What’s really causing our— Marketing Pains?
The ad industry’s big debate is a false dichotomy. The growing tension between digital evangelists and creative purists is a distraction that only eludes to the underlying challenges that marketers now face.
[Part of the series: Marketing Pains ]
The tectonic plates of attention and behavior have shifted and the advertising industry is trying to rationalize its new reality.
Everything has changed, get on board or be left behind. It’s data, measurement, optimization, automation, machine learning and tech stacks.
But also…
Nothing has really changed, let’s get back to what matters. It’s ideas, creativity, substance, empathy and human insights.
Both are correct. The two are not trade-offs. Compelling creativity can and should be spread through a modern marketing apparatus and digitally geared campaigns are also a canvass for creative craft. Efficiency and effectiveness are not on the same continuum.
The opposing views simply represent the vested interests and default settings of the two key camps. With growth, bonuses and even companies’ survival on the line, it’s no surprise that each side would campaign fervently for their share of marketing budgets.
Line items in media budgets are very much trade-offs. What should have been a mathematical exercise — finding an optimal balance between digital and traditional media and tracking audience shifts over time — has become more ideological.
Rather than subsiding, the debate spirals on. Instead of answers and clarity, we seem to be left with more questions. Should marketing budgets be zero-based and built from scratch for this new world? Should agencies be taken in-house for better value and control? Should agencies look more like social publishers? What do engagement metrics really mean? Is the effectiveness of marketing generally in decline?
Our world makes less sense than it used to and it’s not a passing phase. Increased confusion and operational pressure are found on both sides of the divide. It’s a system under pressure.
What has actually changed?
In a word: smartphones. Our phones, windows to the internet, have become part of us and they capture a large chunk of our daily attention. Attention is zero sum — only one thing can hold us at a time. So the 3+ hours that people spend on their phones daily (check your screen time) amounts to a colossal redirection of human attention, measured in billions of hours per day.
It’s tempting to fall for the sheer magnitude of this behavioral shift (see TV is dead), but the change is more nuanced and the qualitative factors are equally significant.
The addition of all this daily phone time hasn’t come with an equal withdrawal from TV. People are spending more time on screens overall, but phones are not simply media devices. They are mobile computers whose diverse utility has made them essential for navigating life.
TV time and phone time are not traded as equals. You watch the one and use the other. They don’t need to be pitched against each other, as they are not substitutes, although they also can be. They can complement each other too… it’s complicated.
Constantly having the internet and the world’s information in our back pockets is not simply a distraction. It has enabled people to do new things. It has lead to new behaviours and new expectations.
These are some of the changes we are wrestling with:
#1. Transparency — the magic killer (click to read)
#2. Fragmentation — the shrinking of attention spans (click to read)
#3. Skippability — the democratization of attention (click to read)
#4. Sharing — the gearing of collective attention (click to read)
A new world
There is a growing sense that marketing has lost its way — and that we’ve been led here mostly by marketers choosing short-term performance over substance. This view fails to recognize the massive shift taking place and the inherent discomfort that comes with evolution. Short-termism is a symptom not the cause of the current state of the industry.
The world we operate in now works differently to the pre-internet one. Marketing has become more complex. The base unit of our realm — attention, has been rewired by technology. The core workings of brands and advertising have been weakened — and it won’t ever go back to the way it was.
The digital world promised marketing so much, but it was oversold. We looked at our new tools; measurement, efficiency, data and whole new channels; without ever fully grasping what the side effects might be.
Our environment has grown so challenging that we see brands searching for purpose and adland consumed with a blame game but the change is bigger than us. Technology has profoundly impacted human behavior in the last two decades. The internet has literally reduced people’s belief in organized religion. It was naive to have thought we were simply dealing with new channels and widgets.
Being at the confluence of culture, media and technology — marketing is a canary in this coal mine. If there is a silver lining to this cloud perhaps it’s this: that we move on from infighting to apply our industry’s diverse problem-solving capacity to improve how people and technology coexist, not for our industry but for everyone.
