Worth Noting Pages 21-25

·         Idea for Painting: Create the feeling of emptiness, loss or separation as symbolized by an empty seat isolated among a group of partygoers/revelers.  The composition/impression is one that is expectant -- i.e., When, or will, this person return?

·         Cynical Business Quote from Bermuda Department of Tourism Director Gary Phillips as told to my DDB coworker Barry Brown:

            If the lions and tigers don’t get you, the gnats and mosquitoes will.

·         TV Commercial Idea to launch a new beer:

·         Open in hot bar -- trendy, but grungy.  Hollywood star type standing next to a regular guy at the bar.  “Hollywood” peruses all the “name” brands as camera scans the displayed bottles.  Kaleidoscopic, dreamlike/druglike state.  Concentration is broken by the sound of a beer being ordered by the “Regular Guy”.  Impressed with Regular Guy’s confidence, famous star checks out the bottle (c/u beauty shot) and haughtily orders the same.  As the Regular Guy walks away, paparazzi and toadies swarm over Hollywood who’s holding a bottle of “his” beer -- claims he’s a regular guy, been drinking the brand for years.  Flash cut to magazine photos, to group surrounding star all drinking same beer, to random parties all drinking same beer.  Cut back to original bar: Regular Guy sitting at a quiet table with sweet, pretty Regular Girl -- he’s drinking his beer.

Slogan:  Be your own trend. [Drink ____ beer].

·         Pet Ideas, Inc.: name for Kitty Kuffs ™ holding company.  Ambiguous enough to work with other non-pet products

·         On the damaging kind of altruism (President Clinton quote about budget impasse in Congress):

            We shouldn’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

·         On CEO pay:

·         In Japan, there’s roughly a 30:1 ratio between CEO pay and bottom worker pay

·         Was about the same in the U.S. during the 70’s

·         By 1990, U.S. CEO pay had grown to a 140:1ratio from top to bottom; by 2000, 500:1!

·         now it’s a “winner take all” market

·         From Shafted.  Assault on the Middle Class.  (USN&WR 1/22/96).  Labor Sectretary Robert Reich talks about “The politics of resentment”:

·         “Disgruntled workers feel betrayed because companies are not living up to a ‘tacit social contract’ to share wealth.  Instead, executive pay and stock prices are soaring, but wages are slumping and jobs are disappearing.”

·         On family values and family budget issues being closely connected:  “Parents must spend so much time fighting for economic survival that they cannot spend the necessary time to teach children values and to protect them from the chaos around them.”

·         On Why the Increase in Cheating to Get to the Top?  “Pressure is egalitarian.  Competition has created more pressure.  Many feel the game isn’t worth playing.”

·         On Altruistic Motives & Hypocrisy from James Michener regarding the Congregationalists in Hawaii: 

They came to do good and they did very well.

·         On the Sudden Interest in Spirituality (from Smithsonian Magazine Jan. ‘96 article on “dowsing”):

 “The ‘secular-scientific’ community we Americans have worshiped the last 50 years is bankrupting us spiritually.  In large part, that’s because we’ve become as Einstein predicted, ‘a community of close-minded specialists’.  We don’t have the human or spiritual or Earth-connected balance of past societies.”          

·         1996 Coke grassroots giveaway promotion -- The Red Crew: executed by McCann-Erikson’s Momentum IMC

·         On the Internet and being connected: The concept of “shared space”:

·         Hyperconversations, computer interaction can create an elevated image of others online

·         Connection has more to do with laying the computer network on top of existing human networks.  Example:  When college campuses are built, the sidewalks are left out until natural campus traffic patterns and pathways are established -- only then are sidewalks installed. In this way, technology is applied to the human network.

·         Mobile communications termed “wireless” -- “Tetherless is actually more descriptive of the restrictions of the current system.

·         Satellites are particularly useful to connect remote, inaccessible or difficult (crisis) locations

·         Marketing Services Companies -- locally-based

·         Mobile Marketing, Stamford:  Sampling, on-site, displays, etc.

·         Scratch-It Promotions, Bridgeport: Conceive/mfr. scratch-off games, incentives/sweeps

·         New Age explained:

·         Form of Utopianism-- the desire to create a better society, a “new age” in which humanity lives in harmony with itself, nature and the cosmos

·         A social movement built around the belief that during the next generation human society is going to undergo a massive social transformation that will bring into existence a “new age” of peace and harmony

·         Change in consciousness from isolation and separation to one of communion,attunement and wholeness

·         An awareness that body and mind are interconnected -- all actions have repercussions

·         Life is inter-related and multi-dimensional -- emphasize the “whole”

·         Aware of change and accept it -- go with the flow

·         Encourage widespread, open thought -- allow all things positive

·         Spurred, in part, by concern for the environment

·         Little faith in the institutions that are supposed to improve our lives

·         Turn to food, dietary supplements & alternative medical treatments to increase the quality and length of life

·         Take greater responsibility for protecting themselves

·         Started in the 60’s with talk of peace and love and exploring more natural lifestyles.

·         Since then, there’s been an enormous shift in awareness as many people realize that finding inner peace, creating a spiritual discipline and having a holistic and preventative approach to health care are as important as working to get a Mercedes

·         Will strengthen as Baby Boomers look for meaning in their lives

            Nothing brings you back to God faster than the thought of your own mortality.          

           

·         On Change in TV broadcasting (from Fast Company April/May ‘97, Change Agent.  He’s Making News for the Future -- quote from Stephen Rosenbaum, BNN

I’m counting on the fact that viewers want to take over TV.  They want to go from being passive viewers to being participants.

·          On Change & The Web (Fast Company April/May ‘97, Anything, Anywhere, Anytime -- Any Questions? -- Michael Saylor, software entrepreneur)

·         His dream:  “A crystal ball on every desktop that lets consumers find out about anything, anywhere, anytime.”

·         His premise:  “If we have a billion phone calls a day, why not a billion questions a day?”  -- i.e., Datamining

·         “Today, when you pick up a phone, the dial tone marks an electronic pathway to        hundreds of millions of other phones on the planet.  Within a few years, you’ll jack into the Web and get a query tone -- a gateway to a global mesh of online databases.”

·         “The Web is about distributing information to everyone.  That’s basically what Wal-Mart does.  It takes thousands of disparate items, pounds them into the best price, lowest risk, best offering format, and distributes them -- best this, cheapest that.  It’s power to the people.  The Web brings companies down to a standard cost positioning, so companies have to compete on things other than price.”

·         From Whatever Happened to Madison Avenue? by Martin Mayer

·         Economic theory assumes that everybody acts rationally, and that rules out advertising from the start.

·         Advertising worked -- it sold goods and services -- but mostly it influenced consumer decisions that were of very little importance to the consumer.  Advertising that led someone to switch from Bayer aspirin to Anacin was hugely important to Sterling Drug and American Home Products but not to the people who switched.  Most such advertising influenced what psychologist Milton Roleach called type “Type E” beliefs -- inconsequential beliefs.  If they are changed the total system of beliefs is not altered in any significant way -- the more competitive the advertising, the more it seemed to address itself to changing inconsequential beliefs.

·         Much advertising did not work.  When it worked, or failed, the reason had to be that it changed the product -- in short, advertising added value to the branded product.

·         Even in 1921, the establishment of uniqueness through communications was what paid for advertising; that’s what always pays for the advertising.

·         Brands as major assets were the result of years of investment in what Burleigh Gardner of Harvard Business School called “image”; David Oglivy, “personality”; and Hal Riney, “tonality”. 

·         Advertising forced management to contemplate a longer term.

·         While other industries are led by European and other foreign countries, the creation of perceived value through advertising is [was] an American specialty.

·         Riney:  “Advertising has become a business run by businessmen who have no real interest in advertising.  They think they do, but they don’t.”

·         Today, only a handful of the CEOs at the nations biggest advertisers will even look at the new campaigns before they run, let alone take time at meetings to discuss strategies and approve tactics.  Advertising agencies now deal with middle managers meeting assigned short-range goals, who have little flexibility and less inclination to use what flexibility they have.  The CFO wears several more bars on his shoulder than the EVP of Marketing.

·         In the 80’s, advertising failed to attract the brightest people -- they went to investment banking, where the rewards were so much bigger.  And it was the habits of mind that put the skids under advertising.  It’s not that Wall St. failed to appreciate the value of brands -- indeed, much of the takeover activity in the latter part of the decade was designed to profit by what the raiders considered undervaluation of brand franchises in the market price of corporate securities.  But there was a contradiction in the logic of buyout artists. The true value of the brands was their longevity, while the “corporate restructuring” contemplated in takeover deals was designed to capture such values for current shareholders without concern for the future.  The combination was destructive:  brand extensions that placed old names on new products damaged established franchises, while other brands were cannibalized or used as cash cows to beef up quarterly earnings figures and help the restructurer sell out at an inflated price.

·         Cashing in on brand equities (to quote Rena Bartos of JWT) “kills the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

·         On The Future of the Agency Business: Integrated Service  (10/6/97 Ad Age Forum      p. 34) -- by Howard Steinberg of Source Marketing, Westport CT)

·         Whatever happened to integration and synergy?  You know, the “whole egg” theory.  Some confuse integration with simply acquiring your way into related disciplines like promotion, direct event marketing and online.  That’s a balance sheet strategy, employed by the Interpublics and Omnicoms to derive revenue from every facet of marketing services spending.  As weight shifts from one discipline to another, profitability is not at risk.  This is good financial management that makes sense to Wall Street; an integrated strategy it is not.

·         Agencies focus on media.  Despite amassing a global array of marketing services capabilities, today’s agency structures don’t represent a fundamental change in how agency business is done.  I guarantee you this:  If advertising people are running the account, the strategic focus will be on building the brand via media expenditure.  They can’t help it; it’s all they know.  It’s how they make money.  The business of integrating is left to the client.  I see a different view of the future.  Right now the client is the integrator because the marketing services industry tends to offer a menu of tactical options.  Marketing services has not yet evolved to deliver true integrated services necessary to support brand strategies.  It’s not as simple as one-stop shopping.  It’s approaching business in a fundamentally different way.

·         The agency of the future will not be an advertising agency but a marketing agency.  The walls will come down because the portfolio strategy of separate units won’t serve the client effectively.  Agencies of the future will have account groups managed by generalists who direct a mix of complementary specialists from all walks of the marketing landscape.  They will solve problems and seize opportunities for their clients, regardless of the discipline or form.  They will be media neutral and think in terms of the most efficient way to build business.  They will also enrich themselves by offering relevant service.

·         Demographic Groupings.  When you visit te agency of the future, you will ot find separate marketing disciplines on each floor, but non-tactical structures, perhaps organized by demographic groupings.  When the Mountain Dew brand team visits, for example, they may get out on the “Males 12-to-18 floor.  They would meet with the account team to discuss how to reach this elusive audience with a seamless integrated message and strategy in which the sales force, bottler, retailer and consumer will all share and participate.  Their plan will include trade management, sales incentives, consumer promotion, local events, new media and yes, broadcast advertising -- all beneath a cohesive umbrella.  And the brands managers will only have to go to one meeting!

·         Marketing Age.  The new agency configurations I’m reading about today are not likely to be a part of this future because they still see the hub as traditional advertising and below-the-line business as complementary “tools”.  Marketing campaigns -- not advertising campaigns -- are going to emerge that include something for every link in the distribution chain.  Advertising Age will be renamed Marketing Age.  The American Association of Advertising Agencies will merge with the Promotion Marketing Association of America and the Direct Marketing Association to form the “Marketing Association”.  When this future arrives -- and it will arrive -- the client community will rejoice in the strategic elegance and executional simplicity of having focused agency partners that can drive the entire integrated campaign.   

·         On The Demise of Tradititional Agencies: Marketing-Savvy Clients Open Doors to Smaller Shops    (10/6/97 Ad Age Forum p. 34) -- by Jeffrey J. Hicks, President Crispin Porter Bogusky, Miami

·         I believe there’s an important shift in the industry that’s beginning to challenge the dominance of the Burnetts and J. Walter Thompsons and provide opportunities for smaller, creative-driven agencies.  Advertisers today don’t seem to want much of what traditional full-service agencies are selling.  The result has been the division of accounts among the numerous agencies and the addition of shops such as Fallon McElligott, Leap Partnership and Weiden & Kennedy to the rosters of big marketers.  Coca-Cola Co. has moved from one agency too more than 26 in the last few years.

·         The traditional agency was set up to move a marketing idea from client to consumer.  Along the way, the agency and its departments added value by managing the marketing process in the account service department, using its research department to define the strategy, producing ads with its creative resources and finally, placing the ads in the media that the consumer would see. 

Today, five factors are challenging this model:

1.     Growth of client marketing departments:  Marketers no longer pass projects and responsibility off to the agency as they once did.  Their marketing departments and personnel are being held responsible for balancing increasingly complicated investments across a wider array of media and non-media alternatives.  To do so, they have expanded and improved the profile of the professionals making the decisions.  Pepsi-Cola’s chief Roger Enrico summed it up in Martin Mayers’s 1991 book, Whatever Happened to Madison Avenue:  “Why should great marketing minds go to work at an ad agency when all the key decisions are now being made at the companies?”

2.     Growth of consultancies:  Marketers now often generate strategic vision on their own with the help of management consultants.  Observed John Deighton of the Harvard Business School: “Much strategic thinking in marketing is being supplied by the marketing-intensive practices of the management consultant industry.  The talent being recruited by consultants and clients is in many cases better at strategy than the talent that is going to the agencies.  So you’re having agencies playing the role of consultants to clients who are more broadly educated than they are.  That’s the problem.”

3.     Growth of media buying services:  Media billings assigned to buying services have grown more than 200% in the last ten years, despite little increase in total media spending.

4.     Agency acquisition and financial concerns detract attention from creativity:  While mergers did provide benefits, they also meant more layers of communication between departments and bureaucratic overhead that I believe make the development of innovative ideas much slower if not altogether impossible.

5.     The emergence of interactive media:  The pending combination of commercial video content with addressibility will again change the relationship between marketer and agencies.

·         Traditional agencies obsolete.  The ability to manage targets as small as a single household will make marketer-controlled databases of product/service users the most valuable asset in the marketing mix.  This combined with the impact of low-cost distribution via the Internet will make the traditional agency model obsolete.  So what will the implications of these trends be?  In the future, breakthrough creative that can run in any medium will be the most valuable and differentiated service agencies provide.  It also will be the least likely to be internalized by clients.  Agencies will need to position themselves to take advantage of marketers’ a la carte preferences or risk being passed over.  But large full-service agencies that have “unbundled” their services will face a greater potential for client conflicts across those services.  And they have had little success in convincing clients that their interests are best served with competing clients being served under the same roof.  Smaller agencies will be able to compete on a more even level with larger agencies as the economies of scope associated with the traditional full-service structure disappear.