You can't build the digital industry of the future if you are still holding on to the obsolete relics of its past. Upstream Group's Doug Weaver outlines the key notions marketers need to abandon in order to build a more sustainable and nimble tomorrow.

One of the best things about the dawn of the internet era was that it was a chance for marketers to get a fresh start -- a chance to build a new world of possibilities that weren't based on the old network of media channels, on old business practices and ideas, or on old concepts of reaching out to consumers.

From a vantage point of these ideals, the world was introduced to targeted ads delivered to those who are really interested in the products the ads describe. Content shifted from happy-talking scripted testimonials to more engaging and relevant connections between brands and fans, built around positive brand attributions and perceptions, rather than a hard sell. The concept of messaging itself also shifted from a means to push brand-focused and delivered ideas to a two-way conversation in which consumers could not only initiate an interaction but also create their own content to promote -- or criticize -- brands and products on their own terms.

But somewhere, even in this dynamic and technologically enabled new reality, the industry is reverting to its old patterns, falling back into reliance on established techniques and tactics that have become outdated and inefficient. And in a presentation at the iMedia Agency Summit in Austin, Texas, it was Upstream Group's CEO Doug Weaver who sounded the alarm, urging marketers to break free from strategic addiction so that digital marketing can continue to rise to a position of respect, value, and success.

Borrowing the theme of author Matt Miller's "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Revolutionary Thinking for a New Age of Prosperity," Weaver outlined a series of what he calls "dead internet ideas" that are inhibiting the growth the industry needs to survive and thrive -- particularly in a post-recession economy.

As an old-school industry innovator, Weaver brings a sense of distance, perspective, and history to his argument. Having worked as part of the group that created the first online banner ad, Weaver recalled his early experiences with the brave new world of digital marketing. "Aspirations were huge. The digital revolution was going to whip right over us," he said. The funny thing is that all the weird predictions of the time ended up coming true. "The future conformed to and exceeded the predictions."

Now that we are in the thick of the digital revolution, Weaver thinks that it's the industry's aspirations today that will continue to define it, and its potential. "If we ask for big things, we will achieve them; but if we settle for incrementalism, that's all we will get," Weaver reasons.

Though Weaver contends that he is optimistic about the hard trend of marketing succeeding, he was less optimistic about the survival of the advertising agency. "I'm not so sure that the agency model can be repaired. I think the system is broken. It doesn't need someone to make it better; it needs someone who will rethink it and build it from the bottom up," he says.

Blaming the industry's stagnant state on its reliance on current dogma and sacred cows, Weaver identified 12 concepts and focal points that we need to retire in order to make room for their replacements:
 
1. A web built on the notion of pages. Weaver reminded attendees that the internet started out as a web of people, connected. Then corporations barged in, and focused on building big, gaudy websites to gain attention. But when social media came along, the internet reverted to a web of people, again built on what people have done and wanted to share, rather than on what they looked at. However, current trends are heading toward treating social media as yet another page of media to be used as the dominant tube to filter ideas through.

2. Moving people around the web. In 2010, marketers can speak directly to consumers through an ad unit, and then measure how many of them were engaged. Yet, as Weaver points out, we still focus our efforts on getting that consumer to go somewhere else -- to a web page, mobile site, social network, etc. "We say [the consumer is] in charge, but we still make him come to our house," Weaver says.

3. Optimizing click rates. Weaver says our strip-mining tactics that lionize the click waste time and talent, and pull agencies away from their real mission of strategy and creativity. They also prevent us from exploring the true value of the impression itself. "It's like watching Secretariat pull a milk wagon," Weaver says.

4. Microsites. Weaver described the microsite as the digital cousin to the advertorial. This once served a purpose, but he rationed that they now fundamentally burn credibility and inventory to get people to go where they don't want to go. He recommends that marketers take what they would have done in a microsite, and put it in a distributable ad unit that can go where the audience is going.

5. Worshipping at the altar of advertising. To the marketer, advertising is not the sexy, stylish realm of the Don Draper type anymore. "It's not sexy -- it's a cost to be managed down." Weaver asks why we give the important job marketers do a limiting term like "advertising," let alone "digital advertising." He also urged agencies to consider themselves "marketing services organizations," and embrace the holistic thinking this implies.

6. The campaign. Marketers say they are focused on managing the consumer relationship and are embracing a listening culture, now that they have the tools to talk with the customer -- not just at them. But Weaver asserts that campaign thinking has no place in that message, offering a different vision of marketing execution: "Elevate the idea that there's a fundamental relationship between consumer and brand, and then act accordingly. Listen to the open media channel that social enables. These will replace the concrete thinking."
 
7. Blind RFPs. These are the ones that the sales organization doesn't know is coming, and that asks for late-stage pricing and ideation. Weaver contends that marketers exist to create true value, and that they can't do that until we shut down the "silly beauty contest" that the RFP has become. His solution here is that clients need to invite shorter lists of agencies to pitch, and provide them with a more-focused project scope in order to waste less time and energy and get better results. "Let's all put ideation where it belongs -- centered on a business issue we can both address together," he says.

8. The "right" to target. Weaver senses a creeping culture of entitlement when it comes to data. "The average consumer would be terrified to hear how we talk about their data and targeting them," he says, and suggests that we address the emerging regulatory debates by focusing on what the consumer will get in return for the personal information they share. Otherwise, if consumers want it to go away, it will -- as with the National Do Not Call Registry.

9. Agency as velvet rope. As a practical matter, the accelerated pace of technological evolution means it's impossible for creativity to flow through an agency channel that is under decreased demand and increased financial challenge. We need to open ourselves up to collaboration and partnership, rather than building walls of proprietorship.

10. Advertising and editorial separation. As every program on television is now incorporating product placement, and as the media line continues to blur, the idea that advertising and editorial should be considered as church and state is passé. Weaver feels that we still have one screen -- one experience that must morph together. "The artist formerly known as the banner will increasingly be used as a distribution system where advertising and editorial will be working together," he says.

11. The silver bullet. Weaver contends that although the iPad is a neat new device, it's certainly not going to be the last device ever created. It's a fashionable trend that will eventually be joined by more "silver bullets." "Nothing changes the game by itself, but everything alters the chemistry of what we do," he says.

12. Getting it all figured out. Weaver emphasized that it is time to accept that the digital age is a permanently evolving environment. It will never stop changing and, therefore, we will never end our quest to find a better way to work with the tools and technologies we have, or to build new ones.

Weaver reminded Summit attendees that, like it or not, we live in a world of controlled chaos, and that ideas held beyond their expiration dates block the realization of what we can do to reinvent digital marketing. "All our reasons for not doing away with these ideas are about fear and lack of control," Weaver says. "But we can't imagine the future until we unload those ideas holding us in the past."

Jodi Harris is senior editor at iMedia Connection.

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