Where Marketing Went Wrong.

We talk a lot about Media fragmentation in the industry, where we really went wrong was agency fragmentation, we aligned ourselves by media channels, which not only added complexity, but in the digital age now mean nothing. How do you structure for print, press, TV, digital, mobile when we're watching TV on iPads, listening to the radio on our phones and reading the newspaper on Desktops.

Here’s how to focus on what matters, working around people.

Until around 1995 advertising and marketing was quite simple, even with media agencies spun off in the 1970’s and the advent of planning in the 1960’s, we had a simple structure that made total sense.

Everyone knew what they were doing, easy management, no duplication, expect maybe a touch around PR, Events and Retail.

Around 1980, a medium sized brand, in one market, may operate as follows.

When the internet arrived we had two new incremental needs that nobody else could do. Not wanting to change or learn or quite frankly mix with these people, we made a fundamental mistake, we decided to create a precedent of adding new VERTICALS.

Thus around 2005 the marketing landscape looked like this, it was tidy and worked well. Digital was a "thing".

But we'd created a mental model where:

• Everything new was to be assigned a new vertical.
• Everything that involved specialist knowledge, could be allowed to brake out as a new silo.

So as of 2015, a medium sized client, in ONE market, is now typically arranged like this.

I'm not sure about you, but this seems:

• Impossible to manage.
• Entirely wasteful
• To bare no relation to people.
• To not have any clear meaning.

Can you imagine what this looks like for a larger company who may have several brands? operate in different markets? or who may use more specialist agencies like youth marketing,innovation agencies, create technology companies, incubators.

What is clear is that this system means nothing.

In fact most of our terms mean nothing.

Media doesn't mean media any more, because most media isn't paid for. Who looks after this non media, media?

Digital isn't a thing, everything is digital.

Organic social doesn't exist any more, all social is paid for, that makes it advertising not social?

Everything we make it content, when does it become content marketing?

We are set up for failure as an industry.

If we were to create the system again we should have added new techniques as HORIZONTALS, not VERTICALS.

Mobile becomes a place for PR, CRM and Advertising to work, it cuts across.
So does social, events, even new areas like Innovation.

The words digital and content are banned from our vocab, for digital to mean something there would need to be non digital advertising, this doesn't exist. Same with content. Everything we make is content.

The system becomes MUCH clearer, much more manageable.

Having experts who understand different channels allows better ideas and easier development campaigns.

( please note this is a personal suggestion, nothing to do with any beliefs of my employers)

1) Solution ONE
Advertising as a Matrix.

2) Solution two.
Time based advertising. ( Again, a personal thought for discussion)

The matrix above is far better than the current silos but it's still complex, and it's not arranged by around customers.

It also doesn't take into account the problem of urgency. As marketing gets more complex more decisions need to be made each day. From real time marketing to "big data" to performance marketing, the needs of every minute are vast, our focal point becomes shorter.

At the same time the vast changes that have destroyed RadioShack, Blockbusters, Taxis, Nokia, Kodak, Sony and have been navigated by Apple, Facebook, Tesla, Uber and many others, are because they were patient and future thinking.

So how do we ensure that the urgent is managed as well as the long term?

Here I take EVERYTHING the entire potential universe of branding and arrange into three buckets.

Visionary agencies: Long term investments to build BUSINESS
Focus: 2 years out PLUS
Would be a group of innovators, technologists, futurologists and business strategists; they’d spend their time focusing on activity two years ahead and beyond. Their scope would be to improve the products/services made, on branding, positioning, and on understanding the future of marketing.

Brand agencies:Medium term storytelling to build brands
Focus: 3 months to 2 years.
Would be the closest agency to what we consider advertising today. A mixture of talent across all current agencies, to include PR, and some retail and talent from all new technologies, their job would be to build brands and classic upper-funnel activity. Their time horizon would be three months to two years. These are artists that design and shape the brand, and then produce ads and marketing to tell that story, and build brand equity.

Performance agencies: Short term sales and other immediate metrics.
Focus: Real time to 3 months
Their scope would be to understand how to tweak marketing and communication tactics, how to use automation, clever SEO, retail out-of-home advertising, flow advertising, creative optimisation, real-time marketing, short term PR, promotions at retail and many other tools to perfect the conversion of equity into sales, or in other words, largely lower-funnel activity