Never before has a willingness to comprehend technology--to understand its implications--been so important for everyone working inside advertising. As Advertising Week 2008 parades 1960s ad man character Don Draper onstage, look back: No one other than, perhaps, a producer had to hold technical experience in order to make an ad "happen." All that writers, art directors or account managers were required to have were ideas, and iron stomachs. No more. Today, as Adweek's Brian Morrissey notes, "technology companies and agencies will need to get on the same page." The current problem facing Silicon Valley, as Morrissey puts it, is in creating...
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Here is a purely defensive innovation to protect revenue streams. Google understands that innovation is not always about growth, and is applying one of the lessons of the PC age -- if don't continue to innovate, you get left behind by the times. Isn't that right Control Data, Cray, and IBM?
I gave a presentation this past Monday to students at the Miami Ad School (Minneapolis outpost). The subject was, "What's the future of advertising?" I rephrased that to "What is advertising?" because honestly, can it be neatly defined any more? I think not.Advertising could just as easily be defined as triggering relevant information and functionality under an appropriate context, as pushing images and copy out willy-nilly. We're back in the wild west, we're mutating. And as I told the students, that's a good thing, since this evolution carries with it expanded opportunities and inventive risk. I'm bullish about the ad industry's...
Just got off the phone with an advertising headhunter who told me the advice I gave her two years ago, (start repping interactive people,) is a wave now hitting her beach. Agencies are furiously ramping up only to discover they don't have the management vision in place to deploy the talent they are so rapidly hiring. The top echelon managers made their bones in traditional advertising which focuses on building messages, and have no idea how to re-organize themselves around the creation of consumer solutions. It's so much more painful then they realize. It's not something you can bolt on...
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