I don’t usually blog about other people’s blogs, but this one is too good to pass up. In “Gravity is just a theory”, Seth Godin does a very neat job of packaging the ideas that marketing is so much easier when you market something that doesn’t clash with people’s pre-existing convictions and that can convince people by showing, not by telling.
“When in doubt, market gravity.” Classic Godin.
So Seth Godin made a new post on the evolution of marketing from local/personal, to mass, back to local/personal again. The theory is that brands now aren’t built thru mass marketing, but thru viral marketing and people spreading your stories (because they’re “worth spreading”) and then you leverage permission based marketing to (CRM in new clothes?) to cultivate that base. Classical, spam/mass marketing is no longer needed in this world.
From consumer’s standpoint (and since everyone considers themselves rational people on which advertising has no effect hahaha…) it all makes sense. However, I think the key word here is “build”, as in creating a new brand. An exisiting brand with existing mass reach, and there are quite a few of those entities, will still have a very hard time giving up their mass marketing, and it’s ability to predictable demand creation. Look at Apple, who has one of the world’s most loyal “tribes”, an amazing ability to create stories people want to spread and products people want to show the world they own. But still, it’s pretty obvious that mass marketing is an important component in them sustaining sales, and growth. Right?
But sure, the trend towards and increased influence for the viral and CRM-component in marketing plans are obvious. But I’m not entirely convinced that it’s a replacement, but more of a complement to the marketing mix, applicable in some cases and not so much in others.
And besides, if mass advertising fails, what will happen to all the Web 2.0 startups? Good luck running AdSense on your shiny spreadsheet app 
I guess I’ll have to buy the book and make Seth prove me wrong!
So, apparently it’s “Good times RIP” and every startup and VC firm seems to be competing for who can be the most prepared for the reputed nuclear winter. A whole lot of second guessing and obvious advice from the same people that were bubbling of enthusiast just a couple of weeks before the shit hit the fan (I met a whole lot of them when we presented at TC50)… better listening to people that actually gives good advice before the fact, for example Marc Andreesen’s with his epic “nuclear winter” prophecy.
Anyways. There’s a lot of opinion and discussion on the “let’s switch business model” theme… mostly “omg omg! advertising is dead! we need to get paid! soon! ahhh!”. But I’ll deal with advertising vs. freemium vs. paid service another time and instead direct my thought to the fundamental business model issue, which I’ve been meaning to discuss for quite some time now…
What annoys me is that when most people say “business model” they’re confusing it with “revenue model”.
The “business model” is the overall structure which the company employs make money. One more time. Not to get money (as in revenues) but to make money (as in profit). So business model includes all things related to the business, such as:
There are many different kinds of business models and many ways to organize them. The common denominator being that it’s a system of different components, and how the company charges for the value they create is just one.
For example “we need to switch from an ad based business model (CPM, CPC or whatever) to a freemium business model (SaaS, licensing or whatever)”. What they mean is (naturally), that instead of people pay for the service thru non-monetary means (their time and attention), they will instead finance it with monetary means (their money)… and what they’re really doing is not switching business model, they’re simply changing one component of their business model, the revenue model, from advertisers paying for some kind of message placement or user action to good-ol’ direct payment from the user in exchange for premium product features. Now this might imply , but not necessitate, changes in other sub-parts business model… for example customer service might be required and thus change the cost structure, or a sales force might be needed, affecting the sales model etc. If the change affects all these components I guess you might say that people have “switched” business model, but changing revenue model is actually a slight tweak in comparison to many other parts.
Easy as pie.
Stay put another post on why switching from an ad based to a paid business model might not be the awesome way out everyone thinks!
(hint, if companies have no money, neither does consumers)
So I’ve been experimenting with a couple of different models for writing creative briefs lately. Last time someone did something good in the area, was when Jon Steel released his to-be-bible of Account Planning in the mid-late nineties.
However, the conditions for creating advertising (even the definition of advertising) have shifted drastically in the last ten years. We now have one billion more options in terms of media, technology and consumer habits to take into account. Consumers are blocking out ads like never before, and with the rise WOM-hyping, virals and social networks, agencies even consider them to be a plausible channel for distributing a message. Also, clients have started doing their own planning, make changes later in projects and are demanding accountability. There’s also the issue of cross-agency collaboration, since media fragmentization and finite consumer attention, has boosted the relevance of niche agencies, that use their target audience and/or media specific knowledge increase cut thru and impact.
Planning has always been pretty unglamorous, but now it seems like the major bottleneck for creating effective advertising so maybe it’s time to get our act together Sadly, it seems like Jon’s elegant and simple template to writing creative briefs simply doesn’t hold up anymore. Unless the planner is beyond awesome, that is. And the client has to provide the resources and business insights to leverage the planner’s awesomeness. But the bulk planners and clients are, by definition, average.
One could argue that the creative brief is a possible competitive advantage for agencies, but I think hogging a format would be counter-productive since creative briefs will need to be distributed and adapted across agencies and clients. Also, the learning curve for new clients and creatives, account directors, project managers etc. should be quick and easy. And, as I’ve learned, it needs to be enforced on a agency-wide scale… and for that to happen it needs to be compatible with the current Porter-Levitt-Steel-Mintzberg-Ries-Aaker-influenced-model. Meaning the use of abstractions no-one really agrees on, like “positioning”, “strategy”, “target audience” (mostly because most people haven’t bothered to actually read Positioning, Marketing Imagination, Building Strong Brands, Truth lies and advertising, Rise and fall of strategic planning etc.).
Basically, we need to establish some rough default structure that everyone get the hang on to increase the average quality of what creatives have to act on when trying to win the next grand-prix in Cannes. As for me, I’ll be posting a suggestion here in the next week or so.
Any suggestions?
Recent Tweets
