Please pitch me stuff to make advertising better.

Over the years I’ve met a lot of people with great ideas, technology & approaches and they’ve always wanted a way to get access to Clients, now I sit near billions of investment at Havas Media, perhaps I can now help.

It’s hard not to notice that the world is changing fast & that the companies that thrive have built or rebuilt themselves for the modern age.

If Advertising was to rebuild itself for today it would look entirely different; but so far despite all the chatter virtually every aspect of advertising has changed remarkably little in 100 years.

- The way we work is still around channels, not people.

- The ad units we make are still repurposed print ads from the 1700’s and TV ads from the 1950’s, even content marketing is a tactic from the late 19th century we’ve found again.

- We still split into media agencies, creative agencies and digital agencies, despite the word digital having no meaning, every agency being creative and media fast becoming unbundled from the notion of a paid space.

I’ve joined Havas in a new role to help reimagine and make happen what advertising should become. They’ve grasped more quickly than most that the big changes happen when you are next to data, media partners and budgets. They also understand the importance of bringing creative and media together to drive real change, so I’m here with a platform, investment, time and scope to do new things.

So this is request to pitch me. Whether you’re a media owner, a data provider, an ad tech company, a digital agency, a content maker or any other company or individual who can work with me to do something new and profound, give me a shout.

Here are just some of the things I wonder.

1. Why is advertising focussed around channels not people? Anything that’s shaping advertising and retail experiences around people is going to make brands, retailers, agencies and above all else, people happier.
2. Shouldn’t advertising be more empathetic, if you’ve a technology that can help make things better for people and solve problems people have, I’m particularly keen.
3. The best advertising is a better experience, if you know how to make the way that retail or brand experiences feel, give me a shout.
4. Shouldn't advertising be more dynamic and personal, from data to targeting, if you can make ads feel more relevant, I want to hear from you.
5. What are the next advertising experiences and surfaces? Why doesn’t Google Maps become a new advertising media? Shouldn’t wearables offer us something more than smaller ad units? Why are connected cars not bringing us special offers? What does an Advert using API’s mean? How does real time data bring about changes in targeting and creative?
6. What parts of advertising have we never challenged and make no sense? Pre-Roll ads are 30 seconds long because TV ads were 30 seconds long. Calls to action are based on a pre-digital mindset. Programmatic undid the convention that we targeted channels and moved to audiences, what other conventions can we undo.
7. The purchase funnel never made total sense but it was the best we had and it worked, it doesn’t any more. Now ads online can link directly to purchase, now ads in print can take us to shopping sites via image recognition, what other technologies should we adopt?
8. Privacy will be the biggest issue of the next 5 years in advertising, what if we stopped focussing on pretending we don’t know much and instead reward people for sharing data and invite them in. When privacy is traded for value, everything changes.
9. If programmatic for the desktop internet was about buying audiences, programmatic for mobile layers in location, movement and others things, if we though of programmatic on mobile as buying contexts and moments, how would advertising differ?

If any of these sound interesting to you, if you’ve something to add or a technology to present, give me a shout.

Thanks
Tom