The downturn of many “once great” companies can be attributed to simple ignorance. This particular form of ignorance is a product of arrogance, the arrogance to think, “we make products or services that people want” when they never bothered to ask their customers if in fact the still wanted them.

Consider how the mighty have fallen. Not too long ago every corner Mom & Pop video rental shop was put out of business and replaced by a blue and yellow phenomenon called Blockbuster, there was one of these bad boys in every corner. Again not to long ago we can still picture these guys in their boardroom boasting about how they ruled the world. Then this little thing called NetFlix happened. They obviously did not see it coming, at least not until it was perhaps too late.

The point I want to make is that they should have. There is really no excuse. You don’t need a crystal ball for this, all you need to do is pay attention. Shifts in consumer behaviors don’t happen overnight, but you can always count on the fact people change.

Companies spend an ungodly amount of time and effort keeping tabs on what their competitors are up to. It’s amazing to me how little effort they actually spend understanding their customers.

This week was “bring you Son or Daughter to work” week. It occurred to me companies should institute a new holiday – and it should be scheduled everyday.

If I have not made my point here are a few more clues – The newspaper industry, the music industry, the airline industry, and buggy whips!

No more surprises  - declare today – “Take your customer to work day”

How many times in the past week have you heard the term “Mobile Media”, or “Mobile Advertising”? I have clients, analyst, and reporters ask me constantly. “Who’s your mobile media expert?”, “What percentage of my budget should go to mobile media?” – Silliness in my opinion.

Most marketers associate the term media with a medium to deliver or PUSH your advertising.  Basically if you see mobile as just another place for your ads, if you intend to include another line item in your media plan that says “mobile” – you have it all wrong.

Mobile is not media it is a point of interaction between a brand and a consumer. You may say well so is a TV spot, and that is media right? Not necessarily the key word here is interaction, and I mean the two-way kind.

Mobile, email, and even the good old telephone are amazing little tools to continue a conversation they should not be used as a medium to solicit one – that is called SPAM.

I can’t count how many times we are asked to “support our offline campaign online” – I get this, but my view (and maybe it is just semantics) it’s about driving an integrated brand experience. This week in a study conducted by Group M a subsidiary of WPP said online ad spending will surpass TV spend in the UK by next year. The forecast calls for UK Internet advertising revenues to hit £3.4bn this year. TV advertising, on the other hand, is expected to grow by less than 1 per cent to £3.56bn in 2008. And by 2009 the UK will see digital as the dominant channel.

Wait so does that mean finally the above the line agency will get that all to familiar call. “Guys we need you to come up with some of that TV and radio stuff to support our campaign” – never-say-never

I had my first ever glass of Johnny Walker Blue Scotch not long ago. Scotch is my drink of choice and I was excited at the prospect of trying what many have told me was going to be the best scotch I have ever had. And sure enough it was. The whole experience, from the feel of the weight of the glass in my hand to the warm flow of the scotch down my throat to the satisfying burn I felt as it passed into my system were all exactly what I had imagined. It was a great experience. And, it got me thinking. Mind you I only had one so it was definitely not alcohol induced thinking. I wondered whether it actually tasted that good because in fact it is that good or because I expected, and in fact my mind believed it was going to be that good. Of course, the answer is both. I was pre-conditioned toward a positive experience and the product delivered. So yes, the distillers, the packagers, and the distributors all did their job to create a positive experience for me. But of course so did the advertiser who pre-conditioned me for the experience. Advertising heightened my expectations and the product delivered. Exactly as it should be.

Of course this mental rambling got me thinking about brands in general. I thought about chocolate and then instantly of Hershey, I thought about high performance cars and then of BMW. Of family entertainment and then Disney. Of soft drink and then Coke. You get my drift. Think of the power of this. In the famous book “Positioning The Battle for the Mind of the Consumer” Al Reis and Jack Trout talked about the power of occupying space in the consumers mind. Owning a word, a concept, basically a brand. And as my stream of consciousness reminded me, once that brand sits in that space in ones mind it is very difficult to replace. Clearly a combination of factors contribute to my positive association with the brands I mention above, but advertising has to be top of the list. Multiple impressions served over a long period of time with great impact and I was hooked. In fact, I started thinking, all driven by that glass of scotch, that this was exactly why I got into advertising in the first place. To build brands and help clients own the hearts and minds of their consumers.

But then I was struck by the sobering thought (to carry the drinking analogy further) that at present I was not really in the advertising business. I am in the interactive advertising business and today there is a clear difference. Interactive agencies don’t own the brands, or more specifically are not chiefly tasked by brand managers to be the primary voice of the brand in the marketplace. Sure we get to express the brand in a given channel. But its kind of like the difference between leasing and buying. Traditional agencies own the car outright, it sits in the driveway fully paid for. Interactive shops may get to play with the car ,but it’s a short term lease and eventually you need to give it back. Interactive shops are experts. Need a web site built you go to an interactive shop. A banner campaign, we’re your guys. Need analytics work to better understand consumer behavior and our phones ring. Don’t get me wrong it’s great. As technology has advanced our industry has quite literally boomed. The things you can do now to target and then acquire and retain customers is absolutely staggering. In fact our industry is booming for good reason, our brand of advertising is highly effective and highly measureable. We can clearly tell clients that for every dollar paid this is what was returned. It is very satisfying, and I am proud of the work we do. But is it memorable? 

Continue reading "Brands in The Digital Age - by Bill Kanarick" »

Ok so WPP did not say that, but rather their actions proved it. WPP had a great week by winning a $4.5 billion dollar deal with Dell. A deal of that magnitude is not easy to come by, and certainly not easy to win so I want to congratulate them.

One would assume that the very best minds and top talent at WPP spent countless hours in a conference room somewhere lined with whiteboards, Starbucks paraphernalia, pizza boxes, etc. working their asses off to win this. The product of which was a plan for how to best service the Dell account. No doubt the answer is to put together a multidisciplinary team made up of creative (both traditional and digital), media experts, strategist, analyst. Planners, industry experts, and this is only a partial list – effectively a new agency.

This “think tank” and the horsepower and tools to make their ideas and plans a reality for the Dell client would have to share focus, incentives, and account responsibilities. This makes all kinds of sense to me, and obviously so did Dell.

Why create a “new agency”? The irony here (if you have not picked up on it yet), is that this whole thing flies in the face of the promise of what the holding company model was supposed to deliver. These guys have been pushing the “benefits of the network”  - how many times did they tell a client the tale that their collection of agencies would work together in concert to support your brand, yet all they got was bickering about who got the revenue, the credit, or the earn out. Funny that now after the dust has settled, and all the double dipping has been exposed the client’s have learned their lesson. The smart winner in all of this was Michael Dell.