Learning Never Stops

Yesterday was the first of three days I’m devoting to helping train account management people at our agency.  Three days?  Yes, it’s that important.  Especially after I opined loudly on the subject back in November.

Two instructors present material and we apply it in a series of mock meetings where some senior account people, including me, pretend to be clients, and the account people portray themselves.

Today’s curriculum, starting in the right place with something foundational, focused on what the instructors called Immersion (doing your homework) and Discovery (having done it well enough to ask smart questions).

Learning Is Day-to-Day

An important point made in the classroom was that both Immersion and Discovery are ongoing.  We talked about them first, not because they are the first stages in a process, but because you can only do your job well if you do them first – and continually.

In other words, you have to learn, and keep learning, your client’s business.  Not just the facts and figures on your own dashboard but the overall industry in which the client competes, the state of their business overall, and of course their marketing.

To learn the client’s business, however, you also have to learn your client; to establish a relationship with them based on your genuine commitment to their business success.  That relationship permits you to keep learning.

Advertising has so many new specialties and disciplines that we've written often about specialists and generalists.  None of that tradecraft matters, however, if you lack an understanding of what the client needs from you.

Learning Is Year-to-Year

Do the above lessons sound basic or obvious?  If so, it doesn’t make them wrong.  In fact it makes them all the more important.  I don’t mind admitting that I gained a lot from reviewing them in my role as a trainer.

Learning never stops.  Reviewing the basics always helps me refresh what I do instinctively, and thus do it better.

Advertising People Must Be Both: Fox and Hedgehog

Are you a fox or a hedgehog?  What would your client say you are?

This question has come to mind a couple of times after reading The Signal and The Noise by predictive science guru Nate Silver (here was my review of his book).  According to Silver, there are two types of prognosticators.  Hedgehogs believe “in governing principles about the world that behave as though they were physical laws.”  Foxes “are scrappy creatures who believe in a plethora of little ideas and in taking a multitude of approaches toward a problem.”

 

It’s not a new idea.  The Greek poet Archilochus wrote:  “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”  Western Civilization kind of ran with the concept; it appears in literature a number of times over the centuries.  Foxes:  Aristotle, Shakespeare, Pushkin.  Hedgehogs:  Plato, Dante, Dostoevsky.  If you ever read business books, James Collins, who wrote Good To Great, is clearly a hedgehog.  Silver is a fox.

In fact, Silver believes it’s better to be a fox, at least when it comes to making predictions, because there are really no hedgehog-like governing principles that lead to a sure thing.

Fox, Hedgehog & Associates

What about when it comes to making advertising?

Hedgehogs like big, enduring ideas, governing principles they can cite time and again.  Despite all the changes in advertising, some of these principles endure.  For example, “Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising” is doubly true in an era when word of mouth travels faster than ever.  Plus, given all the uncertainty we all face, it’s kind of comforting to know some truths are constant.

But not all principles survive the test of time.  For example, “Good advertising is written always from one person to another.”  I thought this old Fairfax Cone idea would not only survive, but thrive in the digital era where marketers and consumers connect with each other directly.  I had an epiphany at Hyper Island, however, leading me to realize that networks of people are the base unit of communication.

That’s where foxes come in.  Foxes don’t just know “many things” but they are always open to learning new things.  They embrace, not ignore, new information that conflicts with what they already believed.  This doesn’t describe the so-called “open mind,” accepting everything as true, but a critical mind, willing to think through new information and see how it applies.  That’s especially valuable in advertising.

Personalities are part of the profile, too.  Silver’s discussion in the book started with pundits you see on U.S. political talk shows like The McLaughlin Group.  In his view, they’re all hedgehogs, because big, bold, proclamations make fantastic television, even (especially?) when they turn out wrong.  Foxes are boring because they analyze various probabilities.

Similarly, hedgehogs make meetings spectacular; bold and daring.  They draw you in with simple messages.  They sell.  This is how Hollywood dramatizes our business and it has a grain of truth to it.  Foxes – well, I won’t say they are a buzz kill, but their thoughtful approach is usually more restrained.

Clients Need Both

Advertising today – and it’s all advertising – needs both foxes and hedgehogs.  Foxes help us get to the right answer; hedgehogs see it through.

It's possible for any one of us to be both a fox and a hedgehog. The fox in you should have good peripheral vision, seeking new ways to move business forward. Your inner hedgehog should compare these new inputs to larger principles, and act accordingly.

Clients, too, will want a fox to help them sort through the complexity of modern marketing – and a hedgehog to seek simplicity and propel things forward, fast.

How to Survive the Ad Biz in 2013

This past year I had lunch with a friend who used to run his own agency.  He closed it ten years ago and built a brand strategy consultancy.  Although he calls on marketing executives, and sees agency people in meetings, he was remarkably removed from goings-on in the advertising business.  Stopping for a moment, he thought, and said:  “My overall impression is ‘turbulence’.”

It was either this...
or start in the mail
room.

We won’t argue with that:  Turbulence.  Clients continue changing agencies at a rapid pace.  Assignments are spread among different agencies, either within or across holding companies.  It’s a buyer’s market, with agency fees generally down.  There were more layoffs last week, and many others change jobs voluntarily.  How do you survive all this turbulence?

It’s not just advertising.  Also this year, Fast Company announced “The Four-Year Career” and advised that “career planning is an oxymoron”.  The gist was that you may as well plan for constant career change because it’s going to happen to you anyway.  Their modern definition of a career path:  “Tacking swiftly from job to job and field to field, learning new skills all the while.” 

How to Survive the Ad Biz in 2013

This blog made a similar point in How To Get Ahead in Advertising:  “Advancement is not so much a straight line through one discipline, but tacking like a sailboat across various disciplines.  We will always need specialists, but it’s the generalists who will advance the farthest in agencies of the future.”

In the days of Ye Olde Marketing, there were fewer specialties, therefore, fewer specialists, so becoming a generalist was more achievable.  Most of the ways to reach consumers only reached them, i.e., with one-way messages from advertisers to audiences.  Today, there are many, many specialties and new ones invented all the time.  Media has multiplied and specialists have proliferated.

You’re already a specialist by virtue of what you do every day.  Copywriter.  Art director.  Social media community manager.  Web developer.  Shopper marketer.  Account executive.  Everyone shows up for work to do a specific thing.  You probably don’t expect to be doing that job forever.  How do you become a generalist, too?

Be Curious

First, be curious.  While you’re doing that job, have good peripheral vision, paying attention to how others contribute.  If you’re at an agency with many different services, take advantage of the many opportunities to learn.  If you’re at a specialist agency, for example a digital shop, you can still learn because by nature the work will intersect with other disciplines.  For example, your mobile app may also be part of a shopper marketing program.  You can also read about a couple of disciplines you haven’t learned yet.  Pick a couple of topics and focus on those.

Be Courageous

Second, be courageous.  Take a step outside the comfort zone of your day-to-day activity and try a new specialty.  I’ve been impressed by the willingness of up-and-comers to move from one discipline to another.  We even ran a program that rotated account executives over a two-year period among advertising, direct, digital, shopper and experiential.  More experienced people should do this, too.  I had a colleague who took his 25 years writing successful TV commercials and applied it to writing all the SEM copy we did for a large client.

Capabilities lead to Possibilities

Over time, you will go from specialist in a couple of areas to generalist who can see the big picture.  That kind of perspective gives you two super-powers.  One is that you are obviously more marketable.  The other is that you are more effective.  You’re not just a specialist playing your position well, you have a sense of how the other parts of the marketing program come together.  Ultimately, you’ll be qualified for a job to centrally run those interdisciplinary marketing efforts, either as a client, creative director, or agency account lead.

Put another way, capabilities lead to possibilities.  You need possibilities.  You could lose your job, it could bore you, or it could cease to exist, but chances are you won’t be doing the same job four years from now.  The trick isn’t just to survive, it’s to survive by growing along with the industry.

What Mad Men Teaches Us About Advertising in 2012



The Diversity Committee will see you now

I didn’t watch Mad Men last night. I’m living it today.

There’s nothing wrong with nostalgia, mind you. That early 1960s era is of particular interest to me. On my desk is a small photo of my grandfather taken right about that time.

In addition, I believe history teaches us a lot. In the same way following world history makes us better citizens, following advertising history makes us better at what we do.

What we do is sell. And modern times are the best times to be doing just that. The last great upheaval in advertising was driven by television, but it only happened once. Digital technology drives new upheavals all the time. It’s happening so fast that few can keep up with it or understand it. Major CPG companies struggle; former Mad Men seem to understand. But as Matt Nelson of Tribal DDB put it, now is the golden era for advertising.

In a similar reflection, Duff Stewart of GSD&M said “a successful leader in advertising… today is defined by curiosity.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. (Well – I tried, here and here.) With such a menu of challenges and buffet of media options, more than ever we can say “it’s all advertising” and get to the task of selling in new ways. We have much to learn.

One thing Mad Men can teach us is how little progress we’ve made on diversity. There’s more diversity among media options than the employees who practice them. It’s the best time to be in advertising – but it could be better.

Why You Should Care About Pinterest

My daughter and I have joined Pinterest. We’re not alone.

For me, Pinterest is a fast-growing social medium that knows how to build a community. My 13-year-old daughter was interested in what she had read about “pinning” things that piqued her interest like design, art, fashion, recipes and clothes. It looked like a perfect opportunity to do something together. So we created a joint account which you can see by clicking here.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest has been described as a social bookmarking site (a more user-friendly del.icio.us perhaps), a social photo sharing website, or, simply “like having all your favorite pages of magazines in one spot”. One of my tweeps says “it’s like getting a new magazine to peruse every day.” Pinterest says they are a “social catalog” or a “virtual pinboard”.

Like a real pinboard, it’s visual and instinctive. Pinterest asks its pinners to pin big images, with thoughtful descriptions, of “things you really love.” It’s obvious that people are following these guidelines, because the result is a visual feast. You instinctively go to those images you find most interesting, informative, entertaining or appealing. Our first image clicked? These baked shoestring garlic fries.

We also “liked” a book about social media content, a photo of Paris, my daughter’s favorite actress, a great dessert, ballet pictures, and that great currency of social media, cat photos. Looking back over our activity, I was surprised to see we had “liked” 42 different pins. It seemed like a lot for our first hour using Pinterest, far more than I “like” things on Facebook.

How will people use Pinterest?

In fact this personal experience teaches me something about Pinterest: It invites a lot more interaction because of all the options you see as soon as you arrive. Somehow it doesn’t come across as too cluttered. The things you like stand out easily. It’s also new every time you log on, so there are always new things to – as my friend put it – “peruse.”

Perusal of magazines and catalogs is the behavior Pinterest leverages. (My daughter has a file folder of all her clippings from catalogs and Martha Stewart magazines.) What’s new is that Pinterest gives you a place to store it all and to share it all.

The sharing part will be the subject of a future post because we haven’t followed anyone yet. Sharing will make Pinterest, like any social medium, strong. Witness the story of Kate, a North Carolina hairstylist.

Why does Pinterest matter to Marketing?

Inevitably, among the plethora of options is some content that represents a brand of some kind. We saw very little branded content, just things that people liked enough to pin for all to see. Some of those things can be bought, like this fashionable wristwatch. It’s not there for you to buy, however – it’s there for you to admire.

“Pin things you really love.” People are following that guideline, so Pinterest can show you the wisdom of crowds. When it comes to brands, people will only pin you, your product or your messages if they really love you, your product or your messages. Marketing was never a substitute for great products anyway and that goes double for social media. (Mashable recently ran a breathless headline about Pinterest driving retail traffic, but the evidence looked kind of thin to me. See for yourself.)

There is another factor to consider with Pinterest, one that I will call “catalogability”. That is, a brand will fit better with Pinterest if it already has or understands a catalog business. Brands like Etsy and Gap make sense on Pinterest because you might pin their products anyway. (We might caution Gap for selling a little too hard, however). Less intuitive examples – for me, anyway – are the Today Show, Chobani and Whole Foods.

There’s no telling where Pinterest will go from here, so I’m quite willing to be wrong about how people use it and how marketers infiltrate it. We can safely predict that word-of-mouth will drive Pinterest’s development. As those tens of millions of new users start connecting with one another, communities will form. Brands should proceed carefully, but at least get familiar with it.

Disintermediation II

My presentation to BOLO 2011 is available on SlideShare. Click here to read or download it. The topic was "Disintermediation," or "cutting out the middleman." The presentation defines what it is -- and what it's not -- with some suggestions on how to prevent it. You may also want to read "Disintermediation," my post from last November.

Small is Beautiful

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona – The most exciting places in the agency world have less than 50 employees.

That was my strong takeaway from BOLO 2011, held here on Monday and Tuesday.

BOLO, a conference for the principals of small and midsize agencies, featured Scott Stratten (UnMarketing), Ron Baker (Pricing on Purpose), and Jay Baer (The NOW Revolution). It's run by Agencyside, a consultancy that helps nimble agencies stay competitive.

Here are some of my observations from BOLO:

Small is beautiful. While large agencies struggle with structure and duck their overhead, this group gets down to business pretty quickly. Yes, it's a challenge to make payroll and keep clients happy, but necessity is the mother of invention. There’s less time and effort wasted. Plus, learning travels faster when it can be shared across a tight team.

Technology is part of the culture. BOLO is focused on tech-driven media, so the attendees came ready to learn. But they also had lots to say. I was blown away by the work being done, and the willingness to experiment with technology. There was only a little bit of theory – and lots of practice. More than a few have contributed to TED.

Community is real. "Social Media" starts with the word "social" and that's clear to this group. The way they use SoMe to build business relationships rivals how they use it on behalf of their clients. This week I made a ton of new friends (look for some great #FF recommendations in my Twitter feed tomorrow). In addition, they contribute to their communities. One example was The League of Innovators, a “creative club” allowing local brains to bring ideas to life.

Talent is diverse. Big agencies have a (deserved) reputation for hiring the types of people they already have. The people I met this week included tech entrepreneurs, TV producers, and of course statisticians. Entering the agency world did not kill anyone’s curiosity; everyone was hungry to learn more. (“BOLO” stands for “Be On the Look Out.” I love that.)

I’m hoping to be there next year and recommend the same to you.

5 Reasons Not to Fear Social Media Burnout

Have you experienced Social Media Burnout?

If so, you’re in good company. Three social media masterminds recently admitted it was all getting to be a bit much. Steve Rubel blogged that social media might be getting tiresome – and then deleted several years worth of blog posts to start anew on Tumblr. Edward Boches went on vacation, literally and figuratively – and enjoyed getting off the grid. Bob Garfield confessed over the weekend that he’s talked a good game but hardly ever posts, tweets or tumbles. “I follow people who ovulate more than I tweet,” Garfield wrote, adding in some of the creep factor we’ve come to expect from social media.

All of these industry notables – each of whom I respect deeply – feel the pressure to post, tweet and blog on a constant basis. Maybe you’ve had the same feeling, even if it isn’t full-blown Social Media Burnout.

There is a cure.

“Hi, I’m Steve and I’m a…..”

I’ve felt the same pressure myself. Recently I’ve gone through some light periods on Twitter, and regular readers of Ad Majorem know this is my first post in a while. My Klout score has declined to around 50. Should I kvetch, worry, or otherwise vex myself? I’ve been pretty busy this year with important business, and the balance of the year doesn’t look much better. Would it be so bad if lightened up?

5 Reasons Not to fear Social Media Burnout

Stay committed, I tell myself. Here’s why.

1. Social Media is far from mature. Not only is Social Media not going away, it hasn’t even gotten started. Facebook of course has the most users, but usage penetration for Twitter and other platforms is still low, with many of the users coming from the opinion leader, creative class, leading edge crowd. Google+ may or may not reach a billion users, but it has certainly changed the game with its new features. The future growth will come not from signing up more users, but from inspiring even more innovative and useful features across the social web.

2. New features and platforms will continue to facilitate human interaction. What we now call “social media” is really just the digitally fueled accelerant of what we used to call “word of mouth.” Word of mouth is not a medium, it is something that happens among people. Advertising has always sought to influence it. Social Media can only facilitate it – and allow us to monitor and measure what people are saying, which we couldn’t do when those conversations took place over the backyard fence.

3. Learning is constant. I grew tired long ago of hearing that “change is the only constant” because it’s so obvious and really not that new of an idea. Change happens faster than it used to, however, which means that learning opportunities have multiplied exponentially. Social Media is the hottest hot-bed of learning because it is the literal intersection of psychology and technology. If I drop off the grid, I lose chances to learn and stay sharp.

4. Authenticity trumps ubiquity. The important thing about anyone’s participation in social media is that we contribute to the discussion. Large numbers of likes, followers or fans will always impress us, but they’re not as relevant in social media. You and I must be ourselves and add our perspective. Our networks – our friends, colleagues, whatever – will respond to authenticity, not ubiquity.

5. Corporations are still betting on Social Media. In an era when budgets are tight and results are hard to measure, no one is giving up on social media. Quite the opposite. A Duke University survey of 249 CMOs finds that social media budgets are expected to increase their share of marketing budgets over the next five years.

So, fear not. Stay social, be yourself, and keep an open mind.

Marketing Silos

In the fields of marketing communications and organizational behavior, there is nothing more sinister than the silo.

Silos prevent cooperation and coordination. Silos signify self-interest and turf battles. Silos are a comfortable place to hide while we practice our specialties, oblivious to opportunities for working with others.

The Truth About Silos

The silo metaphor borrows equally from the Agricultural Revolution and the Information Age. The agricultural reference is a structure for storing bulk materials, usually grain harvested on a farm. An information silo, according to Wikipedia, “is a management system incapable of reciprocal operation with other, related management systems.”

Silos can be dangerous. “It may be fun,” advises an OSU fact sheet, “to jump in the grain or even bury yourself, but this kind of play is very dangerous. Flowing grain acts like quicksand. Once you start to sink it is impossible for you to dig your way to the top. As you dig, the grain keeps shifting under your feet, pushing you deeper towards the bottom.” Shudder.

Marketing Silos are Surrounded by a Barnyard Full of Manure

One of our clients recently ran a program in a medium we do not handle. Our creative director, always passionate about the client’s business, called me this morning to say “it’s not consistent with the brand voice,” and “it’s not relevant to our consumer.” He was right, because this work was done in a silo.

Silos are surrounded by a barnyard full of manure. That barnyard actually reinforces the silo mentality. We can stay in our silos instead of venturing out of comfort zones into something messy and complicated like interpersonal communication. Or a big pile of…. manure.

Connecting the Silos

Last year Evan Rosen wrote a column with good, practical advice for encouraging collaboration. My only quibble was with the title, “Smashing Silos”. The revolutionary tone is appropriate, but the prescription to me is more like “Connecting Silos”. We’ll always need specialists, and they’ll always need a place to put their grain.

Silos aren’t inherently bad unless we stay inside them. As modern marketers, we not only need to know our specialties, but get out of them and see the bigger picture.

(If you liked this post you may also like this one or that one.)

Stumbled Upon by StumbleUpon

This morning’s Ad Majorem site data included an extra couple of hundred visits, all reading a book review of The Shallows from last September. The source was StumbleUpon, a personalized aggregator of web content, or as Wikipedia clarifies, “a discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that finds and recommends web content to its users.” I’m now one of those users, and you can follow my stumbling via Twitter or on StumbleUpon itself.

So what did I stumble upon?

A trusted colleague, Michael Leis, describes StumbleUpon as a fantastic and small community, and that it was a fellow “stumbler” who convinced him to try Twitter some years ago. (Read Michael’s “5 things I’ve learned about Social Media, StumbleUpon Style”.)

Notice that I didn’t write “a fantastic but small community”. The magic of social media is not the size of one's network, but its relevance. I’ve selected a few topics of personal interest and am sure I’ll find relevant content from like-minded stumblers.

Automatic for the Tweeple

Several friends on Twitter also use StumbleUpon, so I tweeted them this morning for more insight. Open government advocate John Moore and Social Media strategist Victor Canada both called StumbleUpon “my favorite bookmarking site.”

I still haven’t figured out why a lot of people suddenly stumbled upon my 8-month old post, but I’m glad they did, because I got a new resource out of it.

Change vs. Progress

“Now that we have progress so rapid that it can be observed from year to year, no one calls it progress. People call it change, and rather than yearn for it, they brace themselves against its force.”
-- Stewart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now*

We live in a time of such constant Change that sometimes we see only the Change and not the Progress it brings.

If all you see is Change, the typical human response is to resist, or as Brand puts it, “brace against its force.” (If you’d like to know more about Stewart Brand, click here, and you’ll also learn that this quote is actually ancient 20th Century wisdom from his book published in 1999. That seems like eons ago but the quote is more relevant than ever.)

If, however, you look at Change and see the Progress it brings, you won’t brace against it, but embrace it. It’s a choice that you must address introspectively: are you going to be fearful or courageous? If Change is inevitable, do you really have any other choice?

It’s better to be courageous, of course. That doesn’t mean we should be foolhardy, embracing Change just for the sake of Change, or just simply “go with the flow”. Our pursuit of Progress should be neither foolhardy nor passive. Rather, we should always use a mixture of curiosity and caution.

Change is only Progress if you’re looking for it. It takes work. You have to stay on top of the trends. You have to see how they apply to your own or your client’s business. You have to be willing to try some new things, and be able to convince your colleagues to try them, too. That’s where the caution comes in. Some of these bets will fail. If you stop and think about a new way of working, you’ll reduce the risk of failure and increase the chance of learning.

How are you doing on your goals for 2011?

We’re about a third into the calendar year. How are you doing on your goals for 2011? Maybe you set some goals or made some resolutions. There’s a very good chance you anticipated 2011 would be a year of Change and planned accordingly.

So far, would you say you’ve experienced only Change, or Progress as well? The difference is up to you.

*Hat tip: Ross McLean, who used this quotation in his presentation at SXSW.

How to Get Ahead in Advertising

The marketing and advertising world is constantly changing, and so is the way you advance through it.

Recently my business partner and I met with some human resources folks to talk about how our people are faring on the job. Sure, we spent time on performance evaluation, but the real purpose is people development. Nothing enthuses me more than seeing everyone perform up to their full level of potential.

We used to develop people by making them into great specialists, i.e., great advertising people. This meant we taught them to know the client’s business, their competition, their consumer, and of course the ins and outs of how to develop great advertising.

These days the conversation is less about how to make people better specialists, and more about how to make them better generalists. You still have to know the client’s business, but also the ins and outs of advertising, retail and digital.

Put another way, advancement is not so much a straight line through one discipline, but tacking like a sailboat across various disciplines. We will always need specialists, but it’s the generalists who will advance the farthest in agencies of the future.

Some people embrace this approach naturally, teaching themselves about shopper marketing or social media; others purposely change jobs to gain experience. Sadly, some people put their heads in the sand and ignore or even criticize different channels.

My own perspective is that I’d be bored doing the same thing, the same way, for more than a couple of years. I’m grateful that my current job brings new challenges every day, and the chance to try a new way of marketing my clients’ products and services.

The course to growth and advancement

These are some of the buoys in the water that can mark your path to growth and advancement:

Advertising. Yes, advertising. Companies still spend billions of dollars on it. Television is still the fastest way to build awareness of a message, and it’s adapting to a digital world with time-shifting, pre-roll and on-demand programming. A good agency executive gets familiar with all of it.

Retail. Most agency people don’t take the time to understand Retail, whether it’s promotion or shopper marketing. You will perish for lack of knowledge because retailers are gaining so much of your clients’ marketing budgets and this discipline has become much more strategic in the past decade.

Digital. For all the industry trade press coverage of “digital”, the people with practical experience are still a narrow subculture. Your agency may have hired some brand-name experts but you only benefit if you’re working on a digital assignment. You can study Digital but there’s no substitute for experience.

Channel planning. You can only be a true generalist if you know how to combine everything in a way that will drive your client’s business. This seems obvious but it amazes me how seldom it actually gets done, and even then it is not usually done from a true consumer perspective. Just a few years ago, the easy, almost lazy thing to do was draw up a spider chart and “surround the consumer” with as many “touchpoints” as possible. That never really worked.

How to Get Ahead in Advertising

You’ve become a generalist. You understand Advertising, Retail, Digital and Channel Planning. In one of these you’re a specialist. This is how you get ahead in advertising.

Where you work is also part of the equation. Your agency or consultancy may be held back by a traditional view, antiquated organizational structure, lack of capability in specific disciplines, or the lack of a media department that years ago was spun off into a separate agency. The biggest restraint, however, is when an agency loses its ability to know the client’s business, their competition, their consumer, and how to provide business solutions.

The “agency” only loses its ability to the extent its employees lose it. You can control your own development. Familiarize yourself with other disciplines, be a great generalist, but never lose sight of the need to be able to solve a client’s business problems. The path onward and upward isn’t a straight line anymore. You’ll have to be patient and continually improve yourself.

What is IMC?

IMC, or Integrated Marketing Communications, has more than few definitions. Here’s mine: it’s Marketing.

The words “Integrated” and “Communications” are redundant

Any marketer who doesn’t integrate their various marketing communications, in even the smallest way, is so hopelessly siloed they will never survive. There’s simply no excuse in the year 2011 for developing separately your advertising, retail and digital programs. Even in a siloed organization most people acknowledge the need to work across disciplines. Even the most specialized agency acknowledges the need to cooperate with their clients’ other partners.

Thus the word “integrated” is redundant because all marketing must be integrated. I would argue, too, that “marketing” implies some kind of communications, so that word is also redundant.

IMC is just a fancy acronym for Marketing

I confess to having used the term myself, here, here, here and here. In each case the context was a program where we made a specific, dedicated effort to align all the disciplines and deliver for a client a truly integrated marketing program. This effort required a lot of heavy lifting strategically as well as during execution, not to mention the challenge of keeping all the various constituencies moving in the same direction. It’s hard work, especially if you have to wrangle a group of agencies.

We need hard work, because aligning the disciplines doesn’t come naturally. In the days of Ye Olde Marketing, advertising was relatively simple, retail was far less sophisticated, and digital didn’t exist. Today all those disciplines demand attention, so we need specific, dedicated efforts that change our behavior and help make IMC – uh, modern marketing, come naturally.

Stop calling it IMC

The risk in continuing to use the term “IMC” is that some marketers and some agencies will treat only some marketing as “integrated” – which means that other kinds of marketing are what, exactly? Disparate? Traditional? Antiquated? It starts to sound like Ye Olde Marketing.

I’m not starting to a campaign to extinguish the term “IMC”. I’m merely advising caution in using it.

Join #IMCchat Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m. Central U.S. time

Just a reminder that tomorrow night is another edition of #IMCchat, which we posted about recently.

#IMCchat

Every Wednesday evening (7 p.m. Central Time in the U.S.) there is an hour of chat on Twitter about Integrated Marketing Communications. The moderators pose a question or topic for discussion and industry professionals give their points of view. You can follow it via the hashtag #IMCchat.

Better still, you can participate. It’s an open forum. On Wednesday I commuted home via train during that hour and spent the time on my smartphone taking part in #IMCchat. You can read the transcript here.

Forums like this can expand your horizons. One example this week was a familiar topic, consumer insight, being discussed in ways I hadn’t considered, from the point of view of PR experts and freelance writers.

Another good line of discussion centered on Six Sigma, the manufacturing efficiency process. I was interested because my agency has used its principles for project management in highly complex situations. The discussion explored whether Six Sigma is a way for manufacturing to be more consumer-centric.

I find in these discussions that fresh points of view challenge my own assumptions, and I wind up contributing to the conversation in ways I might not have before. That’s part of the process of self-improvement we all must undertake in the marketing business today. It’s not enough to do a better job at what we know, but to do a better job learning about things we don’t know.

"Where do you want to be in 5 years?"

I have a standard question when helping employees plan their careers and when interviewing prospective employees: “Where do you want to be in 5 years?”

The answer shows how self-aware a person is, how well they’ve planned ahead, and importantly their capacity to dream a little bit. Some of the answers are very specific, like a job title or a function. Some are lofty, like having achieved something exceptional. Others are developmental, like having learned a new skill or discipline.

It occurred to me last night that this question may be unfair. Our business is changing so quickly that it’s hard to plan five years ahead. So now I’m going to ask, “Where do you want to be in 3 years?” If the answer is about next year, and has substance, I’ll gladly accept it.

You can still dream big about next year or even this year. Rapid change in our business also means that new opportunities arise all the time, and we shouldn’t be afraid to embrace them.

Kevin Carroll, Katalyst

If you want some inspiration, check out Kevin Carroll, self-proclaimed Katalyst. He addressed the annual meeting of Draftfcb Chicago last night and really inspired me. He publishes a blog and you can follow him on Twitter. That's his picture above.

Vox Populi

The most-read posts on Ad Majorem

Here are the most-read posts on Ad Majorem, subject by subject:

Channel-neutral planning
1. None of us are “media agnostic”
2. Are you a Specialist or a Generalist?
3. Can One Agency Really Do It All for a Client?

Digital
1. Online Media is a process, not an event
2. Who “owns” Mobile?
3. Hyper Island: Burn the Ships

Retail
1. Reducing Assortment II
2. Reducing Assortment
3. “The changing media landscape” …of Retail

Advertising
1. iPad’s :30 in Oscars was not its first ad
2. The basis of all great advertising
3. TV is dead – long live TV

Agencies
1. Should ad agencies and media agencies re-bundle?
2. The History of the Ad Agency Business – in one easy power point slide!*
3. What does the future look like?

Results and Accountability
1. “Oh – were we supposed to prove the results of what we did?”
2. “I don’t know which half of my ad budget I’m wasting – and I don’t WANT to know!”
3. How to know “which half of my advertising budget is wasted”

International
1. Global assignments are complex, so keep ‘em simple
2. Canada and its consumers
3. Why Global Brands matter

Professional Development
1. 3 keys to (continued) survival in 2010
2. 3 keys to job survival for 2011
3. Why Diversity is important in Marketing, and how you can help achieve it in the workplace

Bubbling Under: 3 posts that didn’t make the lists above
1. 3 reasons you should care about Shopper Marketing
2. Hyper Island II: The Network
3. Have you allowed raisinets in your brand’s portfolio?

3 keys to job survival for 2011

It’s December.

We’re all rushing to the holiday finish line, a swirling rush of activity. Some of us will keep working through Dec. 31st, nailing deadlines along the way. For some, it will feel like a crash and burn.

For others, it will be a crash and burn.

All of us should take the opportunity to stop and think about what we’ve accomplished in 2010 and what we want to accomplish in 2011. And then figure out how to get it done. Here are three steps you can take: Plan Big, Think Smart and Move Fast.

Plan Big

Whether your plan is to keep your job, change your job or get a job, it’s important to plan big. The end of year is a reflective time when you can dream a little bit and think about goals for 2011 that are ambitious and achievable. Last year at this time I made a 2010 plan big enough that it will continue into 2011.

Yes, I wish I had been able to check it off my list in 2010, but actually just having the goal has motivated me to do a lot of things I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. This is especially important if you are in the group of people who want to keep your job – apathy and the routine are your enemies.

Think Smart

This step is about strategy, or more prosaically, how you are going to get things done. Some element of strategic thinking is involved here, especially if you have planned big. You will absolutely have to think things through. You also need two other simple elements: People and Time.

Advertising has always been about collaboration, and now more than ever when no one has all the answers. So think about People you can enlist to help achieve your goals. They won’t be “your” goals anymore, but that’s OK because you’ll still get credit as part of the team.

Time is the other element of Think Smart: You will need to literally schedule time for yourself to work toward your big plans, especially if you need to schedule time with others.

Move Fast

The most underrated job skill in the advertising business is execution – the ability to get things done fast. Some us think big, a few plan smart, and not enough move fast.

The image above is from the tail of Elvis Presley’s plane. It’s the motto of his crew, the letters TCB with a lightning bolt, meaning: “Taking Care of Business in a Flash.” (Lee Knight had a good post on this last year.)

If you really did Plan Big, sometimes people and things around you won’t Move Fast enough. Try to be patient, not frustrated. Certain tasks and steps along the way can go faster, and others can’t. Just stay focused on what you want to accomplish.

A Modest Proposal

No matter what level you are, I’d encourage you to consider goals for 2011 that will increase your experience in digital. Even if you work in a digital agency, you’ll need to rise above the day-to-day and learn new things because “digital” is changing so fast we may not even use that word by the end of 2011.

The key is to get experience. All of us can read about it, participate and even start a blog, which is all beneficial. Doing actual work in your company is even better.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and Feliz Navidad -- and have a happy, prosperous, change-embracing New Year in 2011.

* Note: One year ago, we posted “3 keys to (continued) survival in 2010”. It was inspired by Arthur Ashe. Today's theme, "Plan Big, Think Smart, Move Fast" was a motto hanging on the wall of Hank Feeley, President of Leo Burnett International, who hired me into this business, and who practiced what he preached.

Hyper Island: Burn the Ships

NEW YORK – This is the end of my three days on Hyper Island. We learned a lot about Digital strategies, tools and measurement, all of which were important, but none of them are the most important thing.

Hyper Island really isn’t about “Digital”, it’s about Change. As posted on Wednesday, we didn’t just increase knowledge, we increased our ability to embrace the changes going on in our industry. The change is so swift we can’t even predict the terminology we’ll use in 2011. (Coincidentally, the BBH Labs blog ran this headline just last night: “Digital, can we kill this word for good?”.)

The organizers and instructors here were superior Digital practitioners, but their real strength was being superior Change Agents. Change was the explicit topic at the beginning and the end of the three days, and a constant theme throughout.

“Digital” isn’t just a change for our industry, it’s a harbinger of change. The changes and challenges will keep coming and always cause discomfort. Rather than trying to feel comfortable, the smart strategy is to embrace discomfort. Stick to the mission, which is keeping up with the changes.

Burn the Ships

Hernán Cortés understood how wanting to stick with comfortable ways could distract people from a journey into unfamiliar territory. He led a group of Spanish ships to conquer the Aztec Empire. When they arrived at Veracruz, he burned the ships so his men would have no way of going back.

That’s the spirit we decided to carry back to the office on Monday. Yes, we will go back, but having metaphorically burned the ships, we won’t go back to the ways with which we’ve grown comfortable.

It was a great week. Thanks very much to the organizers, instructors, and of course my fellow shipmates.

Hyper Island IV: A New Hope

NEW YORK -- We're finishing off the day at Hyper Island by splitting into groups and responding to briefs clearly intended for Digital Strategy. Even if they weren't "clearly" digital, we'd be creating digital strategies anyway because this is Hyper Island.

I admire the quality of thinking represented in each group's presentation. It's evident that most people come from the perspective of starting with a solid consumer insight and trying to bring business solutions to their clients. On actual digital strategies, we were uneven, but as one of our judges said, "What are you going to accomplish in 45 minutes?"

The point is that we are coming at these briefs differently than we would have two days ago.

On a related note, I'd like to think that one of the main themes of the day -- collaboration -- seeped into the exercise. I really enjoyed working with my team.

I'm a Believer

One last point if you'll indulge me. I despise the term "media agnostic" so much that if you enter it on Google, my blog post lambasting it is the first result.

We're two days into Hyper Island and not one person has uttered it publicly. That alone gives me hope.

What is Hyper Island?

NEW YORK – This is the first of three days I’m spending at Hyper Island Master Class, a sort of boot camp for marketing and advertising people catching up on “Digital”. For more about Hyper Island, read the recent article in Fast Company, and a response of sorts published in Adweek.

Even having read about Hyper Island in advance, I didn’t know whether to expect a class in writing code for HTML5, or how to sign up for Twitter, or… well, I imagined a lot of possibilities.

Here is what I’ve gleaned so far, after the first morning’s agenda.

Change Management. While the curriculum features digital tools, case studies, best practices and important principles, the real topic of discussion is adapting to changes around us. This isn’t only a matter of increasing knowledge, it’s about increasing our ability to embrace the changes going on in our industry.

Communication is what’s changing. Digital is partly a range of media we must all learn, but its significance lies in the way it permits people to comment and connect much more rapidly than in the days of Ye Olde Marketing. Word of mouth has always been the most reliable form of marketing communication, and it’s more out of control than ever.

It’s not about how you sell something, it’s about what you sell. The old paradigm is “market what we can make”, creating ads with finely tuned messages, hoping for big awareness among a mass audience. What shatters this paradigm? Consumer experiences drive commentary far more authentic than what we can possibly say about our products or services, regardless of medium.

Time for lunch now. I’ll write more later. You can follow all the action on Twitter by searching for the hashtag #HIMC.