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Tue, May 31, 2005
The New Ad Agents
Wednesday, May 25, 2005 11:50 AM EST
THE NEW AD AGENTS
THE Media Co.
Time Warner's in-house marketing play Need help navigating Time Warner's
marketing and media assets? Many clients of the world's largest media
company do. "We are definitely applying much more creativity and
marketing to the preeminent assets in the house of Time Warner, trying to
address the more complex client challenges that are out there," says John
Partilla, president of Time Warner's Global Marketing Group, the company's
in-house marketing and creative consultancy.
Global Marketing was restructured a year ago when Partilla joined the
media giant after heading Young & Rubicam's Brand Buzz unit. By tapping
closely into properties within each of Time Warner's divisions, including
America Online, Time Warner Cable, Time Inc., Turner Broadcasting, and
Warner Bros. Entertainment, the unit is attempting to offer marketers and
their media agencies more holistic and integrated approaches to their
marketing problems.
Even as the company's divisions run ad sales operations on their own, it's
often not apparent to Time Warner's biggest clients - Fortune 500
companies like General Motors, Procter & Gamble, Verizon, and Wal-Mart the kinds of marketing and media opportunities that Time Warner can
package. One example of a program strengthened by Global Marketing's
involvement was Revlon's "Revlon on the Red Carpet," which involved Time
Inc. magazine properties, AOL, Turner, and the WB. "We took nuggets of
ideas and made the program bigger and more robust," Partilla says.
Partilla, along with Mark D'Arcy, the group's chief creative officer, work
closely with TW division heads, marketers, and media agency executives.
Partilla takes pains to emphasize that the group doesn't function as an ad
agency: "There are some general agencies and media agencies that are
unclear as to what we're doing. But for the most part, that's an exception.
Media agencies are, more often than not, confident about being the
architect of the brand. They tell us what they need to accomplish in terms
of price efficiencies, as well as brand growth objectives."
Even so, Partilla says the group is asked on occasion to collaborate with
agencies. "Our competency is in creating more possibilities out of our
assets," he emphasizes. "No one has a monopoly on creativity. We're trying
to develop more creative possibilities for clients within the house of Time
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Warner. We want to talk and work with everybody for now, but we are
talking a great deal with some of the more creative of the general
agencies," Partilla adds. Tobi Elkin
THE NEW AD AGENTS
Anti-Agency Agent
No creative, no media, just pure thought
Reason Inc. is an advertising agency the way the hit TV series "Seinfeld"
was a "show about nothing." Reason doesn't create ads, it doesn't buy
media, and it doesn't even conduct research. All it does is think. Moreover,
it only has one employee - founder, president, and sole thinker Marc Babej.
What Reason does have is clients, and some pretty influential ones at that.
And while Babej demures when it comes to discussing them, he
occasionally lets it slip that he was doing "this thing" for Time Warner and
"that thing" for one of the vice presidential candidates. But just try to get
him to talk about what those things are.
Most likely they are some fairly strategic marketing projects. Consider the
primary services the agency offers: "reason-based strategy," "motivation
engineering," "marketing contingencies," and "actionable futurism." Babej,
a former brand strategy director at big agencies like D'Arcy Masius Benton
& Bowles, and smaller shops like Kirschenbaum Bond + Partners, is cutting
out the middleware and going straight to the thinking process. Sounds
reasonable to us. JM
THE NEW AD AGENTS
The "Non-Linear Platform"
Embracing return on involvement
"What if we're wrong about all this stuff?" That's a question you normally
don't hear posed in many industries, especially on Madison Avenue where
confidence, hype, and spin reign supreme. And you certainly don't expect
to hear it from someone peddling advertising services. But that's just what
Greg Wilson, founder of San Francisco agency Red Ball Tiger, has been
saying about the traditional TV advertising model.
People aren't necessarily skipping commercials, he says, they're using
digital video recorders and other technologies to avoid being interrupted
from what they're trying to do, like watch TV. Sounds simple, right? Wilson
has used that simple logic to develop a new economic model for TV
advertising which he calls "return on involvement." He claims it's the only
sensible revenue model for advertisers and agencies operating in a world
where viewers control television.
"Advertisers pay for outcome rather than effort," Wilson says. Instead of
avoiding what he refers to as "non-linear platforms" - things like DVRs,
video-on-demand, and broadband video - Wilson says advertisers and
agencies should embrace them as a way of knowing when consumers are
actually involved with ad messages. That's easy enough for Red Ball Tiger
to suggest, because the agency is leading the way in developing "nonlinear" ad formats such as TiVo Showcases, but it may not be easy for some
traditional agencies to adopt. JM
THE NEW AD AGENTS
The "Marketing/PR" Guy
VNRs are the new PR
Nearly a quarter century ago, Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt coined the
phrase "marketing myopia" to describe the near-sighted way many
traditional ad agencies look at the marketing process.
For them, it's a process that begins and ends with an advertising message.
The problem with that approach is it's not the way most consumers actually
get information about brands. They're just as, if not more likely, to get it
from a multitude of other media sources, especially the news media itself.
So while Madison Avenue toils at the relatively thin slice of media
impressions that are comprised of ad messages, the PR industry is moving
quickly to capture the brand turf in the bigger part of the mix.
One of the people who's been moving fastest in that direction is Larry
Moskowitz, the chairman-CEO and founder of Medialink, the world's largest
producer and distributor of VNRs - video news releases. According to
Moskowitz, VNRs represent the future of brand communications. With
consumers increasingly avoiding advertising content, Moskowitz is
developing ways of getting brands mentioned directly in the editorial
content. Sound like branded entertainment? Well, it sort of is, but it's the
PR industry's version. Moskowitz calls this approach "marketing public
relations." Others have called it "branded journalism." The idea is to
provide TV, radio, Web sites, and news organizations with information
about a company and brand in a way that will ensure the media will cover
it and that people will see it. JM
THE NEW AD AGENTS
The Talent Shop
Mega talent agencies steal some thunder
If Madison Avenue didn't have enough to worry about, it can add Hollywood
über-agents to the list. Talent shops have encroached on the territory of
traditional ad agencies over the last few years by expanding into branded
entertainment and snatching revenue away from the incumbents.
Talent agency client rosters read like the who's-who of marketers,
including blue chip brands like American Express and Coca-Cola.
Talent shops like Endeavor, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), William Morris,
and The Firm have all muscled into the world of branded entertainment.
Endeavor created a new division more than three years ago called
Endeavor Marketing Solutions to serve large companies like Mattel, Time
Inc., and American Express, says Jimmy Yaffe, managing partner for the
division. He refers to the division as an "innovation" lab designed to build
brands through "cool stuff." Such opportunities include non-traditional
marketing like video games, premieres, and mall-based communications.
Endeavor helped convert Bravo show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" into
a lifestyle brand with books, records, calendars, and consumer products
through its work for the show's production company Scout Productions.
The goal of talent agencies is to both create opportunities for existing
talent and to devise new marketing initiatives for companies. CAA has
corralled projects for Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Abercrombie & Fitch,
and Hasbro. Daisy Whitney
THE NEW AD AGENTS
Communications Planning
Stirring the media mix
Before the British invaded Madison Avenue in the 1990s, zero-based
planning meant demonstrating little preference among broadcast network
media buys. Radio, outdoor, and print also were used liberally, along with
the occasional dash of online media. While agencies thought they were
becoming more media neutral, it was really more of the same - media
neutrality within the traditional mix.
Thanks to innovation, technological and otherwise, a new breed of media
strategists is taking hold. Media planning using the old standbys is giving
way to communications planning - a mix of TV, print, outdoor, online,
along with buzz and viral marketing, experiential stores, sampling, and
other forms that have yet to be determined. The emphasis is on meeting
the clients' business goals no matter the media or strategy.
After pressure from clients and waves of consolidation among media buying
agencies, U.S. shops have shifted from full-service providers to the media
neutral specialists of the U.K., France, and Australia. It took those markets
a quarter of a century to get down with the idea, but America adopted the
tools and technology and pledged allegiance in less than a decade. Though
individual planning executives have made the jump across the pond, the
world's dominant media market remains a tough nut to crack for
progressive media shops abroad. Communications planning executions are
expected to accelerate exponentially as planners identify when consumers
are open to receiving messages. Hillary Chura
THE NEW AD AGENTS
The Software Play
Ad zapper as ad agent
It's the perfect oxymoron. TiVo, the device best known for its ability to
render ads moot, also sells ads. Through its TiVo Showcase introduced in
2002, the box that became a verb has pioneered long-form advertising of
the flashier ilk, like two-minute trailers for movies or videos from
automakers. TiVo has struck deals for films like "Austin Powers" and "Lord
of the Rings," as well as General Motors, Walt Disney World, and Royal
Caribbean Cruise Lines. That's the sort of content marketers say they must
disseminate to fight the ad-skipping phenomenon TiVo spawned six years
ago.
More recently, TiVo lured the very networks whose ads are being passed
over. NBC, Fox, Discovery, and others have promoted programs in the
Showcase, says Kimber Sterling, director, advertising, and research sales at
TiVo. TiVo has also worked closely with media and ad agencies.
TiVo offers its ad partners audience data - how many viewers watch a
promotion and then record the show, daily usage, clips watched, and total
time watched.
Despite its popularity, TiVo, with its 3 million customers, was on
deathwatch until Comcast announced a partnership this spring to develop a
version of the TiVo service that will be integrated into its set-top boxes.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts also says TiVo will work with Comcast to
develop a system to deliver more targeted and relevant ads.
Says Sterling: "Our vision is to provide opportunities as well for advertisers
and networks that may offset the [TiVo] threat and turn it into a more
valuable platform." DW
THE NEW AD AGENTS
The Clients
Putting the zing in in-sourcing
Something about being on the ropes makes it difficult to cede control of
pretty much anything. It's also part of the reason Target Corp. and Apple
Computer have some of the coolest marketing around.
Target and Apple used to have about as much zing as a thrift store. Apple,
while cool, innovative, and sexy, had seen better days. Now, both brands
are soaring.
While other marketers farm out advertising and media decisions, a small
group of Apple and Target executives come up with groovy lifestyle
marketing; execution is outsourced to myriad agencies. You could call it
in-sourcing.
An in-house team at Apple handles buzz marketing, and Steve Jobs, the
company's iconoclastic co-founder and CEO, has been behind much of the
creative work since rejoining the company in 1997 when its market share
looked like Silicon Valley's version of the Atkins diet. Omnicom Group's
TBWA/Chiat/Day and OMD earn their fees, but largely by complementing,
rather than defining, their client.
Target's Minneapolis headquarters, meanwhile, is ground zero for
marketing activities ranging from copy writing and planning to
merchandise presentations. The red bull's-eye pulls in talent from a raft of
agencies including Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, Peterson Milla Hooks, and
Periscope. HC
THE NEW AD AGENTS
The Media Agencies
The cart leading the horse
If the medium really is the message, then maybe media shops will emerge
as the new ad agents, relegating their "creative" counterparts to the purely
tactical function of writing, art direction, and production.
The new breed of media agency is certainly positioning itself that way,
abandoning its "media buying" roots. These new agencies are becoming
strategic visionaries that drive both medium and message. In the
interactive space, there are plenty of examples of media shops driving
creative.
In many ways, this is a return to Madison Avenue's roots. Agencies began as
media brokers who ultimately produced ads and conducted research as a
means to an end: placing media. Now they're flipping the process,
developing communications strategies that pinpoint where prospects are
likely to be most receptive to an ad message. JM
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