Traditional Advertising: Time to Change
If the goal of your job is to film :30/:60 movies and/or win awards then you're a pompous ass.
I have tried to write this post about 15 different ways without coming off too harsh, bitter, or angry, but it's impossible. For anyone who follows my feed or occasionally checks the url, you know that I've been silent for a long time. I figured I would come back with a bang.
Traditional advertising is easy. I can come up with an incredibly snarky idea, maybe it's a TV spot or a magazine ad. I can slap a logo at the end of it, spin it, and get a client to buy it. Then I can sit back and wait for all the glorious praise to come my way. "It's f#*%ing awesome man. You're a creative genius."
But that's not the point of advertising, is it? The goal is to solve clients' business problems creatively and more importantly, increase their revenues. To do that, you have to know who their consumers are, what they want, what they like, where they are susceptible to messaging, etc. Bottomline: You need to become the people that you are trying to reach. Then, you can figure out how to get them to buy company X's product or service.
So why do we (in the advertising industry) still measure success by awards and Super Bowl Spots? Every day, thousands of Digitals (my definition: web designers, developers, copywriters, marketers, etc., I'd use digital natives, but that already has a definition) work hard to create lasting impressions for clients. Maybe they are websites, mobile applications, in-store kiosks, or something equally engaging.
I know what traditional advertisers are thinking right now, "We do that too, we pitched an iPhone app to a potential client. iPhones are all the rage right now and they are digital. I'll tell you what, you can build it if they buy the concept, but we'll design it." Developers, you can cring now.
Uh oh. They've latched onto a buzzword. Too bad the target audience can't afford iPhones. I'm not saying that some Digitals don't think this way too, but the reality of working online is that the medium is constantly evolving, screens are getting smaller, interaction principles are changing, and the barrier to entry is still low. Constant change and the reality of a communication, not broadcast, channel forces Digitals to spend equal time producing as learning.
Let's face the facts, Traditionals (television, radio, and print designers, copywriters, etc.) and Digitals pretty much use the same tools to do their jobs: cameras, photoshop, illustrator, flash, etc. And while they have changed over the last few years, the medium that the final product is produced on, in the case of Traditionals, hasn't changed much, or if it did, it took 5+ years. The digital medium can change in the matter of months. Just look at what the iPhone has done to the world of mobile phones.
Digitals have to be prepared for this or become obsolete. They have to think strategically because its not as simple as knowing that a standard magazine page is 9x11. The work has to jump off the screen, operate the way the user wants and stand the test of time because redesigning the work is not a quick turnaround (as much as people like to think). The work also has to match the established metric goals. Every page view can be counted, every second reading is tallied, and every purchased is tracked.
Yeah, we can count impressions, but we can count actuals too, can you do that with a television spot?
Does a television spot solve the client's problem? Maybe, if its as simple as building awareness, but is it the most effective way? Think about the end of just about EVERY commercial that you didn't fast forward through because of your DVR, I bet there is a URL for you to look at. And a website to visit that last well past the 30 or 60 seconds of the TV spot, there you can read, email, and interact with the company.
It's time to start thinking smarter not cleverer. I encourage everyone out there to be a constant student of the world.
The digital medium is only going to gain more ground as it becomes the only effective channel to engage with customers on their terms. And the customers only want to talk on their terms, not yours. Those Digitals out there now may very well be able to produce a television spot but those Traditionals who are unwilling to learn something new EACH and EVERY day are bound to suffer the fate of the dinosaurs: Extinction.
