Conscious & Connected

Ten years ago, I was employed by what George Parker calls a BDHC. That year the company’s annual strategy meeting convened in Silicon Valley. We met at the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, and stayed at the Rosewood, Sand Hill. From there we were bussed to the oracles of digital advertising, the Facebook and Google duopoly.

I guessed we brought 3,000 years of experience in the strategy group. I mentally totted up the billions of client budgets for which we were responsible. None of this mattered: that week we were the pupils. We were there to be taught the future of advertising, and to entrust these client budgets to the digital oracles and their algorithms.

I was burning the candle at both ends that week: late nights and early mornings working with a team mostly 8-11 hours ahead. We were proposing a pivot in response to a European-based client’s declining sales. I recall my disorientation: lack of sleep, long conversations (at the bar), but mostly confusion as to the future of our business.

Why was the digital future better? Would it create value for our clients? ?How would it make us a better agency for our clients if the duopoly controlled the budgets and data?

We know how that future played out. The shift to a digital performance model caused devastating damage to societies and democracies, not only in the US but everywhere in the world. It resulted in the destruction of brand value I have documented elsewhere.

This week we learned something new in the latest (surely not the last) revelations.?Facebook and Google are truly a duopoly. Anti-trust and monopoly law has been defanged for a long time in America.?Yet if the duopoly did not break the law they certainly colluded and mis-informed advertisers and agencies about their operations, algorithms, and the data they controlled behind their walled gardens.

I was responsible for strategy and global business for a small unit within my BDHC. Later that year I articulated our strategy as “A World Without Walls”.

Advertising funds the duopoly. BDHC’s still control a huge proportion of these funds.??Thinking back 10 years, were we not conscious of what was likely to happen?

Are we conscious now?

At this time of year, the industry gets together. Last week it was Advertising Week in New York and the virtual Festival of Marketing led from London. ?I looked for a response from the industry to revelations about the duopoly. ?As critics like the AdContrarian point out, there has been no meaningful response from any of the leading industry organizations. We do not need to ask why: their funding depends on the duopoly.

It’s easy to criticize. I understand how the incentives fueled the system. I want to contribute to honest appraisals of what happened, and changed to the system, metrics and incentives, and work with people on actionable proposals for a different future.

I was refreshed to listen to a podcast on Conscious Media Investment from WARC, led by the UK-based Conscious Advertising Network, with a balanced panel that included an agency leader and the founder of a non-profit working against disinformation.

The well-moderated discussion revealed that at least some in the industry are conscious and take responsibility.?I heard a clear acknowledgement of what went wrong..

???????Publishers have been short-changed as content exploded and was commoditized

???????Advertisers cared less about who audiences were but whether they would transact

???????Messaging reinforced existing behaviors and beliefs, favoring established brands

???????The platforms of the duopoly and adtech were subverted by propagandists

I heard the beginnings of an action plan as to how advertisers can change. I am with James Williams, author of Stand out of Our Light in insisting the advertising industry has to change before reform can begin at the societal level. In this panel I heard:

???????Brand safety and integrity solutions are a start, but not an answer

???????We need more nuanced evaluation of content and how it matches to audiences

???????We need media measurement for long-term value

???????Brand value can ?align to evolving consumer values

I am encouraged by the recognition that we need to revive the long-term modeling of marketing and advertising effectiveness. The old form of Media Mix Modeling (MMM) was largely discarded for Multi-touch Attribution (MTA). Now with new, scalable emotional data sources and modeling methodologies we can address short and long-term effectiveness and integrate metrics of consumer value alignment and well-being.

Mostly, I heard that some in the industry are conscious of our responsibility to change.

Please listen.

Stewart Pearson

Stewart has lived, worked, and traveled in the UK, Europe, Asia, and New York and now lives in Seattle. He has four decades of experience in marketing and advertising focused on building client brands directly.?He was Global Chief Client Officer and Vice-Chairman of Wunderman, at WPP. David Ogilvy once sent him a critical telex from India and Lester Wunderman told him stories of Picasso from the village of Mougins in France.

Stewart was back at the Rosewood Sand Hill again shortly when his equestrian daughter was competing in Palo Alto. These days were shorter, and the conversations better.

Please contact Stewart at?[email protected], at?LinkedIn?and Twitter.