Day Two of iMedia’s Brand Summit started with a look back, took a look forward, then ended with Felcher & Sons looking over its shoulder for the Office Linebacker.
After an afternoon in the sun yesterday, the Summit’s attendees from northern climes actually have a bit of color. That dose of Vitamin D, a little partying and the warm weather did wonders for invigorating the conversations and clashes.
Today started with two looks back. The first was my fond stumble down memory lane, looking at my favorite brands from the last 46 years. I’ll turn that one into a column, but suffice to say that Osborne computers, Swisher Sweets and a 2-year-old with Elmo all get laughs.
Doug Weaver, president, Upstream Group, took us back again by hailing Darrin Stevens and “Bewitched” as the vision many of us held and pursued when we started down advertising lane. But we got a quick reality check after he introduced Joe Cappo, author of “The Future of Advertising: New Media, New Clients, New Consumers in the Post-Television Age.”
My synopsis of the book and Cappo’s brilliant wisdom: The agency biz may not be dead yet, but it’s sure starting to smell that way. I don’t know if it’s just resting or not (if you missed that, rent some “Monty Python” DVDs), but if it is, somebody had better wake it up soon.
So what happened to the agency business? “Its food source was cut off,” Cappo said, referring to the old model in which agencies simply took a 15 percent cut of media they placed. In the 1920s, agencies were simply agents of the media and didn’t charge for creative and other services.
Enter media buying specialists in the 1980s. They offered marketers drastically reduced commissions—two to three percent—which forced agencies to begin charging for other things. That was the beginning of the end of the agency as Larry and Darrin knew it.
“What had allowed the agencies to be a marketing partner with their clients just evaporated,” Cappo said. And like any good earthquake, that had some serious aftershocks. It drove agencies into holding companies, such as Omnicom, which bought 180 small companies in one recent year. These conglomerates snapped up sales promotion agencies, direct marketing firms, creative boutiques, and more.
You’d think it would be a good thing to have all that firepower in one army. It would be if the groups actually talked to each other and created a united campaign for the client. But, Cappo said, “They have failed to integrate those things… It’s an orchestra of instruments playing their own tunes without a conductor.”
That has created what Weaver called a “strategy vacuum.” No one at a high level in any of these advertising colossi is creating a unified strategy that every bee in the hive can work from, so clients are conveying too many mixed messages. Why don’t clients create their own strategies? “They’re just as siloed as the agencies,” Cappo said.
Although the agencies might wake up in time to save themselves, he believes it’s more likely that the big management consulting firms will step into the strategy vacuum and pull things together. Accenture already is doing just that, and others are following. Cappo jokingly (maybe only half-jokingly) suggested that Omnicom should just buy Accenture.
He had plenty more to say on a variety of topics, including the death of the “big idea,” why he thinks TV needs an Osama bin Laden rather than a Boris Yeltsin (trust me, that’s really funny when you hear the context), what the Web is really best at (it’s not advertising), and what he means by the “new” consumer.
I’ll explain all that for you on Monday. If you can’t wait, go get the book. Otherwise, stay tuned.
“I don’t even know why we did it, in hindsight.”
That comment got a huge laugh for Micky Pant. Reebok’s outgoing chief marketing officer (he’s just announced that he’s going out on his own, so if I were his potential competition, I’d be very afraid—Pant is brilliant, charming, self-effacing, effective and should have no problem filling his plate quickly). He was talking about Terry Tate: Office Linebacker and pop-culture icon.
As you read yesterday in Dawn Anfuso’s interview with Pant, the whole Terry Tate thing was a racehorse that ran off on its own. Pant was just smart enough to know how to handle the reins after it left the starting gate.
As you know, the Tate films are only available on the Internet, but were introduced with one 60-second spot during last year’s Super Bowl. That spot has never aired again, although people tell Pant they’ve seen it dozens of times.
Tate is such an Internet success that Reebok was able to grab more than one million downloads of Tate’s new adventure with a sensitivity trainer in six days after the Super Bowl—but not by advertising during the game. They did it by pulling out of the Super Bowl entirely this year, running teasers on MTV and sending emails to registered fans (I’m one). And that’s on top of more than 21 million downloads from the first four films.
On Monday, I’ll share the four things Pant loves about the Internet, one he doesn’t, and what he believes is TV’s big problem.
And a few of my favorite quotes before I head back to the party, er, meetings…
“I’ve been around dead bodies…if C.S.I. had smell-a-vision , you’d never watch it again!”
--Joe Cappo on TV’s love for “tawdry” programming
“You don’t have to carry it around like a newspaper.”
--OPA study participant on why she prefers the Internet to print
“Advertising doesn’t persuade. Consumers persuade themselves and each other.”
Marketing consultant Neil Perry on lessons learned during 23 years at McDonalds
“In that 30 seconds of a desperate plea for attention, things get said and done that are simply ridiculous.”
--Micky Pant on the dearth of creativity in TV spots
See you on Monday!