Ad Creative Seeks Social Media Stimulus
So, this week our brand is being pitched new ad creative for 2009. It's sure to be exciting with seven different concepts and art boards galore from our new ad agency. On one hand, it's always refreshing to update the look of our brand - give it some real emotion and make it pop with eye-catching photos and bold copy. On the other hand, it's becoming increasingly boring.
I'm a journalist turned designer, turned brand and PR guy. I guess you could say I'm a creative type, or at least, I can relate to them. But since I've jumped neck-deep into this promising, whirl-wind we call social media I've been hard pressed to find the same inspiration in print advertising or traditional advertising in general. It seems like I'm stepping back in time to the set of A&E's Mad Men. Another static print ad pushing a message at a target consumer. Another media plan beaming with circulation numbers. So why are most brands still stuck in the ad age? For manufacturers, they're being driven by their customers.
Our brand's print ads, television commercials and web ads are developed to support our brand, but perhaps more importantly (depending on your perspective) they're made to support our sales force and the retailers we serve. The reality is, presently, our retailers aren't asking to see our company's social media plan- they want to see our ad plan. What are we doing to pull products through their stores and bring consumers inside?
Currently, it's difficult to quantify and track the impact of social media on our brands, much less our products and our retailers. With social media monitoring tools like Radian6 offers, the gap may be getting narrower, but it's still going to be a while until the mainstream business community truly understands social media. And they may never even refer to it as such.
On Sunday, I talked about "Selling the Pitch Internally" and how creating a blog for internal use can be a great tool. The irony was that the audience doesn't see it as a blog, rather "Dispatch" the blog's title. If you ask our sales team if they use social media, I'm confident they would all say no.
Most brand managers I know are all on board with social media at some level. They want to extend their reach, explore new territories and define (or redefine) their brands online. But it's not easy to justify a social media spend- if there is such a thing.
For now, I'll go into the ad creative pitch with an open mind. I'll look for things that we can tie into online marketing and social media campaigns. I'll look for ads that have more pull than push and I'll ask our new agency to think the same way. From there, we'll take small steps to implement social media around our marketing. Maybe a socialized news page here, a twitter feed there. Would we love to drop some coin on a social media agency? Sure. But for most brands it's still not in the cards, yet.
So, what will the Mad Men (and women) of our generation look like? Who will break out with an integrated fully-socialized campaign that truly breaks ground? Who's photo will be embeded next to the social media marketing in Wikipedia?
The answer is out there and it's just a matter of time before it gets dialed-in. So keep driving and keep up the innovative approach to your brand or client. The more we soak up, the better we'll be and the more we'll build. Maybe we already are the next Mad Men... Social Media Mad Men.
Originated on PitchEngine
I'm a journalist turned designer, turned brand and PR guy. I guess you could say I'm a creative type, or at least, I can relate to them. But since I've jumped neck-deep into this promising, whirl-wind we call social media I've been hard pressed to find the same inspiration in print advertising or traditional advertising in general. It seems like I'm stepping back in time to the set of A&E's Mad Men. Another static print ad pushing a message at a target consumer. Another media plan beaming with circulation numbers. So why are most brands still stuck in the ad age? For manufacturers, they're being driven by their customers.Our brand's print ads, television commercials and web ads are developed to support our brand, but perhaps more importantly (depending on your perspective) they're made to support our sales force and the retailers we serve. The reality is, presently, our retailers aren't asking to see our company's social media plan- they want to see our ad plan. What are we doing to pull products through their stores and bring consumers inside?
Currently, it's difficult to quantify and track the impact of social media on our brands, much less our products and our retailers. With social media monitoring tools like Radian6 offers, the gap may be getting narrower, but it's still going to be a while until the mainstream business community truly understands social media. And they may never even refer to it as such.
On Sunday, I talked about "Selling the Pitch Internally" and how creating a blog for internal use can be a great tool. The irony was that the audience doesn't see it as a blog, rather "Dispatch" the blog's title. If you ask our sales team if they use social media, I'm confident they would all say no.
Most brand managers I know are all on board with social media at some level. They want to extend their reach, explore new territories and define (or redefine) their brands online. But it's not easy to justify a social media spend- if there is such a thing.
For now, I'll go into the ad creative pitch with an open mind. I'll look for things that we can tie into online marketing and social media campaigns. I'll look for ads that have more pull than push and I'll ask our new agency to think the same way. From there, we'll take small steps to implement social media around our marketing. Maybe a socialized news page here, a twitter feed there. Would we love to drop some coin on a social media agency? Sure. But for most brands it's still not in the cards, yet.
So, what will the Mad Men (and women) of our generation look like? Who will break out with an integrated fully-socialized campaign that truly breaks ground? Who's photo will be embeded next to the social media marketing in Wikipedia?
The answer is out there and it's just a matter of time before it gets dialed-in. So keep driving and keep up the innovative approach to your brand or client. The more we soak up, the better we'll be and the more we'll build. Maybe we already are the next Mad Men... Social Media Mad Men.
Originated on PitchEngine
Tags: advertising, media, social
1 Comment
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Comment by David Alston on May 26, 2008 at 9:52am -
Jason, great post. As a guy who's gone through a similar evolution over the past 15 years I feel the same way about the traditional ad buffet. I was fortunate to be able to start fresh here at Radian6 and obviously had the support to explore social media PR and marketing ideas. Going that route has been amazing for our brand. And as I look back at my spend over the past 7 months I don't see any on the traditional (even though I had originally allocated about 1/3 towards it in the budget.) I think next year I'm going to change the name of the "marketing" budget to the "relationships" budget because, for the most part, that's what all of my focus has been.
Not every company has the opportunity to switch cold turkey as you point out but I do hope that many give it a try this year. As someone who has always had marketing in his veins nothing has been so refreshing and invigorating as working within the social web. Once you go social media it's pretty hard to go back :-)
Good luck with receiving the agency pitch this week. Cheers. David
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