The next marketing supercontinent

The Pangea Theory tells us that all land used to be consolidated in one giant mass. Over centuries different pieces broke off and shifted into what are now the disparate continents. Some scientists believe that in time all land could join back up and form a sort of Pangea 2.0, or supercontinent.

The same trend seems to be happening in advertising.

As media behavior evolved into disparate channels so did agency offerings - digital, CRM, activation, PR disbundled from traditional creative and were, in many multinational cases, given their own brand or company names. But as clients discovered new agencies in each discipline they began to split billings and revenues.

This has become a critical issue for mainstream agencies, as marketing budgets are slowly but surely shifting to digital and other non-traditional channels. In certain categories (B2B ones for example) it is possible to skip TV altogether and focus completely on digital and PR. As non-traditional momentum grows, agencies must watch the back door and ensure that budgets are secure even if priorities shift out of ATL channels.

The answer seems to be the industry's latest buzzword: Integration. 

This idea is not new. Media agencies and marketing plans have been "360" for several decades. Our discipline itself is often called Integrated Marketing Communications. Several marketing books, including one I recently revisited, talked about Integration of mainstream advertising with digital as early as in 2003. Yet in the Philippines and even across Asia, silos are still the norm.

It seems inevitable that agency offerings will shift to accommodate the entire consumer journey in order to retain end-to-end client business. Is the next wave of ad agency organizational development going to lead us to Marketing Pangea 2.0?

As this happens agencies must figure out as a starting point -What exactly must be integrated?

Three potential models:

• PEOPLE:  Everybody in the agency (planning, account, creative) knows enough about each discipline to be able to do the work for any channel.
  My take: Not realistic - are there enough people like this to fill an agency?
• PROCESS:  Different disciplines, different specialists, who work all together, all the time, on every project, to collaboratively create complementary pieces of the final output.
  My take: Maybe not the most efficient model.
• PRODUCT:  May be led by any discipline but output represents a holistic consumer experience, ideally moving beyond "same idea across touchpoints" to pre-idea vector planning.
  My take: My preference. Probably because I'm specialist-biased. More on this in another entry because it would take an entire other entry.

It will be exciting to track these developments and see what exactly the advertising integrated supercontinent will shape up to become. The game is changing and the agency that figures this out first could end up winner of the Integration land rush. And who's to say this won't end up a non-traditional agency?

Whose line is it anyway?

Turns out, the Line belongs to the CFO.

The ad industry still refers to media as "above-" or "below-the-line". But what are these terms based on? Is it media types, with certain channels forever tagged as "above" and others "below"? Or is it based on media usage, delineating between which channels are "traditional" and "non-traditional"?

It turns out that the origin of the advertising "line" belongs to finance, and separates the services that generated profit from those given away for free. The birth of advertising agencies began with media agencies that made huge commissions on placement buys. In time they started offering creative services to assist clients in coming up with content to fill up their bought ad space. The commissions used to be so substantial that agencies eventually gave away an entire slew of support services - PR, Direct marketing, etc. (Source: "The Future of Advertising". Joe Cappo. 2003.) 

Evolution of the line... Where did it go?

It was a surprise to discover this piece of advertising history as the industry seems to have arrived at a shared understanding of the terms, using them to refer to traditional or non-traditional media. But the profitability angle sheds light on why those characterized as "below-the-line" media have carried a stigma for being less important, more by-the-way and more tactical. The result has been the continued prioritization of ATL in the development process, almost always strategized and conceptualized before BTL guys ever get a crack at a client brief. (As if business problems are so single-minded that only one vector should represent the lion's share of a marketing solution.) As it often happens for us in digital, briefings are often cascades of the thinking and ideation that ATL guys have already done. The first thing that is developed is the TV spot, after which the "big idea" can be carried over into other mediums.

Developing campaigns and starting with an ATL-geared approach may have been all right in the mass media age where the single-minded ad message was enough to drive any and all campaigns. But with the fragmentation of viewers and proliferation of channels, messages (while still very, very important) are no longer enough to drive good advertising. Additional thinking must be done to figure out the roles channels play vs. each other so that they can be most relevant in a brand or advertising ecosystem.

Today people say marketing must be "through the line", which is perhaps correct as agencies now collect fees on all services rendered. But maybe the line has completely disappeared, not in its original sense of fees and profit but based on the more recent need to have to call out which media is the most traditional or essential. What should matter is to be able to understand how channels mix, the roles they play complementary to each other, and how to use and strategize the use of each medium in a context-relevant way.