Topic: Marketing
I moderated a roundtable discussion at the Institute of Communications and Advertising’s Future Flash conference last spring in which we had more than a dozen of Canada’s leading ad agency heads speaking on questions like what were the biggest changes they’ve seen in the marketing industry, what were the big opportunities and challenges these days, what was keeping them awake at night, etc., etc.
In our pre-event e-mail exchanges one participant, Taxi chair Paul Lavoie, turned the tables on me, and put some big picture questions right back at me:
“Think of the year 1983 and then think of today. From your unique perspective and experience, what are some of the biggest changes. What remains the same?
“What are some of the biggest HYPED up crap you’ve witnessed, reported on over these years?
Paul”
I’ve been meaning to clean up my quick e-mail back to Paul as a post since I started this blog (in fact I meant for it to be my debut post, but got sidetracked). I finally got around to it this week. So here are my thoughts on how the marketing and media world has changed, and hasn’t, in the past quarter century since Michael Jackson reigned on the pop charts, Return of the Jedi ruled the box office, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pierre Trudeau strode the earth like giants and Microsoft released the first version of Word:
Biggest changes:
Where to start?
1) Global, publicly traded agency networks didn’t really exist, and certainly dominate to the today’s degree, back in ’83. I think that was the year Saatchi bought it’s first holdings in Canada, kicking off an almost decade long run of big deal after big deal. Think of all the domestic agencies that have been rolled into FCB alone over the years (Ronalds Reynolds, Herrod & Merlin to name just two shops).
2) Ditto the consolidation and globalization of clients.
3) I do think the best ad creative is in fact better and more relevant now than 25 years ago (although I’m sure we’ll find today’s messaging quaint and clunky when we look back from 2033).
4) Unbundled media planning and buying (and everything else). What a concept. Still radical in Canada until the late 80s, and in the U.S. until the mid-90s, now it’s the norm.
5) The Web is now the driver of everything (as the folks at trendwatching.com call it, “online oxygen”)… and it didn’t really exist as we know it until about 10 years ago.
6) The pace of everything is sooo much faster. Remember when we’d FAX important documents back and forth overnight, and we all thought that was fast.
7) Consumers really do have the upper hand now in the relationship with marketers and agencies.
Things that haven’t changed?
1) Consumers always really have had the upper hand in the relationship. We just can see the impact almost instantly now. There’s no more hiding from that reality or just giving it lip service. The things that succeed still have to meet real wants and desires of consumers. They must give them real value.
2) Big ideas still rule (even if the tools we use and the pace of implementation have changed dramatically).
3) The “next great thing” always changes the game, and usually grows the pie. And when it comes to media, no medium has ever truly disappeared. Specialty TV, the Web, free commuter newspapers, digital signage… sure things become more competitive for the established players every time something new arrives, but in the end the well never goes dry.
4) You still can’t cut and shrink your way to success. There might be a short-term boost in those tactics, but long term you’ve got to deliver real value (see # 1) sometimes you have to make some risky bets.
The biggest hype?
Honestly, there’ve been so many exaggerations –usually with small stakes: useless product claims, hollow boasts of world firsts that don’t stand to scrutiny, - over the years, nothing stands out as over the top.
Maybe “media convergence…” The idea that owning both the pipes and cables and a multiplicity of media properties can lead to effective cross pollination and will add up to more than the sum of their parts just never seems to have borne fruit. Yes, there are some very impressive collections of assets concentrated in a few hands, and there have been some synergistic successes, but no full portfolio running like a well-oiled machine.
Two more “hypes” that I didn’t jot down last spring: The revolutionary clout of the baby boomers and the unrecognized power of women in the marketplace.
Not a week has gone by in my career when someone hasn’t issued a release or pitched a story based on the startling fact that the “baby boomers are aging…” and that product or service X is poised to cash in on their extraordinary new life stage habits. Now that they are becoming seniors, we’re hearing yet again –this time from the likes of Moses Znaimer, in his latest venture - that the boomers are an underestimated market.
Ditto, every few years since the turn of the 20th century (forget 1983) someone, usually a consultant or pundit or media vendor with a related service or product offering, rediscovers the fact that women control roughly 80% of consumer spending, and yet marketing efforts directed at them never come close to that kind of per cent of spend.
There, as I wrote to Paul at the time: “that’s a start on my first book ;)”
