The other guys blinked.
The mainstream advertising industry just did something that feels to me like a watershed moment in the evolution of marketing communication. They invented something called CIMM – the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement. There’s an article on it in Advertising Age.
The Coalition is based on two, incontrovertible facts: first, the current methods of media measurement aren’t innovative, and, second, they aren’t working. Well, it’s not surprising, because they were initially structured around a whole different set of circumstances – like a TV and radio audience you could get your arms around.
Says Jane Clarke, Managing Director of the Coalition: “The project may seem kind of wonky, but it is really about fixing the plumbing of the media and advertising industry. Currently, the plumbing is very inefficient and needs replacement. Every media company has their own system for tracking content. It makes cross-media measurement so much harder. What you have to do is cobble together and combine all of these different systems with different proprietary codes.” Sounds crazy? It is.
The backers of CIMM include client-side people like Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Pepsico and Unilever, as well as agency heavyweights like WPP, Interpublic and Publicis. They have sensibly decided that what is needed is a Universal Standard – one custom-plumbed to accommodate the new media universe. And, equally sensibly, someone has decided to bring Ernst & Young into the picture. They’re the guys who will do the due diligence that’s due doing. “Better tracking can benefit any number of parties,” they say.
Right on, Ernst & Young! It can benefit me. It can add some relevance – and gravitas – to the narrowcast marketing and communication work that many of us in the so-called non-traditional marketing biz have been doing for years in websites, promotions, blogs, events, business videos, and scrawls on bathroom walls.
Here’s to better plumbing!
Strategic Creativity – the two words seem to go together well, yes? Well, maybe not. From where I sit, it’s more often the case that these strange bedfellows don’t get along than do. The truth is that there are plenty of strategic people who aren’t creative; and there are plenty of creative people who aren’t strategic. It’s actually quite rare to get both in the same package.
Honesty is the best policy. However, there are some corporate cultures where honesty doesn’t quite make it into the policy manual. Layers and silos provide plenty of places to hide from the truth. The playing field is muddied with purport, proviso and the pomp of political protocol. No such niceties in the entrepreneur’s environment. Here, we participate in a brutally honest game of service offered and value delivered. We’re only as good as our last assignment, and the customer satisfaction we provided. No posing. No petit fours. Just ‘show me the money!’
The laws of natural selection demand that we adapt to changing circumstances or perish. Well, there has been a change of seismic proportions in the world of marketing/branding/communication. It’s not like one or two of the other animals in our environment grew longer legs or stickier tongues or whatever… no, the whole environment itself changed!! On Christmas Day 1990, Timothy Berners-Lee made the first Internet transmission. What appeared to be a minor footnote in history has gone on to precipitate a complete tergiversation (fancy word for ‘upside-downing’) of the status quo – especially the communication(s) environment. That which was then – conventional media (TV/Print/Radio) and conventional methods (“We make this product. Buy it!”) – has now been superseded by a whole new way of communicating. In fact, it’s a whole new way of thinking that’s now significantly influenced by considerations of social conscience rather than just by the profit motive.
I believe in technology, because it’s another word for ‘tools’. I believe in tools, because I’m a primate. D’oh!
Calling all mavens.
The web is a wonderful thing,
We’ve all read the stats about the generation situation. Winning the birthdate lottery has always been (and likely always will be) the rightful inheritance of the Boomers (1946 – 1962), who are now, of course, the Zoomers.