The Media Playbook. Michael Drexler
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we don’t really know when given numbers of customers are ready to buy, it is better to advertise continuously than to flight with big chunks of advertising and then to disappear, harboring funds for the next blitz, as research from the ’60s, based on rather abstract theories of learning, had led us to believe. The concept purified media planning and changed the way major advertisers spent their money. In a sense, building brand equity now rode on the coattails of producing immediate sales on a rolling basis.
Erwin Ephron passed away in 2013, but to honor his contribution to the industry the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) now gives the Demystification Award annually to the most innovative media thinker/communicator. The first one went to Bill Harvey, Ephron’s friend and colleague, as well as the inventor of the ADI.
The 1990s was the beginning of media thinking assuming a seat at the table equal to creative thinking, especially in new business presentations. Media agencies flourished. But once digital media matured a bit in the next decade, everything changed once again.
The 2000s: The Digital Decade
Shortly after Al Gore invented the Internet, the digital revolution was launched. At the beginning of the decade TV still completely dominated both usage and spending. By the end of the decade, while television usage was still dominant with just under 4 ½ hours per day per person, digital usage was barely an hour behind. As a consequence, ad spending for digital rocketed to more than half that of television and is still climbing, while TV spending stagnates, ripe to be overtaken. It is projected that digital spending will surpass television in 2017.
One of the major consequences of “New Media” was new language. Media has always had a vocabulary all its own, protected by practitioners who wanted to maintain the “media mystique.” However, I learned a long time ago that the media professionals who spoke in plain understandable English had the most successful careers.
Here’s a thought in plain English. The most recent research from RMT, Simulmedia and CBS shows that television is still the most productive medium to sell most products. Digital advertising cannot compete yet on an ROI basis. As a consequence, when a marketer shifts money from TV to digital media they might very well be inhibiting sales growth. Perhaps it is better to shift funds from a less productive medium than television into digital enterprises in order to reap the benefits of both television and digital media.
The 2010s: Data Dominates
So here we are today, over-sampled, over-modeled, over-sold and a bit under-understood. But we are making headway, and the attempts to quantify our understanding of how advertising works are to be honored.
I sincerely believe that Big Data techniques are bringing us closer to a real understanding of human nature as it relates to advertising messaging
and its consequence. We tend not to see things as they are, but rather as we are. Data helps us to understand reality more clearly, if used correctly.
Simultaneously, client procurement continues to turn the screws on agencies in reaction to decades-old practices when agencies reaped huge profit margins. I have seen, first-hand, procurement oftentimes over-reacting and thus inhibiting the attempts agencies make to provide contemporary value to clients. I say this even though most of my clients are advertisers, not agencies. And we are very well versed in the economics of our business. At the same time, there are allegations (yet unproven) that agency holding companies are pocketing rebates from the media without client knowledge. We still have a lot to sort out.
Perspectives
The Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman once described the way we understand nature. I think it’s true of the way we understand human nature as well. He supposed that if we didn’t know the rules of chess, but still had to play the game, over time we might notice that the pawn always moves one space, straight ahead. Also, we notice that when a pawn takes another piece, it suddenly moves on the diagonal. So now we discovered a rule – a law. We might, through observation and deduction, uncover other little bits of rules that increase our understanding of the game’s laws until suddenly a pawn makes it to the other side of the board and is rewarded by replacing itself with a queen. Suddenly the rules have changed. Feynman claims that science is like that. Scientists try to discover the rules of nature much the same way his fictional chess player is discovering the rules of the game, and then the rules change. Isn’t business like that? Doesn’t our knowledge of how things work evolve over time because we are curious enough to doubt the dogma of the day?
I envy young media professionals of today who have the privilege of watching the media business unfold on a more personal level. But they should never forget the changing currents we all rode to reach this beachhead. My sincere hope is that as we move forward, we begin by placing a bit more value on talent and people and a little less emphasis on making a short-term profit.
Russia used to have a five-year plan. Advertising had a one-year plan. Harvard Business Review introduced the quarterly report. Nielsen went to monthly reach. Automotives went to the ten-day report. Recency advocated weekly reach. Nielsen offered overnight ratings and now we live with instantaneous digital reports. While it all seems like an improvement, is anyone looking out for long-term unintended consequences?
I would love to see some of today’s best media/marketing thinkers take a longer view of where we are headed. The trends of the last six decades prove that every action has a reaction. I think we need to take a breath and spend more time thinking about the balance between paying for talent and cutting for profit. We need to recognize that change is constant and only by challenging the dogma of the day can we anticipate the forces of change and learn the new set of rules that are sure to emerge. Each new cycle of media evolution provides new creative challenges and new opportunities to engage consumers in a more personal way. While there are almost always stories in numbers, it is the passion each individual media practitioner brings to their job that advances our art and science in the new digital world in all its mutated platforms and beyond.
We hope that you will find the pieces in this book thought-provoking and valuable as you face your own challenges and opportunities, moving into the future.
SF 2017
The Advertising Industry as We Know It Is About to Blow Up
“More clients are now willing to manage the process themselves.”
I’m not an alarmist, but I am being a little dramatic here. When I think about what is going on in our business, I wonder whether there is anything we can really do to save the industry from itself. Let me explain further by offering some facts.
Ten Key Facts That Must Be Understood:
Fact #1. The transparency issue has put advertisers, agencies and media companies in a confrontational zone. It was, in many ways, created by pressures on cost. Hopefully we can at least bring it to a resolution that engenders a greater level of trust, confidence and collaboration. But it will take a significant change in business practices and attitude on the part of all parties. Agencies need to be assured of a reasonable profit and advertisers need to understand the significant investment agencies are making to deliver what they want in terms of resources and technology. Media companies also need to understand the deal flow and that they can’t get in the middle of the advertiser/agency relationship to only serve their financial self-interest.
Fact #2. Technology has permanently changed the game and nobody has yet figured out how to best deal with these changes, with more to come. If you think programmatic buying is unsettling, with all that goes along with it, think about fact #3.
Fact #3. Ad blocking: That really is a problem. Digital ad spending continues to outpace all traditional media forms. And all traditional media forms are still trying to figure out what to do about digital platforms. Sure, all media must embrace digital