Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Verizon CMO Stratton talks tough to agencies

Oneangrycustomer relays the details of Verizon Wireless CMO John Stratton’s take on what awaits ad agencies in the years to come. Sounds like someone’s been taking a ride on the Cluetrain (or listening to Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi). Some highlights of Stratton’s remarks:

“What you’ve been selling for the last 50 years no longer works.”

“Before they figure out where to put their money, your marketer clients will hire and fire agency after agency, seeking someone, anyone, who can tell them where they might go next.”

“But your clients actually need more than just an audience. One of the consequences of the evolution of our media-delivery systems over the last 10 years is that the audience you do ultimately find is much less receptive to the message you’re trying to send. They are absolutely armed and ready to get to the content they want while avoiding the message you are trying to implant within it.”

“They need much more than an audience. They need an audience that cares about what they have to say. They need their message to be relevant to the audience they are saying it to.”

It is tempting to wonder how it could take so long for such educated and experienced people to understand this. But it is refreshing and heartening to hear very blunt talk along these lines from someone in Stratton’s position.

The fact is that individual companies have been figuring this out on their own, without much guidance from industry bigwigs or major research projects, for years now. It is, after all, pretty straightforward to understand. The question for businesses everywhere is whether or not they are going to wait on the industry bigwigs and major research projects to help them figure out how it all applies to them. If the answer is no, keep visiting this blog or get in touch.

Monday, February 13, 2006

A message to Madison Avenue

A letter to the editor in the New York Times:

We have a message for the movers and shakers of Madison Avenue: “Tone down the relentless yammering; you’re talking too loud for us to listen.”

As quoted in Alex Wipperfurth’s Brand Hijack.

The demise of attention-jacking

Humorist Dave Barry isn’t joking when he says that:

We can no longer compel people to pay attention. We used to be able to say, there’s this really important story in Poland. You should read this. Now people say, ‘I just look up what I’m interested in on the Internet.’

Barry is talking about newspapers, but this is another point that applies across all attempts to hijack attention.

Link via oneangrycustomer ("Chronicling everyday brand experiences” and well worth checking out on a regular basis.).

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Passivity ≠ interactivity

Here’s a spot-on observation from Jeff Jarvis, in a post entitled Interaction vs. reaction: But enough about you…:

The problem with media’s definition of interactivity is that’s all about controlled reaction to media’s agenda: Come talk about our stuff. It is designed like a children’s museum, with buttons you can push to keep you busy and happy. That may not be the intent, but it is the result and message of forums and chats and blogs that are about what the newspaper publishes. And it misses the point.

This applies, of course, not only to media. The same could be said for about 99% of the business and advertising world’s definition of interactivity. It tends to go something like this…

"Passivity ≠ interactivity" continued...

Blogs are business

Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters company, has a blogging CEO, Clare Hart. Euan Semple points to Hart’s latest post, which should ring some bells for those in business:

Factiva prepared a Business Terms index for The Financial Times Deutschland throughout 2005. We saw the term “blog” rise from 9th out of the 45 words we were tracking in January across the German media, and move to number 1 by the end of 2005. As the article points out, the term “blogs” was the most widely mentioned business term in December above terms like Risk Management, Crisis Management, Corporate Governance, Turnaround, ERP and Wikipedia.

This was the German press.  When applying the Business Terms Index across all of Factiva’s sources, the term “blog” moved from number 4 in January to number 1 in December 2005.

Adriana Cronin-Lukas, who is on our advisory board and whose Big Blog Company is an EA-approved supplier of blog consulting services, is also a risk management expert. If you suspect that gives her an edge when it comes to teaching her clients how to eliminate or reduce the risks associated with blogging, you’d be correct.