The case for a new advertising model

Recently a senior agency executive who shall remain nameless related an anecdote about working with a client who was very proud of a creative asset his team of agencies developed and, in his natural desire to leverage it as much as possible, asked his media agency to place it on Snapchat. The agency executive simply said: “Snapchat?”

The fact is that Snapchat prefers (demands) content that was specifically created for its platform and even their 3V format, basically a 7-second pre-roll ad, needs to be created for a full-screen vertical video experience that differs in format (not to mention tone) from most video creative originally intended for TV, or even digital pre-roll.

When you think about it, this is true of most major social platforms, including the biggest of them all, Facebook (see chart below).

?It is easy to place blame on marketers, but the reality is that this "creative-centric" model has been the backbone of the entire media and advertising industries for the last 50 or 60 years.

In the prevailing model, clients invest months and hundreds of thousands of dollars on a few very well produced creative assets (i.e. TV spots, magazine print ads) and then spend millions getting those few assets in front of the "right" audience with a certain reach and frequency model.

This model requires high upfront costs and concentrates the creative and legal complexity up front, led by one or a few select creative agencies and consultants. It also requires that these standard creative assets fit in many places. Hundreds of TV channels can run them across the country, even the world, and to take it even further many digital properties can run as pre-roll too.

Lastly, the goal of this creative is solely to "tell the brand story" or "create an emotional connection" with the brand.

While this paradigm worked beautifully for 50 or 60 years, today marketers are addressing a rapidly shrinking audience of linear TV viewers or digital pre-roll "accepters" (whoever those people are!).

?If attention is rapidly shifting to these platforms, then the traditional “creative-centric” model needs to evolve in order for brands to remain relevant for a new generation of consumers.

A new model

So, let’s talk about a new model. One that works in a more fragmented environment and within several platforms, each with their own formats and tone. This new paradigm must "earn" consumer attention and provide them with more control than ever.

In order to succeed in this environment, we need to move to a content-centric model. This requires that marketers have many, many more assets ("content"), each specific to the platform of intended consumption.

Given the volume of assets needed, this approach requires one of two strategies in order to be successful:

• Engage consumers to create large volumes of content for your brand (#PSL anyone?), and/or;
• Partner with content creators that have the capability to create AND distribute content successfully and at scale, on each of these platforms.

This is truly a co-creation model that demands agility to go from conceptualization to market in a matter of days, not months. Especially if a brand is looking to capitalize on trends and seasonality. It also requires a certain willingness to surrender some degree of control.

Lastly, and maybe more importantly, the goal of the content must go beyond telling the brand story or creating an emotional connection with a brand. Content must add real value to the audience in order to succeed in this new era. We are in a truly an opt-in marketing era. These new audiences will only accept the brand message embedded in the content if the latter adds some value to them.

All of this is increasingly important because most of the time and attention is migrating rapidly to social platforms and in this new world the only way to reach and truly engage potential customers is by delivering great content that adds value to their daily lives.

Not everyone is ready for this new paradigm, but it is coming. No matter how much the industry complains about it, consumers are relentlessly shifting their attention and for brands to grow they will have to embrace a new model.