Where do we go from here?

What is the future of our ad industry?

"The house that advertising built was consumer packaged goods. They taught that detergents and soaps could be wrapped in emotion. You were a better mom, you were more American, you were a more elegant European if you used a certain type of hand soap. This is the house that advertising built. Last year [in] the house that advertising built, almost 90% of all CPG brands lost share, and two thirds lost revenue. Why? Because advertising sucks. And if you're wealthy you can opt out of advertising. We are now downloading "Modern Family" and paying two bucks for it from iTunes soley so that we can avoid the advertising. Advertising is becoming a tax only poor people pay."



Good talk by Scott Galloway, NYU Stern professor and founder of L2.

Where digital is headed

Thanks, Adobo!

new scenery

There's no way I could have predicted what was going to happen this year, the end of an era. When I look back the good times stand out, but there were things I needed to move on from and grow out of. After a few years discontent had started to seep into the everyday. There were always great challenges, inspiring mentors, awesome teammates. There was also more corporate haberdashery than I would like to have witnessed, the general advertising burnout, and the wear and tear that comes with building something new. The good times stand out the most.

It all came to a head this year, finally time for a break. On my last day I wanted to post as that I had ended my longest relationship - 6.5 years with M.E.

Who would have guessed that I would be re-adopted, this time by the mother ship. They took me to Singapore, Indonesia and Tokyo, but where I ended up was here in Shanghai.

From team lead to solo flight, from one market to fifteen, from internals to conference calls. From creatives just desks away to creatives miles and plane rides away. From my all-Pinoy AEs to the United Colors of Benetton account team. From beverages to cars, from the D to the R. From comfort zone to the great unknown.

Ni hao.

It is an honor just to be nominated!

We found out today that MRM Manila has been awarded Philippines Digital Agency of the Year by Campaign Asia, already identified as GOLD winner from the first round of judging. AWESOMESAUCE!!!!! It is always awesome to win agency-wide awards because it acknowledges and celebrates the team spirit that drives MRM. It wasn't always like this but we have come a long way in two+ years and it is rewarding to see the fruits of the company we have built.

And as if that weren't enough, the individuals we entered in the awards were all shortlisted!

• Donald Lim is shortlisted for Agency Head of the Year
• Budjette Tan is shortlisted for Creative of the Year
• Me! Bea Atienza is shortlisted for Account Person of the Year  

This is amazeballs. Winners will be announced on December 10, but it is enough for me that our agency won and that all of us were even put on this list!

extracurricular activities

The case for continuing education


Our whole team is studying!
Beau, our Strategic Planner, is enrolled in Gamification on Coursera.com,
El, our associate, is reviewing Idea crafting on Skillshare.com, and 
I've just started graduate studies at The New School. 

Given our insane work schedules and frequent overtime, actually going back to school even just for one course at a time would be impossible. But because we're able to take classes virtually at the time and place of our choosing, we can keep studying.

I get a dorky kick out of how we're digital practitioners studying in such a digital way, but it really is exciting that it is now easier than ever to keep learning about practically any topic through self-initiated research and even formal study.

Being digital means constantly refreshing.

Ongoing learning is something I feel really strongly about, especially in the service of gaining fuel that will help us master our craft. And for people like me, there is joy even in the learning process alone :)

Throughout my career, connectivity helped me deepen my understanding of digital. Reading blogs and Twitter feeds keep me updated about marketing and tech developments. Online classes have allowed me to explore topics in-depth – HTML programming in 2008 to understand the building blocks of the web (on Sessions.edu), and a Certificate in Digital Media Marketing at New York University (partly in person and partly online) that exposed me to digital mechanics and "How"s of marketing in this space.

Now that I have people working with me on our digital team, I'm glad I can infuse their work paths with this same value. As strategic planners, we need to have a handle on new technologies and a working understanding of new behaviors created as a result of interaction in this space.

Digital is completely new and thus requires some amount of study and critical thinking - could be informal, could be at a school, but serious digital practitioners need to put the time in to understanding the space. And as things are constantly changing, we must study, re-tool and re-fresh continuously.

Mad Men "The Other Woman"

One of the best things about our industry is the passing on of craft. In planning we don't just learn a set of skills or end up with physical products; ours is a craft of mind shape and form.

It takes brilliant mentors to master and then teach young padawans how to wade through intangibles and abstracts, how to find, shape and sharpen thoughts. It takes mad and passionate visionaries to show us how to weave logic and leaps of creativity into ideas that can be turned into words and pictures that start conversation, sell products, and once in awhile maybe even change how people do things.

I rarely feel like Mad Men acurately captures our industry. There isn't nearly that much alcohol, nobody dresses in suits, all of the AE's are girls and where are the planners? But Don and Peggy are a mentor-and-protegé that remind me of my teachers in our crazy world.

In "The Other Woman", Peggy finally quit. I can't say I wouldn't have arrived at the same decision as she would. But I can completely relate to the difficulty of venturing outside a place that, for all its imperfections is a comfort zone with a lot of potential. I had an idea once of writing a show about advertising and the pilot was going to be young account executives, creatives and strategists trying to quit. It is so hard to quit!

The most acurate part of Mad Men is probably having "Mad" in the title becuase it hurts so much to do what we do - the hours, the politics, the people-pleasing, the crappy bosses, the bad briefs, the low pay, the mental blocks. It is insane and it drives me crazy. But learning from the best has always been one of the best parts. I didn't always have good school teachers, but I've had great ad mentors.

Some bosses have shown me what it means to be a leader and not just a boss. Some have shown me how not to get screamed at by co-workers. Some have taught me how to think and leap harder, faster, better, stronger.

I love what I do and the playground that has been created for us. I love having found my life's work in a group of crazies. I hate that we need to move on sometimes, but there are always people we need to learn from and teach.

This episode was insane. Joan is crazy and awesome. There was a pitch! Megan asked Don about the strategy! Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce finally presented something at the client's office! They won. And Peggy got a job offer from another agency.

Mad Men maybe finally hit on something that is so innate to advertising, the fluidity of movement within our industry. I guess I haven't really maximized this myself, but I've seen it happen so much recently. Hello, Goodbye.

ADVERTISING + EXPERIENCE

why Brands need to SAY + DO

HEINEKEN LIGHT STRATEGY: “Rather than settling for constantly mediocre instances and routines, the campaign celebrates consumers and their 'occasionally perfect' experiences. While every occasion is not right for Heineken Light, the beer is a perfect fit for those situations that call for something a little more unique, special and upscale.” (via)

ADVERTISING




EXPERIENCE




Getting people to experience what we want our brands to stand for is most meaningful in the real world. But because of digital media we can now share activations and real-world goodness the whole world over.

clueless in advertising?

I was an ad agency intern in 2004. Back when I thought I wanted to be a designer. Before I had a stint in PR, an affair with account management, a brush with digital. When advertising meant TV+Radio+Print and the last stop on the project checklist was signing FA off or sending tapes to the stations. When I thought agencies were made up of Suits and Creatives (no concept of planning). When, as I would leave at 5 pm, creatives would tell me the day was just beginning. When advertising seemed like the ultimate playground.

Some things will never be the same. Some things will never change.

When I was a very impressionable intern, a very kind art director lent me a book that someone else had given him when he was thinking of getting into advertising.

It excited me because it was well designed, and because he was my intern crush. Cut to today and I've been at the same agency, pretty much, for almost five years. So even if this book only rates with two stars on Amazon, I think it was pretty effective. 

I'm working with an intern now and I think I will pass it on to her. I wonder what she'll take out of it, if she will be as excited as I was when I first felt the agency buzz. 

how do you explain to your non-advertising relatives what your job is?

Yesterday, at cousin's bridal shower...

Explaining to my aunt what I do —

ME: I work in Strategic Planning.
HER: But you don't make the ads?
ME: No, that's creative.

But we all work together - the Account Management people know the client's business really well, and Strategic Planners know the consumer really well. Then we figure out, given the brand or product, the message that would resonate best with the target market.

HER: *disbelief, half laughing* And you can really do that?
ME: *doubtful* Um, yeah....

She looked so incredulous that I didn't even go into digital! But then she asked me what a Communication Plan is and recruited me into making one for her NGO. So I guess my explanation wasn't that far off!

*Similarly, working advertising / marketing / branding spoils our media consumption.

I Miss Geppetto

by Ernie Schenck

I miss Geppetto. I miss the tinkerers. The craftsmen. The crazies. The looney art directors who don’t know the meaning of the words, “pencils down.” The obsessed whack jobs who never quite know when to let it go. The font that isn’t quite right. The word that isn’t quite adequate. The 1.5-second dissolve that maybe should be 1.576, or 1.478, or something. And there is always, always, always, always, always, always something.

I miss Geppetto.

Not that there were ever very many of him. And I suppose that’s how it should be. This is a business after all, is it not? There are deadlines to keep. Expectations to manage. Opinions to navigate. So many hostile realities to turn back. It’s as if you are Neo in some advertising agency version of The Matrix and you are fighting a million Mr. Smiths all at once.

Yet, somehow a few manic souls once managed to dance between the raindrops. And somewhere out there, they still do. How they are able to do this, I wish I could tell you.

I could say it is a stubborn determination to push back, to just say no, to lock the door and ignore the world and put your head down and just keep twittering and noodling and pushing and pulling and, when there is something of greatness to emerge, then and only then are you willing to step out into the light and say, “Here it is. Now it’s ready.” And it is partly that.

I could say that it is their good fortune to work in a place far from the microscope of big time advertising. That at this very moment there is a creative team in North Dakota or Alabama or Iowa or West Virginia, and they are hunkered down without fear of the naysayers, the bomb throwers, the time-sheet obsessors. They are busily chipping away at that tiny rough stone, chipping, chipping, chipping until as bright and dazzling a bit of advertising you have ever seen comes spilling out onto the page or the screen or the god knows what.

But I know better than to believe that there are no naysayers in North Platte. No bomb throwers in Baltimore. No time-sheet obsessors in Toledo. They are there. And they are, I am sure, as fierce or worse than their counterparts in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago. I could say that Geppetto has gone to ground. That he’s working off the grid. Found himself some creative hidey hole just out of range of the security cameras. But I know better. There are no hidey holes. Nowhere to hide. Not if you’re a tinkerer. Not if you’re Geppetto.

And damn it, I miss the tinkerers.

I miss their passion for the word and the picture. I miss what they once gave us. The realization that, hell yes, the work is worth sweating over. That compulsiveness is something to be coveted, instead of discouraged. That the nagging suspicion that all those faceless gray drones in the Apple 1984 spot were, in fact, not us. That we aren’t all just creative androids toiling away in our cubicles, deluded in our hopeless belief that what we are doing is fresh and worthy and edgy, when in fact it is gray and faceless and we are all mere cookie cutters working for, as John Twelve Hawks puts it, The Vast Machine.

I like speed. I love speed. I love 48-hour film projects. I love ticking clocks. I love how they put our backs against the wall so there’s no time to think, analyze, bicker with ourselves, to do anything but just explode with raw imagination. I love it all. Love moving at the speed of light, from this to that and that to this. But do I miss the fussing and the fidgeting? Totally.

You know what I think? I think we’ve gone too far. We preached the gospel of the idea and we preached and we preached and we preached. It’s the idea, stupid. It’s not about the font or the picture or this green or that blue or any of that. Why, if only the idea was big enough, nothing else mattered. Everything else was frosting. Inconsequential at best. Detrimental at worst. I believed that. I was one of the preachers. I believed it and I wanted it and I wouldn’t let go of it. But an idea is only as big as the clothes it has on. The nuances that give it heart. The subtle things that make it walk and talk and blow our minds with its beauty.

I miss Geppetto.


{Via Communication Arts}