me write. you read.

Did they get it right?

For most social media skeptics out there (see everybody not peddling social media like it’s the next incarnation of the television), there’s an enormously growing amount of speculation that Twitter isn’t the social tool that social media folks say it’s going to be. I would lump myself into said category, as well. And while the Brand Bowl 2010 is a really nice concept, both for a show of technology and agency prowess, I think it’s the wrong metric and the wrong thing to show expertise in.

Brand Bowl 2010

Let me explain. Everybody who’s anybody is angling for the next best thing in the ad business. Whether it be one of the various and sundry social applications on the web, say twitter, yelp, ning, digg, delicious, etc, etc, etc, brands can’t afford to be the farm on just one of these. Because, in truth, the social media application doesn’t matter if it doesn’t hit the target audience well. So, let’s use the “results” from Brand Bowl as an example. The Focus on the Family spot, which was quite possibly the most controversial and tame spot in Super Bowl memory, got lots of love in the Twittersphere. Why? It was both controversial AND it bore the exact subject matter that people oft tweet about: politics, religion and controversy. So, naturally, it would grade high on that scale. However, that does nothing to monitor effectiveness, strength of message or any other necessary metric to determine ROI on a Super Bowl spot.

All that’s really to say is that I truly believe anybody still putting Twitter in any sort of elevated status in the social media sphere has it all wrong. Most people who work in brand building in any sort don’t believe it has much longer of a shelf life in terms of the overall brand discussion. It faded quicker than MySpace and most younger consumers are onto something else. I wouldn’t have used it to measure effectiveness of anything. But that’s me.

5 out of 100 is pretty sad

In the most recent issue of Fast Company, they released their list of the 100 most creative people in business. Of the esteemed 100, only 5 of them work for a company that does “marketing” of any variety:
32: Lee Clow, TBWA
39: Greg Hahn, BBDO
59: Noah Brier, Barbarian Group
81 & 82: Karin Hibma & Michael Cronan, Cronan

So, um, wow. I thought we were supposed to be the most creative people in business? What happened here? I thought marketing was the marriage of creativity and business; that we were tasked with creatively solving business problems; that the greater ad industry was the helm of creativity. Not so, according to FC.

For this, I believe there are 2 reasons. The first is far more jaded and less plausible, but requires thought, nonetheless.
1. Is it possible that the marketing industry is far more isolated from the rest of the business world that the people we consider “rock stars” of the industry are really little more than peons in the greater business world? I think it’s highly likely. Look more closely at the names chosen. Clow is an obvious pick, since he is the Michael Corleone to Ogilvy’s Vito Corleone status. Throw somebody in from BBDO, since that’s about the only agency that most people have ever heard of (courtesy of foppish depictions of ad agencies in film. I loved Alan Alda saying “BBD and O” in What Women Want). Do ten minutes of digging past Crispin, and you’ll find Barbarian Group. And, throw in an under the radar name like Cronan, and you’ve covered your bases. And make sure you leave out Bogusky. FC has had an absurd man crush (much like most of us in the biz) on AB for quite a while now. After the big splashy feature last year and the full page blurb 18 months ago, people will begin to think they pump him up because Microsoft (CP+B’s big ole client) has a pretty hefty media buy with the magazine.
Plausible? Eh, maybe. Probable? Sure. If you’re a tad jaded.
Or, there’s the other option.
2. It’s more obvious than ever that the ad industry as a whole has grown embarrassingly stale. Most of our business models are as stale as the rehashed rehashed ideas we continue to sell clients and expect them to throw money at us because we’re creative. At least we tell the we are.
For me, this theory holds a lot more water. Think about it, the basic agency model has barely evolved since the 1960s. Watch Mad Men, and you get a sense of what most agencies are still like that. (Creative team + Account team) x Media team = Agency Model. Outside of a few noteworthy shops (Mother, Creative Orchestra), we still hire people who do one thing well and throw them together with other people that do one thing well and expect a certain outcome. And we as a group are still held creatively hostage by the invoice that our clients may or may not sign based on how the last client meeting went. Until we break these two basic molds, marketers will never live up to their potential.
We should hire multi-talented, smart people who are both creative and business savvy. We should work with clients that respect the value of a good strategic partner, but first we must re-earn that title. We still have a lot of work to overcome the Charlatan stereotype that we will do or say anything for money, because the reality is that stereotype is still resoundingly true.
So, why is it that if we are so creative that we don’t focus that energy on our own business model? I have 2 explanations. 1. It’s scary. 2. Most advertising/marketing folks are bad businessmen. They mostly don’t understand it, outside of the context of a brand. If they did, things would be way different.

Hopefully, it’s just the first reason. But I have my doubts.