This year’s thoughts on marketing next year – Models, madness and measurement

As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But unfortunately this year has probably delivered the reality check that some of the hardened traditionalists needed. The key things that need shaking up as I see it are the big game changers – the way we operate, the way we think and the way we measure. If we get that right, next year will be a walk in the park.

It’s not about starting to use Twitter or creating an iPhone app. It’s the areas we all know that need changing, they just get put in the too hard basket. Undoubtedly there will be some blood, sweat and tears, but it’s increasingly becoming necessary. So the problems as I see it are…

Models
Clients and their agencies need to reorganise and recalibrate themselves around people and how they actually behave and interact with brands in the 21st Century . First of all we need to scrap silos that don’t talk to each or pump one message out into several channels. We need a bunch of multiple coherent ideas that can be achieved by creating more converged doing roles. Let’s get excited and make things.

In my opinion many roles in agencies and within marketing departments operate in isolation and aren’t about doing, they are more about managing and controlling. We need a lot more Chief Culture Officers, Conversation Economists, creative technologists and Experience Designers

Madness
This one is aimed more at agencies, although brands need to take some of the blame as they believe a lot of rhetoric that comes from them. But essentially no single agency has the right to own an idea or relationship. As we increasingly encroach on each other’s territory due to the convergence of media, it’s going to be the survival of the fittest, not he who shouts loudest. As Amelia Torode recently said, or was that Tweeted: “The best idea is the one with the biggest impact.”

The next point is our problem with binary thinking. We see things too black and white and it’s always a case of yes or no. What about the grey area in the middle where real life actually happens. No single media channel is better than another, they’re different and much more powerful when complementing each other.

Measurement
I’ve mentioned this before, but essentially you are what you measure. In an increasingly social and hyper connected world why are we still using broadcast metrics to evaluate our performance? Let’s face it, in the major markets of the world digital is not only here to stay, it is used by the majority rather than the minority. We need to measure accordingly rather than hiding under rock hoping it will go away.

Due to the penetration levels reaching a high level we can begin to understand how people are actually behaving rather than things being projected. Take this recent stat from ComScore – ‘8% of users make 85% of the clicks when it comes to display advertising’. Now I have no reason to believe that the same isn’t true for TV. Think about it, only 8% of your projected reach is probably watching an ad break and that is being generous. The answer isn’t to spend millions increasing the frequency (this is a poor argument from agencies and publishers to protect revenue) and use that as a brand effect metric, but engaging the other 92% with stuff other than ads, then adapting the metrics accordingly.

The next post in this series of rambles is going to be on marketing to networks, I think.

Related to this post: This year’s thoughts on marketing next year – The prelude

Tags: 2010, Agency models, Brands, communication, Marketing, Measurement