NEW YORK -- Today we had the pleasure of meeting with our IPG partner Richard Beaven, who has done amazing things as head of Initiative the past three years. We work with Initiative in service of several shared clients.
Media is sexy
It was a stimulating conversation because, as I've told many colleagues, "Media is the sexy part of what we do today." To be truly media-neutral one must consider an incredible array of choices to engage consumers. We all know that.
Shake those paradigms!
The more interesting part of our meeting today was having my paradigms challenged. Richard brought some perspectives from the front lines of media strategy that made me stop and think. Here were three of them.
Content, not "Creative". Content is a media-neutral term describing messages about brands and products. Content includes not only creative, but user-generated content, crowdsourcing and content developed by the media companies with which we collaborate.
Collaboration is survival. The incredible array of choices to engage consumers changes all the time, which means that nobody has all the answers. We depend on a rich culture of specialists who help us maximize the opportunity in each channel.
Control is dead. This is true not only in the sense that we can't control what messages consumers will accept. As well, no one discipline can control everything. "Control should be taken out of the dictionary," Richard maintained, "because it doesn't exist in our business anymore."
Lots to think about on my way back to Chicago. Please add your thoughts below.
I think the point on control is half-right. There are still a lot of things that require control, and that, when properly planned and executed, result in greater consumer relevance. To assume control is dead could rationalize the knee-jerk behavior so many marketers exhibit today, particularly when it comes to social media.
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