Marketing and Advertising are finally emerging from the Classical era and into the birth of Jazz. Away from the rigid hierarchy of the Classical (“command and control”) era emphasizing perfection and into a no less professional scene providing greater flexibility and leaner accountability. The story (the tune) still sits at the center. Success is still measured in applause. But who performs and how they perform has changed dramatically.
Problems are obvious. With problems, we nearly always assume the premise. We assume the system the problem lives within. And in doing so, we nearly always accept the boundaries of that system and all its “rules.” Few of us are celebrated for merely solving problems. Opportunities are different. Opportunities create value in ways solving problems rarely does and value is nearly always celebrated.
Last Friday the Hello Viking team immersed ourselves in a 14-hour Google Adwords training session. Search history. Platforms. Tools. Keyword research practice. Ad-writing. Negative filtering. The works. We had 10 people sitting around the table—no one was excused. The discussion was thorough, and fascinating. The art of running Adwords is in the details. It rewards the mind of a math wonk mixed with a copywriter mixed with a programmer mixed with a statistician.
Last night I had the opportunity to speak on a panel with Meghan Wilker and Nancy Lyons from Geek Girls Guide and Nathan Almquist from Webknowledgy at Brookfield Properties’ Boutique Retail Roundtable. It was refreshing to hear consistent responses from our panel—the industry seems to be coalescing around key elements.
A friend who doesn’t work in advertising came to visit the agency today. She asked me to explain what advertising was all about in 2009. I said advertising used to be created from words and images. But then we added technology.
Conversation is not the new advertising. Being a conduit for conversation is the new advertising. If advertising will succeed in the age of increasing consumer voice, it has to stop trying to talk to people, and start getting people to talk amongst themselves.
Seth Godin suggests, “As long as your site is about something else and the ads are a distraction, you’ll see CPM rates drop.” I couldn’t agree more. The challenge, I think, is in rejecting publishing-as-usual and actively seeking greater collaboration to provide advertising ideas, placements and functionality that treat viewers as royalty.
Tomorrow I’ll be speaking along with Greg Swan from Weber Shandwick on “The Brand of You in the Digital Age” for an event hosted by the Minnesota chapter of the American Marketing Association and co-sponsored by MIMA.
One of the benefits of new office space is more space. More tables. More chairs. More rooms with doors so you don’t totally distract the rest of the team. More opportunity for collaboration. So we’ve been hosting and attending a lot of collective conversation since moving in. And it’s been inspiring.
This is one of those things that excites me about the Twin Cities marketing, advertising and technology communities. We show up. We represent. For everything. On Friday I’m one of two speakers for Social Media Breakfast event #16. I’ll be talking about the impact of social media on the advertising and marketing industry. (There’s a podcast preview within this post.)
When we founded Hello Viking, one of our motivations was a reaction (even a rebellion) against agency structures, systems and process we’d encountered in previous jobs over the past 15+ years. Something in those organizations felt broken, out-of-date, and a shackle on better ideas. Thanks to a tweet from David Armano, I found myself reading, then re-reading and bookmarking an article written by veteran advertising account executive Mike Carlton. His premise: “The bureaucratic organizational model thrived during the 20th Century. But is it the right model for advertising agencies in the 21st Century?
We are now located at 1005 W. Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55405. Second floor. Just off the corner of Hennepin Ave. Directly above Sebastian Joe’s ice cream cafe—a venue many consider to be the best ice cream in the Twin Cities.
