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Message to Ad Execs

John Stratton, chief marketing officer at Verizon Wireless, spoke at a gathering of 400 ad agency and entertainment executives last week. His message: He is not happy about spending $1 billion a year on "overvalued, inefficient, rapidly eroding mass market advertising platforms that continue to under deliver."

He offered 8 points of warning to the audience, which are included in the extended entry. (Reprinted from adage.com) Do you agree?

John Stratton's 8 points of warning:

1. Your clients are absolutely in trouble and they are looking for you to save them.

2. What you've been selling for the last fifty years no longer works.

3. Major marketing money is going to be in motion in the next decade and no one really yet understands exactly where it will land, if it even will land, or if it will just disappear altogether.

4. Before they figure out where to put their money, your marketer clients will hire and fire agency after agency, seeking someone, anyone, who can tell them where they might go next.

5. CMO average tenure, already famously brief, will get even shorter as CEOs begin to recognize how much money they are blowing on antiquated media plans.

6. Your marketer clients are really seeking one thing and one thing only: An audience for the message they are trying to convey to the market place.

7. But your clients actually need more than just an audience. One of the consequences of the evolution of our media delivery systems over the last ten years is that the audience you do ultimately find is much less receptive to the message you're trying to send. They are absolutely armed and ready to get to the content they want while avoiding the message you are trying to implant within it.

8. They need much more than an audience. They need an audience that cares about what they have to say. They need their message to be relevant to the audience they are saying it to.

Steve Yastrow posted this on 02/13/06.

Comments

Agreed. We're all in this together, or at least we should be. Marketers hell-bent on firing agencies in the midst of blistering change should be left to sort things out for themselves. What we agencies have to leave behind is our all-knowing arrogance.

Posted by Charlie Nicks at February 13, 2006 8:37 AM

Charlie - can traditional agencies make the leap? Or, as many say, is the business model flawed, preventing needed change?

Posted by Steve Yastrow at February 13, 2006 8:39 AM

yeah, he indirectly told all of them to go an open a blog for their servics... and he'll take thier RSS feeds to see who is doing the best conversation and thats where he will pump money into...!! :)-

In short, new methods are needed, the market knows more about the product then the company even knows.. so media has to get smart and begin talking... and talkin is a two way street !!

Posted by /pd at February 13, 2006 8:46 AM

When I think of "overvalued" and "inefficient" in conjunction with Verizon, I think of Verizon itself, not its ad agencies.

Posted by tom peters at February 13, 2006 8:49 AM

Amen, Amen and Amen! Relevance is key. Mass marketing can be effective in reaching an audience that finds your message relevant in the same way that casting large nets into the ocean might be effective in catching fish. But research consistently shows that conversion rates increase not by expanding your reach, but by narrowing it to a smaller, but more relevant audience. And conversion, rather than reach, is the bottom line.

One thing that I would advise to those who shift from unfocused mass media campaigns to more targeted communication streams is to not leave your mass media audience behind when you go. The shift should be gradual, allowing existing recipients of your message to jump on the bus with you.

Super Bowl ads this year showed how some companies are doing just that. Anheuser-Busch sought to woo television viewers to their online presence. Thus shifting their existing audience with them onto new mediums that will more effectively measure ROI on advertising spends.

See: http://messagingtimes.blogspot.com/2006/02/super-bowl-shuffles-online.html

Posted by Tom O'Leary at February 13, 2006 8:50 AM

The list of eight is spot on!

Posted by tom peters at February 13, 2006 8:51 AM

One critical thought left from the list - be warned that the client most likely has a solution in search of a problem because it's easier to focus on a product/service than it is to deal with customers. As one former Sears exec told me (in all seriousness) "Retail would be much more fun if it weren't for the customers."

As a Verizon customer, I get telephone service (a commodity) at a very high price with customer service that typically stinks. (Fortunately for them, there isn't anyone else out there offering phone service with greater success so, like most, I suffer with the Devil I know.)

No agency can make enough of a difference when the product/service is not "a valuable solution to the markets needs, delivered in a consistent, unique and competitively defensible manner."

Posted by Pat McGraw at February 13, 2006 10:11 AM

The marketing money will land (point 3) but in many different places. The communication on blogs by the agencies is something the companies can do for them selves. Just start a blog and communicate and learn from your customers. It is not that difficult, it just takes time. You can buy this time by outsourcing it to an ad agency, but they will never be as good at it as yourself; communicating open and directly with the end user. On the other hand the companies will need assistance to make ads within interactive games for example. I feel that the book of Joe Jaffe "Life After the 30-Second Spot" - has a great value here (see http://www.jaffejuice.com).

Posted by Erno Hannink at February 13, 2006 11:17 AM

Tom (O'Leary),

Agreed. Relevance is key. But so is anticipation and personalization, as espoused by Seth Godin in Permission Marketing. Now, as people are being re-aquainted with the power of word-of-mouth, rebroadcasting is key as well. What are you doing to empower your most passionate customers to rebroadcast your message on your behalf?

Posted by DUST!N at February 13, 2006 11:29 AM

Just to be clear:

What are you doing to make sure your message is relevant?

Is your message anticipated/expected?

Is the message personalized for the recipient?

What are you doint to help the recipient rebroadcast the message to people they influence?

viagra for sale online cheap Posted by DUST!N at February 13, 2006 11:33 AM

Right on Dustin!

Posted by Tom O'Leary at February 13, 2006 12:46 PM

Maybe the problem is that the super agencies have been working too long inside the Box and they need to get outside it more often !!!

Posted by Stephen McMahon at February 13, 2006 2:52 PM

I think it has more to do with forgetting what the box was to begin with.

Hint: The box is not entertainment.

Posted by DUST!N at February 13, 2006 3:00 PM

Good hint Dustin !

Posted by Stephen at February 13, 2006 3:25 PM

Pat McGraw has it right - too many companies have a solution in search of a problem. If you design a solution to an existing problem, and deliver it in a way that your market likes, you have an audience that has its ears tuned to you. And a voice ready to rebroadcast. Most folks who have a "marketing" problem actually have a product problem - ie, they haven't tuned their product (or the way it is delivered) to the market need. If you listen to your market, they'll tell you what you need to know.

Posted by Karen Leach at February 13, 2006 4:29 PM

This jus sprang up from my mind - Ads must be "ACCURATE"
A - Appealing
C - Concise
C - Comprehensible
U - User friendly (win the viewers' mind)
R - Realistic
A - Affirmative
T - Timely
E - Effective

Posted by K.Sriram at February 13, 2006 11:22 PM

I didn't want to do this post just to whine about Verizon, but, as Tom pointed out, they are a big part of their own problem. If I watch their "It's The Network" spots in my house and try to make a call the network lets me down. My house is a Verizon-free zone.

Posted by Steve Yastrow at February 14, 2006 12:51 AM