Where Will The Dice Land?
Problems are great.
Nothing quite like showing off your bravery, giving things the old college try, going pedal to the floor towards a wall because you know you’ll figure out how to scale the wall by the time you reach it.
If you’re in the business of taking on problems, well, you’re in a good business. There are no shortages of problems out there — specifically for those of us working in advertising, media, and communications.
There’s the Cambridge Analytica problem.
Then there’s the fact holding companies seem to have lost their poster boy and their entire model and what it offers is in question.
Accenture also happened to win a lion. And they’re getting into programmatic.
Some even say disruption is over.
Others say in order for brands to be successful they need to focus more on purchase and post-purchase moments rather than pre-purchase where the ad and media dollars tend to be focused.
And turns out 86% of CMOs are taking care of their marketing strategy in-house? Look:
These problems are why we’ve seen so many articles over the past bit about where agencies need to go, how change needs to be embraced and used as inspiration, and why there’s never been a more important moment for strategy than right now.
I want to point out that I called this at the start of the year:
The Marketing Trend to Watch for in 2018: The Agency
But enough about me. Let’s get back to all of us: people that work at agencies and give a damn and are facing the problems head on. What might be next? Will it be the solution?
The first problem I posed (reminder: Cambridge Analytica) is not a new one. Regular people — those rare birds that on the surface of their everyday could care less about a font or purpose or promise or strategic rigour— have been having their data looked at, analyzed, and used for awhile. And when I say “awhile” I’m not referring to just the 21st century.
Pop over to Google and type in “research definition” and the first thing you get is this:
“the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.”
Data is the “material” and “sources” in the above definition. Our industry has had materials and sources for a long time — or, to put it another way, we’ve always had access to data. Paul Feldwick does an amazing job of highlighting and explaining this in his book, The Anatomy of Humbug.
In describing the industry during the 1950s Feldwick states:
“the more solidly grounded theories of the motivation researchers — the importance of subconscious motivations, of associations, of emotions, of visual symbolism, etc. — had immense relevance for advertising.”
How could they not? Do we not see these details incorporated into Powerpoints today? Won’t we tomorrow?
Research into what motivates people to do what they do was a big deal in the 1950s. As Feldwick wrote, “Top researchers worked for big agencies… It took a certain bravery to publicly argue against research.” But there was a crowd that argued against it. And we’ll get to them in a moment.
First I want to bring up The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard.
Published in 1957, Feldwick explains that:
“(Packard’s) thesis was that ‘techniques of mass persuasion through the subconscious’ posed a deep threat to democracy and freedom… Packard claimed that advertising was developing sinister scientific techniques to manipulate beliefs and behaviour without people even being aware of it, culminating in the prospect that these techniques could be used in the political arena as well as in commercial selling.”
Think that thesis would resonate today? And how might we combat it?
History does provide useful patterns for us to learn from. So let’s continue using Feldwick’s analysis. Doing so brings us back to that crowd I mentioned above that argued against research. I’ll cede the floor to Feldwick’s words:
“argue against (research) is just what one influential group did — the agencies that were soon to be identified with the ‘creative revolution’ in one important narrative of advertising history. The pioneer of this movement was Bill Bernbach.”
You know all those wonderful quotes from Bernbach that look great on slides and sound great when said with a dash of arrogance? They must have sounded even better when the idea of tapping into people’s subconscious motivations was being framed as taboo.
So might things like Cambridge Analytica become the spark that ignites the next creative revolution? Feels like there’s plenty of people that could get behind that.
Might those people cause a shift in how holding companies operate? Or might those people scatter and create their own shops?
Revolutions can sweep people up into their wake and carry them off. So might a new creative revolution — fueled with enough jazzed up quotes — attract the likes of a Marc Pritchard and make him stop practicing his ability to deliver one liners or at least start delivering them about something else?
If this all happened, would we care as much as we do right now about consultants?
And if creativity’s pedestal goes higher, will we even ideate two agile fucks about disruption?
The intriguing part about the idea of a new Creative Revolution is what history continues telling us if we look passed what Bernbach spearheaded.
The J. Walter Thompson Planning Guide was published in 1974. One could argue this marked the birth of account planning, brand planning, brand strategy, communications design, whatever the hell you want to call it.
So while some people are telling brands they need to think more about purchase and post-purchase moments versus pre-purchase do those moments not still need an empathetic understanding of the people that are engaging in them? And isn’t that sort of understanding what planning provides?
And if this means another big moment for planning could be on the horizon couldn’t that also mean that planners and the agencies they work for start increasing their presence and impact on a brand’s overall marketing strategy?
At this point, all of our problems would be solved, right? All we would need to do is sit back and wait for the future to become the present.
But who wants to wait for that to happen? Doubt if there’s many.
But perhaps it’s already happening? That feels more likely.
Past industry evolutions and their solutions to the problems of the day are inspiring. They’re worth remembering as we tackle what’s in front of us today: a variety of potential solutions.
Where might we land among the variety?
There is no clear cut answer. There are just possibilities — things we need to see for ourselves in order to decide if they fit or not.
We live and work in interesting times.