading around one or two employees in front of a camera for a commercial is not enough. Give many employees and departments the responsibility to engage in the social space.

Here at Grip, we encourage every employee to write for Big Orange Slide, regardless of how long they have been here, or what their opinion is. The only rule is that it needs to in some way tie back to the industry. We did not set out to have some utopian work environment, nor were we trying to convince potential clients and colleagues that we are truly a collective of smart individuals working together. It is merely a by-product. But people are noticing that we do practice what we preach, and that Grip truly is a collaborative environment. We couldn’t fake this level of genuineness or passionate debate… right Jim ;) ?

Imagine if at Best Buy, all people on the floor, regardless of whether they were sales people, customer service, or stock people, were encouraged to share anecdotes of their experiences with customers (positive obviously) on Facebook or Twitter? Customers of Best Buy would be able to empathize with the staff and realize that they are people too. In turn, the staff at Best Buy would feel more connected with their jobs, and the people they service, as the customers contribute and share their experiences in return.

Every brand has a slew of opportunities like this. It is up to the brand and its advertising agencies to identify these opportunities and capitalize on them.

The reality of transparency
“Digital will fuck you up” – Mark Comerford. In the age of information, everything about a brand is public knowledge. How you treat your customers, where you source you raw materials, and how you treat your employees, are all available at the click of a button. Zappos again is a company that embraces this fact, as should all other brands. Does that mean a brand needs to change all of its practices immediately? Well, that might be unrealistic. But know that every practice that your company and brand has is well documented, both good and bad. Have a plan on how transparency is going to affect your brand, and the relationships with your customers and stewards. Figure out which practices are problematic, and have a plan on how to resolve them. If your customers bring up a practice that they find undesirable, then open the issue up to discussion and figure out an action plan. Do not shut down the conversation.

Mobilization and ROI
So here are the answers to two things that people have asked me to talk about. There is no secret. How you use the medium is how you mobilize. In other words, if you follow the advice in this series, specifically about open, and genuine dialogue with your customers, they will mobilize themselves. Everyone wants to be a part of something, everyone organizes themselves by what they believe, who they know, and what they buy. “I’m a Bud drinker,” “I like Fords,” “Hey, I like Fords too!” If you create a strategy in which your customers love your product, love the way they are treated, and love they way they can interact with you, they will spread the word without any prompts. So how do you measure the ROI of that?

Conclusion
This series was a primer. An intro to social media, social networking and brands. I hope it helps people to start moving in the right direction to bring their brand to the social media landscape.

I would be disingenuous if I signed the series off. Social media, social networking, and other convergence of technologies, and time tested business practices are happening so rapidly, that new developments, and techniques will become evident with time. Even Facebook has changed since Part 3 was published not 3 weeks ago. You no longer become a fan of a brand, you like a brand. This may seem like a subtle change, but is already having effects on how we approach our social media strategy.

This is a change in the way we as human beings communicate with each other, and therefore is bigger and more volatile than any marketing or advertising trend. It would be like trying to predict how society was going to change when the radio was invented, let alone how advertising was going to change. So there will likely be more articles to come from me on social media, and social networking.

Welcome to Part 3 in our series on “How to be Social.” Part 1 covered the basic rules of social interaction for brands. Part 1.5 looked at a recent incident where a brand didn’t follow the rules, and the consequences of that decision. Part 2 was an intro to Twitter. Today we tackle Facebook.

Just as Twitter is complex in its simplicity, Facebook is simple in its complexity. I am not going to go through all the feature sets for Facebook. There is far too much to explain everything in detail, from groups, events, developer tools, inboxes (inboxi?) and updates to Farmville. Yet in all its complexity, Facebook is so simple to use, that even your mom has an account. The reason is status updates, which I will get to in a moment.

Like Twitter, Facebook is a microblogging platform. Unlike Twitter, the relationship between you and the audience is much more personal. Let’s start with an average user . . . me.

I have a relatively modest 198 friends on Facebook. I know all 198 people personally. Are all of them REALLY friends? No. Maybe a quarter of my Facebook friends would I consider real friends, and maybe 10-20 would be close friends. The rest are acquaintances, colleagues, and former classmates. But the one thing all of these people have in common is that they are people who, for one reason or another, I want to remain in contact with to varying degrees. Colleagues and friends for their opinions, classmates for nostalgic reasons, etc.

Here are some of the basic parts of Facebook:

Status Updates: Status updates are little posts users make. Unlike Twitter, the post can exceed 140 characters. Also, any significant action you take on Facebook will likely result in a status update. If you post a link, photo, or video, it will show up as a status update.

The Wall: Your wall is a collection of your interactions on Facebook. If you make a status update, it shows up on your wall, and in your and your friends’ news feed. If you upload a picture, or video, it will appear on your wall. Lastly, friends can leave little messages for each other by writing on each other’s wall.

Tags: Tagging generally occurs on photos that a user and their friends are in, however, when you make any post, or upload content (photos or video) you can tag your friends. Tagging someone will notify them that this content is of interest to them.

Fan pages: Brands, celebrities, politicians and side-dishes can all set up fan pages. Fan pages are like user profiles for companies and organizations. Instead of becoming a friend of a brand, people become fans. Fans of a brand will receive status updates from the brand in their news feed.

We all communicate with each other, for the most part, through status updates. Status updates are micro posts that any user can make, and anyone who is a friend of that user can comment on the status. If you are a “friend” of a user, their status will show up in you news feed. The news feed is an aggregation of all your friend’s status updates. As you can imagine, the news feed can get quite cluttered, especially if you are friends with a Farmville addict. So Facebook conveniently splits the news feed into two categories. “Most Recent,” which is every status update from all of your friends, and “Top News” which is news that Facebook feels is most relevant to you based on your interests, interactions with that user (or engagements) and if the status is active (has a lot of comments).

Comments = Community
So this is what separates Facebook from other social media platforms. The commenting mechanism allows a user’s friends to join in on a thought or conversation. Multiple people can comment on someone’s status (or photo, or video). If you comment on a status, and then someone else comments on the status, you will be notified. Just as if you make a status update, and someone comments on it, you will be notified. The result is a series of small conversations, stories and debates that unfold in people’s news feeds and on their walls. These conversations are powerful social interactions. Even the simplest comment on someone getting a hair cut or not being able to sleep, so they write an article about Facebook, turns into a real conversation, and connections between friends can really be felt.

EQ
Facebook, beyond other social media platforms is capable of creating an emotional connection between users. This, in my opinion, is the reason for Facebook’s success. As our lives become busier and more complex, our desire to be connected to people and places still needs to be met. Facebook provides a convenient venue for us to do so. But people don’t just want to be connected to people, places, and events, but brands as well.

Acquisition
The first thing a brand needs to do after setting up their page is acquire fans. One way to do this is through promotions. At the risk of being accused of navel gazing, a great example of a Facebook promotion was one of Grip’s own for the summer launch of Bud Light Lime. When Bud Light Lime was being introduced to Canada, they wanted to generate a brand following even before the beer was going to be available. What we did was set up a Facebook fan page and application. In this application, a user would start a virtual party. They would then encourage their friends to RSVP to their party. If a party’s RSVP list grew to 300 people or more, that party would be entered into a draw for you and all your guests to host the real party. In order to enter, you had to become a fan of Bud Light Lime. This promotion generated more than 80,000 fans.

Another way to acquire fans as a brand is through altruism. Starbucks does a great job of this. The mission statement on their fan page is this: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” That being said, their techniques do boil down to promotion, but in a different way.

Here’s a good and recent example: Starbucks has an ongoing promotion geared to not only sell more coffee, but to save them money and forests all at the same time. Buy a travel mug, get 10 cents off of your coffee purchases. On their Facebook page they promoted a one-day event where if you brought in your travel mug, you got a free coffee. All in the name of making a difference. Starbucks has more than 144,000 fans in Canada. That is a lot of brand stewards.

Side note: Starbucks continues to impress me with their social media policies and business practices. They do not hide the fact that they are trying to make money, but they are also actively trying to make money in increasingly more socially conscious ways. They also have a candor with their brand stewards that consistently feels genuine. In the world of social media, this is a powerful advantage.

Engagement
So you have a bunch of fans. Now what? This is a question a lot of marketers ask themselves. Especially after a successful promotion. The answer is to engage and mobilize. Engagement is keeping a dialogue with your fans. There are several ways to do this, the most obvious way is again through status updates. Making regular status updates on your brand page can spark conversation among your fans. Your fans will also post things to the brand wall. It is very important to contribute to these conversations in a meaningful way. Whether it’s sharing the brand’s opinion on events, or commenting on the posts that fans make on the wall. These interactions need to be genuine, which is hard to fake. Brands that have a successful fan page should always have an engagement manager that has a real interest in the brand, product and community. This will ensure maximum engagement. Strong engagement equals strong stewards.

Mobilization
Now you have an engaged group of brand stewards. These stewards will be more likely to be long time customers, and be great brand advocates. So how do we mobilize them? Stay tuned for Part 4. :D

We are the consumer.
First off, this is not an article the decries the use of research. Research is and always will be an important part of marketing. So if you are a researcher out there, I love you and you will always be needed. Keep up the good work. This post is more about the dangers of using research over our minds and guts.

David Ogilvy once said, “The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.” I would like to amend that quote to, “The customer is not a moron, the customer is us.” The longer I’m in the advertising world the more it astounds me that we fail to recognize this. We base many of our strategic decisions on research. These decisions affect the creative briefs we get. Sometimes we will even take the creative concepts we make and then stick them in front of focus groups to research their efficacy. All this testing and research blinds us to the fact that we – all of us in advertising and marketing – are also consumers. We watch commercials, we read ads, we surf the net. We buy things like clothes, food and cars. We consume products and we consume advertising.

I’m not saying research is useless. Research can always help inform decisions and directions. But it should never dictate it. If you gather a group of advertising professionals, and their gut feeling on a strategy or creative is in stark contrast to the research, flush the research.

Why research is unreliable:

1. Tact
I believe there are several reasons why research can be unreliable. The first of which is tact. In our modern society we have trained ourselves to be sensitive. Sensitive to other peoples’ feelings, sensitive to the consequences of our actions and our words, and with good cause.

Anyone who has been in a focus group, or has done an online survey, or has even filled out a little card at a restaurant has likely experienced the following:  you’re filling out your card at the restaurant, and it asks you about the quality of your food. It was pretty bad. The steak was overcooked, and the french fries undercooked (I eat at classy steak-and-french-fry places ;) ). You go to put a mark beside the 1 on a scale of 1-5. One being craptastic, and 5 being ÜBER FOOD. The food deserves a 1, but do you give it a 1? Some of us would, but a lot of us second guess ourselves. We don’t want to be too harsh. What if putting a 1 is the final nail in the coffin on an aspiring chef’s career? Or maybe we just don’t want to be mean. We rationalize the decision, making wild comparisons like “well it was better than fast food, or dog food,”and “its not the worst food I’ve ever eaten.” Our pencil moves slightly to the right, and we pick a 2 or a 3.

2. Context
The second reason is context. In Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, he talks about the efficacy of research and focus groups. He brings up “New Coke,” the Coke designed to beat Pepsi in the now infamous Pepsi challenge. Coke invested millions, using focus groups to engineer a cola that consumers would pick over Pepsi in the classic blind sip test. After perfecting their cola they brought it to market, and it was one of the biggest failures in the history of the beverage industry.

Even today New Coke is the butt of many a comedian’s joke, if not the punchline. So what happened? Well people don’t drink cola a sip at a time in a white room with 2-way glass. They enjoy their cola at a picnic, or relaxing on their couch. The take longer, not shorter sips, and the ambience of the environments were they enjoy the beverage affect their mental states. In short, the research was flawed because the people in the focus groups where not in their standard environment and the state of mind where they would regularly consume cola.

When I was in university, I was out at a mall shopping. A woman approached me and offered me 10 bucks to come in a little room and watch some initial drafts of a Molson Ex commercial. I sat down in a LazyBoy, in a stark white room, and saw storyboards with drawn characters representing the actors in the would-be commercials. The audio track played as the storyboards flashed in progression. “It is obvious this woman wants to have sex.” the commercial started. “But I had sex yesterday, today I want to go out with the boys and have an EX.”

The woman who flagged me into the little white room came in and asked what I thought. I told her I thought it was humorous, but the most offensive commercial I had ever seen, and that if I had kids (which I did not at the time), I would not want them seeing it at all. She then asked me what I would think if I knew that the audience was men my age, and that it would only be shown after 10p.m.? My answer changed. “I guess it would be ok, then.” I was out of my element, I was not looking at the spot like I would in the 15-sec chunk mixed in with other commercials during the first intermission of the Habs game. I was studying it, thinking more deeply about whether it would alienate their target audience, whether or not it would offend me in that context, I even thought, “would this get me to buy a Molson Ex?”  A few months later I was watching the game and the Ex Sex commercial came on the set. I was offended. Whether it is a result of that commercial or not, I have never bought a Molson branded product in my life. I bought and enjoyed a Rickards Red (from Molson Breweries). And I have a favourable view of the family and company due to their long-time relationship with my beloved Montreal Canadians. But have never actually bought a Molson Canadian, Ex, or Dry.

3. Science and Humanity
I am a scientist at heart. I love physics, math, and technology. I went to school for Computer Science and Philosophy, and I did quite well in Calculus. But I am also a human. I have human relationships, emotions and drivers. And while we try our best, these qualities can rarely be summed up with a series of numbers, true or false statements, or sliding scales from 1 to 5.

“Advertising is a craft executed by people who aspire to be artists, but is assessed by those who aspire to be scientists. I cannot imagine any human relationship more perfectly designed to produce total Mayhem. ” – John Ward.

I love that quote, as it is a paradox in and of itself. As I previously stated, research is not useless. What it is is another piece of information. But it is in no way more important than the opinions of advertising practitioners (Creatives and Executives), nor is it more important and definitive than the guy sitting beside you on the train. We are the consumers, our friends and family are the consumers, and our clients are the consumers.

As advertising professionals we need to gather and ingest all the information we can on a problem, and then formulate a strategy and creative against it. And then let our inner consumer take over. The collective feeling and experiences of our colleagues, friends, families, and most important our guts will tell us what the right solution is. Even if our research tells us otherwise.

This is not an article debating whether digital or traditional agencies will dominate the landscape of future advertising. This is not an article predicting the death of advertising agencies. This is an article about the mutant super-child that the two models have started to birth. And the necessity for the industry as a whole to adapt and move forward in a new and rapidly converging world.

Chris Staples wrote a great piece called Dominant Agency Models Face Extinction. In it, he talks about how days are numbered for both traditional and digital agencies.

It starts with this quote from Mark Comerford: “Digital will fuck you up.”

Staples then explores some of the problems and obstacles both the traditional and digital models face.

Let’s elaborate on some of the root issues, and explore how both brands and agencies can overcome them.

The diagnosis
There are three equally important parts to any successful advertising campaign: Strategy, Creative, and Execution. This isn’t new thinking, but it is something that seems to be missed from time to time by brands and agencies alike. You’ll see campaigns that have sound strategy and execution, but bad creative. Or great creative and execution, but completely lacking the strategic component. If you have ever seen an ad, spot or microsite that you found compelling, but were left wondering, “What was the point of that?” then you know of what I speak.

When it comes to the new digital landscape, the three components are having an uncommonly difficult time getting together.

In traditional agencies, the strategy and creative may be sound, but the digital execution often falls flat.

In the digital agency, in general, the creative is solid, and the execution can be brilliant, but there is little attention paid to long-term strategy.

In other words, traditional models produce good strategic thinking, but are short on tactics. Digital agencies are good tacticians, but poor strategists.

This is important. The key to being excellent in all channels is making sure that – in all channels – the Strategy, Creative, and Execution are connected and well thought out. The strategy may inform the creative, and then on to the execution.

The best campaigns, however, are ones where all three components inform each other: strategists, creatives, and production working together to solidify the strategy, creative and tactic.

The wrong way
These two models of agencies (traditional and digital) have been compensating for their deficiencies in a similar and, ultimately, flawed way.

Traditional agencies, faced with the reality of the digital revolution, have done two things: The have purchased “digital shops,” or they have hired on digital “experts.”

Conversely, digital agencies who are trying to break into the traditional world hire on traditional “experts” to help them bridge their prospective gaps.

There are some pretty obvious problems with this methodology.

Case 1: Traditional shops buy digital arms:
In this instance the digital shops generally play second fiddle to their traditional counterparts. Briefs come in with the idea and strategy already baked in, and the digital arm executes against them. In this model, the digital specialists are handcuffed, and more important, never get exposure to the strategic side of advertising. The result is often poor execution due to strategic or creative limitations.

Case 2: Traditional and Digital agencies hiring specialists:
Again, Chris Staples has a good take on this case at Applied Arts, One ad agency veteran makes the case for a Third Way:

“In many of the larger networks, there was (and there still remains) a thinly-disguised paternal attitude towards the new digital offspring. Key decisions and the “big idea” were closely guarded by the core agency team of planners, account people and creatives. As more and more of their clients’ budgets fled to digital, this power relationship started to buckle and strain. If digital divisions are controlling the majority of the budget, shouldn’t they control the big idea as well? . . . Under the current system, clients are forced to deal with multiple project managers to create an integrated campaign. Having 10 people around the table inevitably causes in-fighting and inefficiency.”

When you have an agency that has a lot of specialists at the table, there can often be struggles deciding how to allocate budgets, and who should lead a project. This can result in watered down executions, both on the traditional and digital side.

The prescription: a new structure
Generalists often have a specialty, but have a deep understanding of all the channels that can be used in a campaign. The easiest route to generalists is through the production end. Producers and Project Managers can and will tackle any execution in a similar fashion regardless of medium. Therefore it is easiest to train them to work in the multiple channels. While good producers understand the media the are using, they do not have to understand how a camera operates or how to code a website. The naturally rely on their team’s expertise to fill in the knowledge gap. Because of this, producers tend to be the first to become generalists or, as I like to call them, “media agnostics.”

A few agencies (very good ones at that) have moved to an Executive Producer model. Where there is one lead producer, who is a generalist, leading execution on a client’s business. But we can take this further.

Generalists on top
Think of the new agency model as similar to the medical industry, with the client as the patient. All patients have an overseeing physician, usually called a GP or General Practitioner. When a patient goes to the doctor with a foot irritation, for example, they go to the GP. The GP will do an initial diagnosis and then refer the patient to the appropriate specialist, in this case either a podiatrist, or a dermatologist.

If the patient went directly to the podiatrist, there is a chance they would be misdiagnosed, because the podiatrist thinks almost exclusively about feet. Same can be said about the dermatologist. The GP is an essential part of the process because they look at the problem holistically and determine the best course of action to help the patient.

Translate this to the Agency. You want the generalists to be the primary drivers of the client’s business. Only then can you ensure that you are prescribing the right solution to achieve the client’s objectives. The specialists are still important. After the course of action is decided, you want to ensure that the specialists are the ones executing against the strategy and creative.

How to become or find the media agnostic
The differences between traditional and digital are not the obstacle in becoming media agnostic. Traditional creatives deal with multiple media all the time. You will have a hard time convincing me or anyone else that print and broadcast are the same. However traditional creatives work in these multiple medias all the time with relative ease. The key to them doing this is they don’t need to understand the intricacies of the various media they work with. Generalists in their own right, they rely on their line producers, directors, print producers, design teams, and studio artists to understand the specialized details of what they wish to accomplish.

People who are media agnostic are people who are immersed in the media they wish to work with. Because of this you will find a lot of media-agnostic young people.

I grew up on a steady stream of television, radio, gaming magazines, video games, and the Internet. But in order for the upcoming generations of advertisers to stay media agnostic, educators and those of us in the industry must make sure they are exposed to and allowed to explore all the media we use. We must be cautious not to silo them as they enter the industry.

But the young are not the only source of media agnostic advertisers. If you are traditional, and you wish to be media agnostic, live the media. Get a Twitter feed, use Facebook, read blogs (like this one), look at and explore the great digital work that is out there. Go to digital conferences like FITC and Flash Forward.

If you are digital, read Creativity and Ad Age. Stop skipping past the commercials when you PVR your shows. And really pay attention to the various print ads and billboards you see. The quickest and most surefire way to becoming media agnostic is to foster a genuine interest in all things advertising, design, and digital. Easy right?

Post-mortem
It has become clear that both the traditional and digital agency models are failing. The evidence of that is the lack of great integrated campaigns. They really are few and far between. That being said, I believe we are on the verge of a new resonance in advertising. More and more advertisers and clients are becoming less and less afraid of digital. As this happens, more and more agencies are adjusting their models to better support their clients.

It’s those of us who make the transition first that will be poised to lead the industry through this brave new world. And unlike our counterparts in other industries, such as music and film, digital won’t “fuck you up.”

Welcome to Part 2 in our series on “How to be Social.” Part 1 covered the basic rules of social interaction for brands. Part 1.5 looked at a recent incident where a brand didn’t follow the rules, and the consequences of that decision. Over the next few posts in this series, we’ll introduce some of the key technologies and venues at play in the social space.

Let’s start with a technology that has recently been suggested to deserve a Nobel Prize for its role during the 2009 Iranian election unrest.

Twitter, like many social-media technologies, is called a “micro-blogging” platform.

From the everyday minutia of your life to the big ideas behind life, you can broadcast whatever you want on Twitter – all in ultra-short bursts. You can draw attention to your latest blog posts by sharing a link. You can start a topic trend with a hash tag (“#”). And you can speak directly to another user by using the “@” character.

Every time you Tweet something, those 140 characters are sent out and appear in your follower’s twitter feeds. Conversations on Twitter resemble a disorganized classroom:

Jane Doe shouts something out, and if someone finds the little chunk of an idea interesting, they may shout back with an @ or a #. But for all the promise of “conversation,” real conversations are rare on Twitter. For the most part, users shout out thoughts, ideas, and commentary in a one-to-many ratio.

So, how does a brand get in on the action?

It starts with this insight: people follow people (or brands) when they are interested in what that person (or brand) has to say.

Well branded Twitter feeds need to serve at least one of three purposes. They should be either:

1. Entertaining
2. Informative
3. Useful

1,600,000 people follow @ThatKevinSmith because he is funny.
27,633 follow @CBCNews because of the information it provides.
I follow my apartment building so I can be updated on issues pertaining to the building (utility).

People follow me, I hope, for all three reasons, though it could be out of pure unadulterated pity.

Let’s take a look at two brands and how they use Twitter:

@myStarbucksIdea
Starbucks combines offers (Useful), new product information (Informative), and thoughtful/thought-provoking ideas. They have more than 12,000 followers, and are following about 12,000 people. Next, let’s look at Skittles.

@Skittles
Skittles has about 1,000 followers, and are following 0 people. They have a steady stream of clever and often funny Skittle-related Tweets. Skittles also based their entire interactive campaign in the social space, putting ad dollars and press releases behind the initiative, which brings me to my next point.

The rules I outlined in Part 1 apply here too. In other words, it’s not solely what you do, but how you do it in the social space. Starbucks has nearly as many followers as it follows. It has a reputation of responding (and quickly) to mentions, and actively engages with its followers.

Skittles did/does not. And just as quickly as the press releases came out promoting its social media efforts, so too did the articles about its apparent failure. Just type “Skittles social media experiment” into google and you will get a slew of them. Here is one I just randomly picked out: When Skittles Met Twitter. Skittles not only broke the rules, they didn’t even apply them. They ignored the social aspect of social media.

Another way a brand can interact in the Twitterverse is by joining mass conversations. Twitter has trending topics. When users attach a # or @ to a key word in a post it becomes searchable by Twitter and other users. When many users use # or @ on the same keyword or phrase, the topic begins to trend up.

You will often also see people post something to the effect of, “Great conversation about the Olympics here: #Olympics.” Users and brands can then search for #Olympics and join a mass conversation about it. This, in my opinion, is a huge untapped opportunity to engage users and gather more brand stewards. If a brand starts or joins into a mass conversation about a topic relevant to that brand’s core audience, the opportunity for meaningful engagement is massive.

As with all social media marketing, a brand needs to be agile and skilled to exploit these opportunities. Active mass conversations occur spontaneously and sporadically and usually last from 30 minutes to a few hours. Some conversations last longer, for example, those that correspond to major events such as the Iranian elections or the earthquake in Haiti.

Brands also need to be cautious about the type of mass conversations they engage the public in, and how they interact in those situations. My suggestion would be to act like an MC, guiding the conversation, and contributing in small benign ways, allowing the public and your stewards to really drive the conversation.

Twitter is a unique and powerful social interaction tool. It is a potent combination of widely broadcasted ideas, and small personal interactions. This unique mix provides interesting opportunities for brands. Happy Tweeting.

You can follow Big Orange Slide on Twitter, here.

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