I wish there were a way to broadcast news from the future back to the past for those forlorn moments in an artist's life. #art #MessageFromTheFuture
On my way to go see a dance piece, I stopped off at the Drama Bookshop and noticed that they had a collection of plays written by my old friend. I figured I should buy it, since I have a goal to dedicate a shelf, nay, a bookcase, to the work of my friends. Also, I wanted to read the plays. Over the years, we’ve been less in touch so I haven’t managed to see everything or read everything.
In our…
One day we wont wake to find the glittery skyscrapers laid out as sand once more, no beholding the creeper vines buckling steel beneath their patient grip.
One day we wont be around to explain to the next ones how the scribblings they have found are so very confusing because they are not of one language. If we could, they would "ahhh" and our end would be less mysterious
One day a tree will grow without fear
One day our echos as they tumble through an emptiness - much like our meaning has become - will fall on ears or things we would naively class as ears and the confusion will slowly morph into curiosity, pity and finally relief.
One day we will save the universe by leaving it alone or simply leaving it, we will be heroes as true heroes should be. Unaware of their status.
One day on Mercury is fourteen hundred hours, under tidal-lock-down a day has no end. Our day will come and in our way, we wont even notice
Planning the future: what should your next job be?
I’ve recently added a section to the blog which is called ‘Links’.
I’ve linked to some planning blogs that I’ve been reading of late. There are some pretty interesting opinions in them that have shone a light on my small brain so take a look.
I’ve been reading those, scouring the trade press, downloading PDF creds of fancy agencies, looking at ‘new’ job titles (shopper marketing planner and content planner are gaining traction) and asking smart people at Engine (where I work) lots of questions. All in a bid to understand where agencies are going. In a big to know where, as a planner or strategist, you should go next to be one step ahead of the next curve.
It helps to think about what clients are going to want and if enough of the clients you want to work with are likely to be thinking or structured in the same way (clue – they won’t be and it’s hard to know, but worth stress testing if you can).
Things are changing quickly. Should you start trying to be a digital specialist? In search and SEO? In mobile? In smart TV? In strategy? In multi-channel content planning?
Or should you be going to a big ‘integrated’ agency that is buying in talent from niche planning disciplines (CRM, social, data) and getting them to sit next to brand planners so magic happens? Maybe you should be one of those planners?
Or do you go to a channel agnostic agency that is able to do everything at a strategic business level but not really implement an eCRM strategy, your media buying and your social media customer services?
The view I have of client side businesses is that PR, Customer Services, Acquisition, Marketing, ecommerce, etc all sit in silos in an organisation (meaning territorial budget splits, disparate business objectives, lack of ownership or resource on projects that cross disciplines). If you agree, then the smart money will always be to specialise.
But most planners (based on a sample of mainly me) have at least two things in common that I’ve seen:
1: We aren’t in this just for the money (else we’d work in management consultancies and solve problems wearing suits)
2: We like to learn and think. To the extent we are greedy for knowledge.
This leads me to think that the thinkers (no pun intended) in the agency aren’t going to be happy doing just one discipline. We need to scratch that itch to learn. But unfortunately that can put us at odds with the services needed by a marketing client.
One thing Planners also have hampering them is that, unlike some creatives, they are tied to one or two accounts (in my limited experience that can be the case, though you can have creative directors pinned to key accounts). Exercising a deep knowledge of a category but limiting learning and applying knowledge from other categories.
The other is specialising. Brand planners (in branding agencies) do the interesting work at the top but don’t write the briefs for the TVCs. As a social media specialist, we often get handed the ‘matching luggage’ brief-
Client to social agency: “So, the creative agency who lead on this have written this script. It’s going to be shot in 17 countries, and has a budget of £15m. You’ve got £50k to extend it in to social media”
Social agency: “Erm, we’re not sure this really works for social. But here’s a Facebook app”
Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a sit down with the planners and deciding on an actual idea that works for everyone?
No. Because the joy of being a ‘lead’ agency means you don’t have to. And besides, different agencies, different creatives, different bottoms lines and so on. But it has to match. So that’s that. Go to a big agency and sit with other planners and learn from them and create amazing through-the-line campaigns.
But hold on.
The big agency with all those planners makes a lot of money from making TV ads. Their creative’s write scripts and copy. And if you suggest some social media approaches, aren’t they going to be cheap? Aren’t they going to piss off the social media agency that has been briefed as well? But isn’t the comms planner so far removed from buying that the media agency actually would be better off planning that part?
Integration explosion. I’ve never seen the above in an agency – but I sure as hell haven’t seen regularly integrated campaigns from agencies that have a digital and TV arms (two sets of ECD’s and Planners eh? Well that makes it easy. An ad AND a website).
So go to the agency that just comes up with the ‘idea’ in the broadest sense of the word. That briefs out the other agencies. But then, what the hell are you really learning? Should planning really be separated from a discipline? And will a client pay for that when it’s cheaper to buy all their groceries at the same store (the one where they pay a retainer)? Because you may be solving a business problem, but you can never really know the nugget from a particular discipline that could be the lead. No wonder some clients do the planning themselves these days.
I wrote this a week or so ago, but got distracted from publishing due some videos I chanced upon by the very Saneel - head of innovation at BBH. I'm jealous of his brain, and I highly recommend watching these videos here (he covers lots of similar thinking in a much more concise way, I'm sure.)
So, amid cries of marketers of ‘this is only the beginning’, let's future gaze on some possible scenarios for Facebook (not forgetting Google, of course!)
Zuckerberg has only just started
Facebook will undoubtedly hit a billion users soon. Despite lagging growth in developed markets like the UK. But this is a generational issue; those who would adopt have - slow growth will continue but Facebook will inevitably become the default platform for the next generation.
A huge amount of users are visiting on mobile. This is currently not monetised but an ample revenue stream.
And Facebook is sitting on a user database larger than the population of most countries. With so much data being collected and a growth level exceeding anyone’s expectations, the mastermind has only got to figure out how to monetise the social experience correctly and Facebook will command an even larger amount of ad revenue.
A key to this may be Zuckerberg's approach to incorporating content on Facebook – use the content of a third party (e.g the Guardian) which will advertise with traditional banner ads within Facebook, and possibly get a revenue share from their ads.
Not only does the Guardian benefit from the added impressions of being where everyone spends all of their time online, this is further increased by the fact that people can publicly see what others are reading. This is incredibly powerful; I have read stories on the Guardian that I never would have looked at except for the fact that several people have already read them and I can see this in my newsfeed. Not only this, some of the stories are up to three years old – providing a great source of revenue from content that would potentially have been ‘dead’ to the Guardian normally (it turns out Dr. Dre’s son died in 2007, though I was shocked to see it in my news feed a month ago). This is traditional news content with true virality – something only before seen on Twitter.
With over 60 applications that now push into the social graph, the potential for Facebook to truly become the Internet are tremendous.
The revenue model that this could create is a truly ‘social’ monetisation route for Facebook that doesn’t involve an intrusive form of advertising that consumers aren’t used to. Imagine a revenue share for music tracks that are listened to because someone has clicked from a newsfeed? What about a revenue share from subscriptions? Apps are part of culture today, and the route to start licensing usage of the Facebook platform to services such as Spotify could also be an option.
But this is potentially only the beginning of a much smarter approach to monetisation for the ‘book.
The End of The Beginning
But ultimately last click revenues or post-impression conversion data from Facebook have been what has driven Facebook's success to date. Are marketers still buying this data as proof of the value of investing in Facebook ads? Because they shouldn’t be.
Facebook is a complex product and doesn’t fit into the same purchase stage as search. Searching on Google is simple and fits in with a intent to purchase behaviour that can be recognised (dependent on the brand, generic or long tail terms you want to use, there are softer 'consideration' traffic driving measures too, but if i'm going to buy something, i'm going to start with Google).
Facebook is a fundamentally social product trying to work backwards to monetise. This puts it in a much more difficult position than it’s fiercest competitor - Google.
With a market cap 23x revenue many people from the dot com era are casting their minds back to 1999-2001. Facebook is actually turning over a profit but the perennial fear is that it could turn in to MySpace or be gazumped by the next Facebook. With mobile being a longer term revolution in media consumption, and mobile social networks like Instagram gaining traction, this is a firm possibility.
This also relates to an article I read the headline of recently (but now cannot find) which stated that micro-networks were the future. Smaller, more engaged and dedicated followers are fundamentally more valuable to brands. Someone recently mentioned an article to me that stated Pinterest already drives more traffic from it’s site than any other social platform – with a user base in the UK of under 200k users this makes complete sense!
Conversely, if we look at Facebooks edgerank, a fanbase of millions may only result in a few thousand people seeing a status update. Large Facebook pages are an amorphous mass of people nigh on impossible to segment. And if not that many people see your message, and you can’t have a true one to one relationship with each person, you are stuck in a no-mans land between direct marketing and TV.
For instance: there has been a huge shift in how some social agencies have started looking at Like gating – why should we force people to like a branded page by giving them free stuff? Share of voice may be important on Facebook but fundamentally these people are more interested in winning stuff, and if they weren’t now they’ll expect to. Does this cheapen your brand? Building a Facebook page with a true content strategy that results in only people that you want to speak to Liking your page, with a real focus on engagement over Likes, and a focus on niche passion centres with passionate fans = great. But in the race for ‘Likes’ is it too late for the big brands to start again?
Lastly, if we think about the most successful and one of the most valuable brands in the world to date, we’ll find notice something puzzling. Apple doesn’t fully participate in social media. They don’t respond to negative comments online. They aren’t on Twitter. They have Facebook pages for particular products (App store, iTunes) but use those pages as content channels – where’s their big social media campaign? Where is their openness? Their 'make my next TV ad'?
This leads me on to remember the classic social media question, now rarely asked: ‘is social media right for my brand?’ Now everyone wants to say yes and build a Facebook app, and brands are getting some poor advice. How long before they wake up to the ROI question? Some brands may have cracked that. But if you don’t sell clothes or groceries online, how do you measure success?
Measurement is something that Google has in it's DNA. So watch out, Mark. You better get back to work.
