I have seen some weird perfume ads and the like but hats off to lavazza, I am trying to link the images with the words..at least it’s got a pretty lady in there though, very Italian advertising..
The new model agency
Marco Bertozzi:11.11.09
Its starting, the momentum is gathering towards the true ‘new model agency’. First we had media agencies that were all in silos by department with TV being the dominate in most. Over time that has merged into cross media departments with TV, Press etc buyers all working together, makes me think of ZULU the film, closing ranks to protect themselves from the onslaught. Are we seeing the end of the buyer as we know it?
Digital has thrown everything up in the air and then on top of that technology has thrown digital up in the air and everyone is trying to cope, the one thing that is true though is that more and more technology will do the best job of ‘buying audiences’ as its becoming known. I have just come from an agency that was very commercially aware that low value, high volume accounts and the people who worked on them are not needed in central London, stick them somewhere cheaper was their idea. With agency margins being squeezed this can make a genuine difference.
Buying has that feeling about it, do media agencies really need 40-50 buyers, buying media that has already either been agreed in an overarching deal or is being supported by technology. The arrival of ad exchanges from Google, Right media and many others will change everything. You need to buy impression by impression, audience by audience and in real time, ‘paying’ the right price by impression millions of times an hour – no media buyer will do that.
The planning of TV, Press, digital or outdoor is all possible through technology so I suspect in five years time we are looking at media agencies that focus on strategy, some key trading heads to do the deals and a lorry load of computers. Agencies will be paid for adding value not buying media.
I will be interested to see which agency is brave enough to embrace this new model ahead of the pack and decide that things really can be done differently..lets see.
Fascinating battle of the boy with his finger in the dam and Open access
Marco Bertozzi:11.09.09
What am I on about? News Corp is talking about a) charging for content and b) pulling it from Google. Many people have used the analogy of the little boy with his finger stuck in the dam to demonstrate that Murdoch can’t hold back the tide of open access of content. Actually if you read the story it makes the point that if you act quickly you can hold back a bigger disaster such as a dam breaking, everyone assumes the dam breaks..it doesnt.
Where does that leave Murduch? Has he acted quickly and everyone else will follow and before you know the tide of paid for content will be stopped, or is he just a little bit too late? That is now what everyone is waiting to find out but I do think that perhaps he should have stuck his finger in the dam about 8-10 years ago. The world has evolved and people are able to aggregate so much content that paying for it seems strange, albeit very fair.
People are also a little more fickle than in the past, often when searching for news online, its to fulfil an immediate thirst for information, I would be intrigued to see how many people when searching for news care whether they get it from Sky news, Telegraph, BBC or The Guardian. Take 911, the largest event in news for a lifetime, people immediately started to search for information, does Murdoch really not want to be found in those circumstances? I think the key take out for me is that in an age of open access and such volumes of available content available this decision seems to be moving against the tide.
The amazing banner concerts: creative at its best
This work shows a client that has the convictions to see something through and an agency with talent!
The portal could be back..
How on earth do you stay in touch with all of your communications? So whats normal nowadays? Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, your blog? News feeds from wired, trade news, world news etc etc. I think that the world is getting out of hand in terms of comms solutions.
How right then that AOL, Yahoo and more recently MSN are simplifying their pages and letting in the competition to allow us to connect to all of our accounts from one page. This would have been unthinkable a few years ago, when I was working on a film release the film maker had a promotion site made by Yahoo and therefore contained its logo, even this was not allowed on the MSN site at the time. How the world has changed, but it needs to!
The idea of a Portal is never more relevant, perhaps more relevant than when the portals genuinely ruled the digital waves. I could see these portals gaining back share with the advent of letting people add their own widgets. Yahoo / MSN and the like need to go even further down the road to the likes of netvibes and their many lookalikes
and allow absolutely all the links you could ever want on your page, become like them except you have content, news, entertainment etc. The Portal is back, lets hope they make them better than ever because all i know is I need one place to go to, not 5 or 6. On that point, I have to say that I am thoroughly disappointed with Linkedin external linking strategy, they have one of the poorest iphone applications, they have a useless netvibes widget – what are they doing, they are meant to about being a business network, they need to speed up this part of their developments..
Integrated, digital at the centre, agencies have changed, how do media owners respond?
Just before the recession kicked off every article was about digital, within the agency world it was the key battle ground, who had more of it, was it integrated, who was pretending etc etc. The recession seemed to put pay to that for a while, everyone concentrating on survival. What the recession will have done in many agencies is allow them to make a lot of change very quickly, people are a lot more receptive to structural change when their jobs are at risk. The end result of that will be that agencies have perhaps now taken a bigger step forward in a shorter period of time than at any previous period of the past.
Most agency groups now have pulled together or bought up a vast array of digital properties and now the task is to link them all together and make them something that clients can genuinely buy into, thats the biggest task of all and there are definitely some struggles out there.
Likewise the media owners are having to adjust at the same pace, they have also battled with separate sales teams, on and offline, agency relationship managers, sponsorships and many other properties but to make them work the teams have to work together and present a coherent face to the marketplace. Guardian teams have been well known to be struggling in this regard and have done for some time and perhaps this is now being reflected in the IPA Media Owner survey. The Telegraph made a very high profile office move and merged teams far more quickly and effectively and they seem to be benefitting from that move. The thing that stands out for me at the more successful media properties is that they all have two common themes; the right people in the key jobs and a desire to completely reinvent. AOL was down on its knees but therefore had little to lose and have completely re-engineered themselves and came to market with clarity and ambition. Telegraph was a similar story in terms of their ambition to completely evolve.
There is a lesson in that and some agencies could also look at those examples and shake things up, there are many agencies that have the same people, in the same roles and in the same format. Look to the brave and reinvent your offer and be brave enough to change. Change is addictive, tough to start with but once you do it, you can make a real difference.
Microsoft Imagine..not sure I really dreamed
Spent the day at the Microsoft Imagine day, these events are always filled with one over riding thought. Will I see something new and challenging? Today for me was dominated by one thing..concerts in a banner, a campaign for Axion, The Banner campaigns http://www.bornoncloud9.be/mouseawards2009/axion/the-banner-concerts-banners/
I will not try and explain it, just take a look, it is the best thing I have seen since 2000. I loved this, it was new, it used imagination, it used what some of the other presenters talked about, dreamtelligence, that was from the MD of future labs. That said he did use too much geek buzz words, basically took any two words and combined them!
The rest of the day presented technology, some great ideas but I am still left with this feeling of scratching the surface, not in terms of capabilities, but how is this going to help an advertiser? How are Microsoft going to link up PC, Windows 7, mobile, touch screen in a manageable, executional way for the average client? I know they are working on it but I still want to see it, in practice without being touched up..
Good to be there but I still want to see more…
Universal charger – how long has that taken?
Christ that is good news, how much cash has been wasted on endless different chargers for phones. I wonder if the iphone will suddenly become something less like a phone so Apple can continue to produce chargers that dont work on the their latest gadgets. Oh it works on a ipod, not on a 3Gs iphone though, that docking station will work on an old one but not the latest and on and on, I have a so many different chargers..that said, here comes Powermat – anyone seen it? Looks brilliant to start with, a very slim mat that is plugged in and all you do is lay your phone on it and it charges wirelessly!! Brilliant, and they did a good job of using Facebook to launch it as well.
Well actually no, first you have buy the mat, quite expensive. Then for every device you have to buy a sleeve to put your device in before putting on the mat! Bascially you are looking at £100 quid to charge your phone, but then of course if you have two phones, or two phones and ipod then get your wallet out, more buying of sleeves. I am sure down the line this will be common place technology without the sleeves, just lay them down but for now, who can be bothered with the expense and effort. As many people commented on facebook – why not just plug it in the wall? Good point, well made.
A final note on Powermat. They used Facebook well until they started to receive negative comments so they did what all clients are told not to do, they removed negative comments once they had dropped down the facebook news feed enough and then responded to the one positive comment out of 15 less so, wasted opportunity..
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