Time for a change.

<grumpy>

In Common Sense, Thomas Paine noted "The more men have to lose, the less willing they are to venture." 

Our industry has a lot to gain by the shifts in the communications landscape.  But if we aren't careful, we have a lot to lose, too.

Our communications institutions, by and large, weren't built to leverage the full-contact engagement enabled by emergent technology platforms - nor the very real socio-economic systems those virtual tools are creating.  And at the same time, the financial infrastructure that supports our industry, and the brands it services, is still playing catch-up to the on-the ground realities we face - as any interactive shop not getting to staff an account person because the traditional agency already has one on the roster has run into this challenge.  And others.

Our ideas must be aided and abetted by multi-channel transmedia storytellers.  The skill sets necessary for brand engagement in an always-on world are different.  A provocative relationship requires truths, deep human insights, engaging narrative and emotive power.  But the very notion of what constitutes a relationship is in flux as we are assimilated by the borg.

That's why it irked me recently at the DLX Summit to hear interactive media agencies and publishers focused on teasing efficiencies out of their systems - "oh, we need a streamlined IO process", "oh, we need a streamlined RFP process", "oh, we need a GRP equivalent".

Bullpuckey. 

That's navelgazing incrementalism.

It's frantically slapping a fresh coat of paint on the gazebo before the hurricane hits. 

If you thought getting your IO's in order was the solution to the challenges our industry faces, seriously, go home. 

But it's hard for media and creative agencies to imagine a landscape that doesn't look like the one they just spent all this time and money building.   Frankly, they aren't incented to.  They've invested as heavily in the communication delivery systems and techniques as brands are in the pseudo-science of "brand management" percehed precariously atop reams of best guesstimates about media effectiveness.

While everyone tries to batten down the hatches (typically checking off the "innovation" item in their annual reviews with a single, crappy, non-scaleable CYA "mobile" campaign), real innovation is happening.  Smaller nimble shops good and pure evil are wrapping their heads around the space.  And redefining it.  And while our business - influence - will not change, I believe the fundamental tools, techniques and metrics of our business will be radically reconsidered from the edge in.  Agencies bound to the quarterly targets of Wall Street are at a disadvantage to the nimble crazy mofos unafraid to screw with their models, break/shake 'em up regularly, because that's what's happening in the marketplace of ideas, isn't it?

Look at music.  Yep, Music.   Music labels, too, sit on significant infrastructural investments in manufacturing and distribution suddenly obviated and torched by digital distribution.  So they've spent the last few years trying to litigate their way out of a forest fire.

But from the conflagration has emerged a whole flock of promising phoenixs (or is that phoenii?)  And I believe we marketers have a lot to learn from the music business and the new models emerging there.

Here was Trent Reznor's "Common Sense". 

How crazy has it gotten?  Plenty crazy. 

• Acts as diverse as Radiohead, Trent Reznor and Jill Sobule have successfully explored fan-financed albums and direct sales to fans. 
• Reznor's 'Ghosts' moved 2500 ultra-deluxe limited edition sets @ $300 a pop - netting a cool direct $750K before the general album even got out. 
• TechCrunch recently popped Tapulous's iPhone "NIN's Tap Tap Revenge" - a band-branded iPhone app.

• AC/DC, a long standing iTunes holdout, just announced their Rock Band Track Pack Videogame, to be sold exclusively @ Walmart along with their new album.
  

And remember Radiohead's Google data visualization tool video?   

While the labels continue to innovate ways to shoot themselves in the foot, artists are fighting it out bareknuckled, looking for a buck, building relationships and reinventing both music and "marketing". 

Pretty cool, right?

Now it's our turn to reinvent brand communications.  Right freaking now. 

And have a blast doing it.

</grumpy>

[another fun read, noted by Justin Kistner: Ethan Bauley's 'Industrial' vs 'Social' media riff]

Comments

[renny gleeson]

Haven't finalized, but short answer? Invest in Social media and mobility biz dev/strategists, hire community manager and IA resources, allocate a portion of annual marketing budget to sustained community engagements as platforms from which to "pulse" [but broadly free of individual campaign requirements]. And maybe free up the traditional site maintenance/overhaul budget for distribution-based rather than destination-based marketing.

[gaeyia]

It's one thing to note the direction of the tide and another to navigate the
waters... What do you recommend these communication engines do to develop
infrastructure that supports "Borg" assimilation?

[renny gleeson]

you guys rock.

[fromtherooftops]

Nice post, Renny. On the one hand, what you’ve described is the age-old business challenge of how do we successfully grow while protecting the innovative thinking and entrepreneurial spirit that brought us our success. And how do we build and maintain the infrastructure to serve our clients without becoming a slave to the bottom line? But I would argue that the problem confronting us in the communications space is one that we’re all struggling with, large and small—making sure that we dedicate the time to truly understand the meaning (and future implications) of the game-changing technologies coming to market every day, recognizing that the landscape is constantly in flux. And largely we’re not taking the time we need. Instead, we get fascinated with shiny new toys like blogs or customer-created ads or twitter, and spend our time trying to figure out how to monetize them. But by the time we do that, the market has moved on or the sheen has faded.

At this moment, there are approximately one million sixty-four tools out there for engaging customers on their turf, all of which deserve consideration in specific situations. But we, as media/communications people can’t effectively implement them because we haven’t allowed ourselves to understand their purpose and situational requirements. Step back. Ignore the tools but embrace their meaning. If agencies (large and small) are to succeed in this world, they’ll need to foster more of the kind of thinking that you’re doing…because ultimately it is the only path to the deep human insights, emotive power, and effective techniques you discuss.

[cynthia fuhrman]

Ten years ago this was the conversation some of us were having as founders of the new crop of interactive agencies, before the mainstream agencies would take online marketing seriously. We had lots of conversations about who did or didn't "get it," even though we had difficultly pinpointing "it" ourselves. We purchased "The Cluetrain Mainfesto" by the dozen to give to staff and clients, hoping to help them "get it." Well, ten years later, most of our interactive agencies are either absorbed into larger mainstream marketing companies, or gone...and we're all still arguing over who "gets it." At least the conversation keeps us all interested.

[Dave Allen]

A creative agency's creative director better hold a MFA while agencies need to holistically understand the concept of psycho-drifting. Throw in to the mix the fact that every creative in the agency needs to understand at some level Darwinism, evolutionary psychology, ant colonies, memes, Russell Hoban's 'Riddley Walker' and the simple fact that we ourselves are technological devices, invented by ancient bacterial communities as a means of genetic survival; then all will be well.

@David Burn, you are right when you say W+K will still be in business in 5 years but what will the W+K of 2013 look like? Who will be working there? How small will it have become?

There are 19 year olds who can answer those questions today and I want to hire them.

[David Burn]

@Carrie - Wieden, for one, will be in business five years from now. And let's remember that digital is not the ONLY channel people are hooked on. I'm all for "it's the most exciting channel," but TV and radio and print and out-of-home will all survive for years to come.

For me, the democratization made possible by digital media is exciting, but so is the opportunity for ad pros to adapt and start creating content. Nike and W+K are already on that page to some degree, and other brands are catching on.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter who creates the content, just that the it kicks ass. We know it'll have willing sponsors in brands. Or in Renny's words, "Our ideas must be aided and abetted by multi-channel transmedia storytellers." These storytellers are already coming from the amateur, semi-pro and pro ranks (inside and outside traditional client and agency structures).

May the best storytellers win!

[KarkMolman]

Many big corp's don't get it. Good for real people. Corp's will eventually get it or die. Maybe there's a window open for the little guy. Let's jump through it.

[Carri Bugbee]

Renny,

I’ve have been saying this for awhile: most of the hotshot agencies that dominate the advertising landscape today probably won’t be around five years from now. And the “marketers” that will take their places aren’t currently marketers right now at all – in the traditional sense.

They’re not the folks who studied Brand Management en route to an MBA and they’re not the young hipsters who flushed out their books at Ad Center. They’re not the folks who were weaned on Ogilvy’s “big idea” concept of ad creation and they’re definitely not in the biz because they’re hoping to schmooze with Hollywood directors on the commercial shoot.

They are the tech geeks, bloggers, direct marketing gurus, social media enthusiasts and social networking rock stars who know it’s NOT beneath their job titles to engage with customers. They know that it takes diligent, hard work to communicate with people (in many cases, ONE AT A TIME) to find out what they REALLY want, care about, and are willing to say about a client’s products or services.

Of course, the more invested you are in the old paradigm, the harder it will be for you to tolerate – much less embrace – the new paradigm. In the new marketing milieu, it won’t be about the creative genius who comes up with a killer tag line – or the media planner who gets freebies from the magazine rep.

In fact, it won’t be about the glory at all. It will be about the grunt work.

I suspect this is the real reason traditional agencies haven’t rushed into (and won’t fare well) in the new milieu. It just won’t be as fun for them as it used to be.

The other important thing to keep is mind is that figuring out HOW to operate in this brave new world will require a level of dedication (by agencies and all the people in them) and immersion (think hundreds or thousands of non-billable hours!) that few seem willing to gamble on just yet. But by the time many of them do, a new breed of marketer will be doing their jobs. Some of them already are.

[David Burn]

Is this what happens when you keep it all corked up inside?

[Justin Kistner]

The music industry is a great example of the death of industrial media (few to the many). And, you're right. They don't have an incentive to innovate because their entire system is built around the processes that come with industrial media distribution. It happened first with software piracy. Then music. Then newspapers (although not piracy, it was classifieds). Now video is dealing with it.

Distribution is now so cheap, that it's not a barrier to entry or a valuable commodity. At least not to the same players. Industrial media companies won't transition their business models any more than the railroads did when the writing was on the wall.

Great post on Industrial Media here: http://www.ethanbauley.com/post/51599317/the-biggest-irony-on-the-internet