Media agencies get it… almost

Traditionally digital agencies, because their output is largely creative, have been forced into subservience to Advertising agencies.

We’ve moaned and groaned and generally got upset that we’re misunderstood and downtrodden. Online “amplification” of above-the-line thinking is like working with a straight-jacket on. You have to take an idea made for two-dimensional TV and make it work in a 3D environment.

However, over the last few years as digital agencies have started to be taken more seriously there also seems to have been a shift in the power balance between traditional advertising agencies and media agencies.

Increasingly it is the media agencies with their research and reams of data that have the ear of the advertisers. The media schedule is everything. The creative seems to follow.

So what’s my issue? Well, this scenario may sound constricting for advertising agencies but it is even more so for digital agencies.

There are still too many brands who don’t question the fact that their media agency suggests a whole ream of paid-for digital media (on which they make their commission) rather than looking at the options.

When your digital brief includes banner ad formats it starts to get worrying.

We spend a lot of time coming up against this thinking and challenging it with thoughts around providing catalysts for conversation amongst communities by providing entertainment, utility and relevance. And that often leads to creative ideas that require more from seeding and blog marketing than from paid media.

So with all this whirling around my tiny head I was quite delighted when I watched this presentation on Slide Share from John Willshire at PHD.

There’s some really sound thinking, nothing revolutionary, Yochai Benkler, Clay Shirky and others have all had their influence. I love most of what he says, and it’s so refreshing to hear this coming from a media agency.

But for me, about half of the way through it all starts to fall apart, not completely, but the cracks start to appear. The way the Cadbury’s eyebrow campaign is used as an example seems to me to be about reversing good old fashioned media spend into a campaign.

The approach appears to be that the thought is still led by TV. The media agency says TV is the main channel, the traditional advertising agencies go to work on a 30 second feature film and then us digital folk are asked to think about that two dimensional idea and make it work on the interweb… again.

So for the Cadbury’s eyebrows ad you get ideas like the ability to make your own mug on Photobox with your photo and make your eyebrows bigger. Really.

Relevant? No.

Useful? Not really.

Entertaining? Answer that one yourself.

Will that aspect of the campaign deliver good ROI? I’d be amazed.

Clearly this is an incredibly successful campaign in many ways. But does starting any campaign development with the thought that TV will play the central role really take advantage of the (and I quote John Willshire here) revolution that the Internet has delivered?

No.

Sometimes the “developed for TV” Creative idea will lend itself beautifully to digital environments and more importantly online communities. But more often than not we’ll end up with round pegs and square holes.

All a twitter

Over the last month or so I’ve finally given in to Twitter. I’d written it off 18 months ago because I saw it as being home to wannabe digital evangelists and above the line advertising planners who wanted to show they ‘got’ digital. And there’s still plenty there, along with other egos requiring an audience, but now Twitter appears to be reaching a tipping point.

As a digital marketeer Twitter has become another potential channel to engage audiences through. It’s all very exciting jumping on each and every digital band wagon as it appears over the horizon but the reality in my role is that we need these channels to reach a critical mass before we can talk honestly to clients about how they might gain any value through their use.

Twitter has now got the ability to offer that value, not necessarily just through the people you can reach directly (while inside the M25 it may seem massive, the numbers are still fairly small in reality) but in the buzz and PR that can also be gained through clever use of the channel.

The moment @stephenfry and @wossy discussed their use of Twitter on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross the writing was on the wall. Follow Mr Fry and you’ll see comments about how all journalists want to talk to him about is Twitter. Use it in a clever or unusual way and there’s still PR mileage to be had.

So, from a professional point of view Twitter now makes sense. But what has surprised my slightly cynical self is how it has changed the way I think and behave on a personal level.

As you can see from the huge gap between this post and my last, blogging had disappeared from my agenda for some time. Now though I’m finding myself reinvigorated for two reasons. Firstly, thanks to following some interesting people who I don’t get to see or often enough or spend enough time with Twitter is allowing me to be exposed to more interesting trends and technologies more quickly than ever before. Secondly those 140 characters have got me back into sharing my own thoughts which is a catalysts for posts like this.

Last time I stopped blogging it was simply because I ran out of time. The last post I wrote was shortly before DC Interact became a part of Altogether, enough said! Time is still an incredibly precious commodity, but with Twitter I can maintain a thread of thoughts while occasionally diving in to longer blog posts. Perfect, and possibly why Twitter uptake is fastest with 30-40 year olds.