Discipline + Technology ÷ Current State = Reality (intro)

The discipline of Advertising & Marketing is commonly thought to be less than 100 years old. This may be the case if you added the words ‘as we know it’ in front, but commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of ancient Arabia.

Egyptians used papyrus to create sales messages and wall posters, while lost-and-found Advertising on papyrus was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Wall or rock painting for commercial Advertising is another manifestation of an ancient Advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America.

The tradition of commercial wall painting can be traced back to Indian rock-art paintings that date back to 4000 BCE.

Due to the advancements in the 15^th century printing industry, handbills (or ‘flyers’) started appearing and by the 17^th century, newspapers commonly contained ads, usually for books and medicines. These adverts were not really paid for until 1836 when a French paper called La Presse charged for Advertising and was able to reduce its cover price.

Around 1840 a guy called Volney Palmer created a brokering agency for these adverts as did one particular French news agent called Charles-Louis Havas.

The agency Havas was born and the model spread like wildfire, all over the western world.

In the 1920’s radio came about and the print model was used again – this time the adverts couldn’t contain visual imagery so the science of broadcasting persuasive words and music was learned.

The cinemas almost always showed some form of commercial messages and agencies enjoyed the opportunity of the big screen.

TV Advertising really kicked off during the 50’s and by the 60’s Advertising became far more creative. Messaging was not simply the brand name and purpose but conceptual pieces that wowed audiences.

However, the emergence of the Internet was arguably the first seismic shift in what Advertising could do.

Commercial messages no longer needed to be on static and one-way media channels. People were now able to interact.

To Advertisers, this was exciting as behavior was starting to be seen which added to the ability to know whether media channel and the people were the right fit.

Targeting of Internet Advertising is still based on which site or service people are using. The assumption is that if people are on a car site, they may want to see car adverts. This assumptive method has always been known – its logical that people reading about rapid spreading diseases in the 17^th century may potentially be interested in medicinal remedies.

Throughout history the devices on which Advertising is served have become more and more personal. From walls to computers, the Advertising is now not only in our house but surrounding our work documents and emails.

Then. Mobile phones arrived.

Mobiles rapidly became absolutely essential in peoples lives. Within a decade, these small pieces of plastic became the thing people would least like to lose in a choice of keys, wallet or Mobile.

As Advertising and Marketing channels have become digitized, without exception, the technological advances have assured that digitization equals mobilization.

Ergo, the current state is centric to the most used media channel of all time – the mobile phone. This isn’t a personal bias, this is a citizen bias manifested by the people of the world. It is us who have chosen this channel by finding it more convenient, connected, affordable and accessible that anything beforehand.

As Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore wrote in their (essential) white paper, ‘The 7^th Mass Media’, Mobile presents a totally unique set of capabilities:

1 – The Mobile phone is the first personal mass media

2 – The Mobile is permanently carried media

3 – The Mobile is the only always-on mass media

4 – Mobile is the only mass media with a built-in payment mechanism

5 – Mobile is only media available at the point of creative inspiration

6 – Mobile is only media with accurate audience measurement

7 – Mobile captures the social context of media consumption

So – Advertisers duly worked out ways of squeezing Internet adverts down into a smaller screen and populated WAP and Mobile Internet sites with adverts.

However, Mobile isn’t primarily a display device like some of the predated mediums, it is a communication device first and foremost.

People use phones to communicate with dialogue, yet there is little acceptance or realization, by Advertising and Marketing practitioners, that optimum effectiveness will come via dialogue based campaigns.

We have reached ‘peak attention’ and from now on the old methods face a downhill struggle. In his Jan 2008 blog, Russell Davies predicted that ‘in the future there’ll be less advertising and less commercial media’.

He based this on original thinking from Matt Webb, who stated

“2008 is the year we hit Peak Attention. You can either carry on encountering as much as you do now, giving every input less and less attention every year, or you can start managing it, keeping some back to take long-haul attention flights. What are the consequences of living post-Peak Attention? Nobody will be able to understand anything hard unless they make sacrifices.”

We live in a world where it is readily accepted that for many people, advertising is a total and utter waste of time and all this was fine until media channels become more and more personal.

In its current state, the industry is reluctant to change its practices. Change is the enemy of the competent and nurtures defensive, insular and limiting reactions from those at the highest level in the majority of Advertising and Marketing companies.

What’s more – Mobile devices are the most personal devices on the planet. This means that communication of brands to Mobile users should not, logically, be anything other than personal to them.

“No problem” said the Advertisers and Marketers, “we can use the masses of data that phone networks have to target people even better than online!”

But, and it’s a big but, this information that can be used is not always the whole story of each individual person. It does not always contain their unique preferences or desires. This means that Advertising may or may not actually match what people want.

Added to this, for Mobile Advertising methods other than display, there is either a regulatory or moral requirement to have explicit user permission.

In a scenario then where permission and preference are not totally known, the potential that people churn off the network to another is obviously unpalatable for network operators, let alone the Advertisers that have upset their audience.

It seemed OK to do so in all 6 mediums before, but no longer so in the personal medium of Mobile.

For members of public today, Advertising is something that can be cool, fun and exciting but predominantly it is seen as useless, ridiculous, interfering and irrelevant.

One could argue that faced with this reality, the effort of those in media should be to maximize the number of people who like stuff and minimize those who don’t.

Targeting those who are most likely to like our stuff, is what we try and do – in many cases this works great. In others it doesn’t. We live in an age where half of all people online have never clicked on an Internet advert and very few people have granted permission to receive commercial messages on their phones.

We are fast-forwarding television adverts and getting to the cinema 15 minutes late so we don’t have to sit through the adverts.

We can dial in radio stations in iTunes, which contain no adverts but play the same music as the stations that do. In fact, we can create our own radio stations playing tunes in the order we want – and rightly so.

We can set up RSS feeds to give us the content we want which also avoids having to tolerate a web page with irrelevant flashing images, slowing down the page-loading time.

We live in a world where it is readily accepted that for many people, Advertising is a total and utter waste of time and all this was fine until media channels become more and more personal…

Today, adverts currently have a fairly negative connotation. Advertising and Marketing communications are the things we try and block out, the barriers to our content, the wasted space on a page, the annoying and often insulting creations made by award-winning, highly paid and ultra-intelligent people who have mastered their craft over decades.

Discipline + Technology + Speculation/Reflection ÷ Likely Hurdles = Future 1 (body)

At the time of writing, standards bodies such as the MMA and OMA, along with the Mobile operator trade association (GSMA) are standardizing xHTML banner formats as a priority. Their reasoning is twofold: banners are the easiest channel for media agencies to understand, and also – banner ads display well on the more limited Mobile device browsers.

However, banner adverts rarely exploit the bi-directional, communicative nature of Mobile as seen in the introduction earlier.

I predict that the vast majority of Mobile Marketing will be messaging based in the future. I also predict that user opt-in will be a global standard. The primary justification of this prediction is that consumers will increasingly demand the right to invite Advertisers in to their conversations.

Added to this, Advertisers will see the positive effect of invitation and therefore seek out environments where an invitation mechanism is in place or can be initiated.

The science that we need to apply now is not the same as it has been for the last 100 years of Advertising and Marketing. We cannot just simply apply the techniques we have mastered with the 6 prior mass media. The 7th is totally unique – not just as a device but as what it means in peoples lives.

Looking forward, I believe that the definition and principles of commercial communication will fundamentally change beyond recognition.

I feel that in the new world, the term advertising will no longer mean adverts, it will mean relevant, and useful content. Advertising in the new world will be beneficial in a way that enables people to do things. This could be media players, car insurance finders, virtual payment mechanisms or concert ticketing services – it doesn’t matter, so long as it’s useful for people and brands to communicate with each other.

In the future, communities will prosper with environments, platforms and tools to create, collaborate and interact. These facilities must exist in addition to communication that is (1) relevant, (2) an offering that is transparent, (3) interaction that is easy to do and (4) containing an incentive of value. These are the four rules of engagement, without which, the environments, platforms and tools have limited power or purpose.

I predict that Mobile will sit within Direct Marketing as it is an engagement media.

In my opinion, this Marketing approach should be based on the principles of:

Permission – people will decide what they see/receive/engage with

Privacy – people will decide where their data is and how it is used

Preference – people will decide what content they find relevant

Inference and assumption has limited life span. People will effortlessly request information and the technology that provides the answers, will be invisible.

Consumer permission and trust will be mandatory rather than a lucky by-product.

Pricing of communication will be based on value that is determined by the receivers not the transmitters. The value of their individual attention will be set by those whose attention is commanded and therefore earned.

Agencies will be application and utility creators. Their competition will be other application and utility creators, enabling personal brand communication.

The primary spend in advertising today is on cold media that has no interactive element and doesn’t initiate or encourage conversation. I see a world where cold media is no longer tangible as a predominant method. I suspect that mass reach, non-interactive, blitzkrieg ‘advertising’ will eventually change to interactive, selective conversations.

The young generation that currently demands these conversations will not change their demands in years to come. We should be thinking about what happens in business when the ultra-connected generation grow up. Their rules of engagement and tech savvy-ness will only build and brands have an option to assist in their discussions and creation.

We should not underestimate the effect this will have on business-to-business marketing if the populations of business have grown up with the predominant mentality of dialogue and the earning of attention.

This suggestion alone has astronomical implications to the definition and application of what we currently call Advertising and Marketing. Unsurprisingly then, there are many hurdles to overcome.

Advertising and Marketing companies will progress at different speeds. Some will not progress at all.

Due to this, it is safe to assume that the future landscape of companies will not replicate the one we see today. Weaker Advertisers and Marketers, with marginal value, are likely candidates for purchase by larger or more advanced incumbents.

Companies with significantly diminished value will find trading untenable and will close.

The signposts are already in place for how to progress but the main hurdle is one of risk.

Risking business as usual often generates what I call the ‘Chicken Button’. This is where companies essentially ‘chicken out’ of trying anything new.

It is understandable why Advertisers and Marketers resist change and our respective action points need to address the idiosyncratic behaviour of the industry players.

As mentioned in the first section of this piece, change is the enemy of the competent. But why is this so? Because change may require a different set of competencies, which may not fit the set that exists. Ergo, change is bad.

In the Advertising and Marketing industry, the necessary changes I predict, will continue to threaten a multitude of perfectly competent people. Good people, nice people who are damn good at their jobs.

The second most popular hurdle in Advertising and Marketing innovation is ignorance.

Increased awareness of the challenges set out in documents like this, will hopefully ensure that the information is at least accessible. However, unless you know what to ask, you rarely know how to find, let alone identify, the answer.

The education of the industry is a significant and long-lasting need. Due to this, we now see the emergence of organisations designed to assist these changes.

The future of Advertising and Marketing outlined in this document will not arrive during any one year. It will be an iterative step change requiring collaborative effort across the fragmented ‘value chain’ which ideally, in the future, will be ‘Citizen Biased’ rather than what we see today as ‘Commercially Biased’.

The concept of ‘Citizen Bias’ is essentially to put more control and freedom in the hands of whom we call ‘Consumers’.

Of course, we are only consumers if we are consuming and this type of presumptive labeling is one of the many issues to be addressed.

I predict that every single part of the ‘value chain’ will fundamentally change.

Why? Because never before had we dealt with media so deeply linked to the emotions of every single one of us.

Plus the actual ‘value chain’ looks like this:

1. Every single one of us

2. Everything else

We have been looking at things from the wrong way round.

I firmly believe that the optimal way of approaching communication is from a citizen perspective.

Discipline + Technology + Speculation/Reflection ÷ Ideal Situation = Future 2 (extro)

Social networks enable people to connect and express their feelings digitally. These people have un-buyable advertising power – not in the sense of banners and CPM (Cost Per Millenia: the standard way of buying banners by the thousand) but in their methods and reach of advocacy.

At first glance, the lack of millions of eyeballs places negative emphasis on standard advertising power, but this can only assumed if advertising power is measured by the amount of page impressions that can be garnered.

Perfectly qualified people currently state that the most effective advertising is a medium with 1,000,000 people of whom little is known, rather than a community of 10,000 fanatics who are each individually connected to at least 100 people and write about what they like.

The term ‘effective’ must surely be based on how hard it is in their jobs to join the conversations of the fanatics, because the power of advocacy is undeniable within groups of friends.

In the words of Alan Moore from SMLXL and Xtract, “Social Media Intelligence is the Black Gold of the 21^st Century”.

I believe we are moving to a world where the most effective advertising will be the opposite of impressions, impacts and CPM. Engagement, interaction and word of mouth will eclipse such archaic practice.

The industry will ideally become facilitators of the flow from awareness through to affinity.

Here is a potential facilitation flow:

1. Idea + Media Channel (+/- Conversation) = Awareness

2. Logic + Emotion = Thought

3. Thought/Peer Influence = Personal Bias

4. Awareness + Personal Bias = Review

5. Acceptance + Interaction = Engagement

6. Engagement + (Reaction/Peer Justification) = Experience

7. Experience Shared = Conversation

8. Conversation Shared = Positive/Negative Affinity

At each juncture, Advertisers and Marketers need to be enabling the positive flow to the next step. This has to be done with integrity and with the formation of trust.

As commercial communication increasingly enters the realm of our personal devices, uninvited information within our personal space is something that breeds distrust. Trust is extraordinarily important in personal communication; therefore, personal brand communication must employ protocols that breed trust.

Transparency of commercial communication will be based on principles of clarity and honesty. Building clear and trustworthy environments is necessary in the quest for citizen belief in a product, service or brand. When these environments exist, negative experiences are more easily quenched and positive advocacy can breed.

I see the ideal outcome of positive advocacy amongst a number of people as the formation of an ‘Army of Fanatics’. Once this exists, it is both tremendously hard to compete in the marketplace and far more efficient to market something.

In this example, the Marketing cost is in part, subsumed by the public, and this is known already to be the most effective Advertising and Marketing practice of all. Logically this should therefore be one of the ultimate goals for Advertising and Marketing practitioners.

Currently we use tools to create content and use parts of a few media channels to share it. I predict that in the years to come, all devices enabling mobility will be based on creation, sharing and interaction of multimedia content within trusted environments.

The differentiation that new world brands can offer is with the firm placement of customer emotion at the heart of their offering.

The connections people have with each other and with brands, products and services presently have barriers that limit the interconnections individuals’ desire. However, my theories involve the dismantling of standard segments into ranges of individuals. The individualisation of commercial communication is one of the hardest concepts to put into action.

The winning brands will logically place themselves as selfless offerings that are totally and purely committed to inter and intra-personal connectivity.

The inter-links between message and experience will be removed so you can interact with content that triggers further experiences – on any machine and a screen.

The advertising community will increasingly realize these trends and gradually base their creative, planning and buying around environments of conversation.

Agencies will be facilitators of both sides of communication rather than just the outbound, brand side. The creation of commercial communication will be in collaboration with individuals.

Return on investment will be the key focal point of effectiveness. The days of winning awards for non-economically viable campaigns will come to an end.

The media agencies will become consultative units of high-level, long-term investment strategies for select brand clients.

Advertising agencies will house the creative development of utilities and Direct Marketing Agencies will be glued together with digital capability and focus on the science of personal brand communications on personal devices.

We will see constellations and combinations of media channels that are optional and custom-fit to individual user experience. These constellations will be strategically invested in by media agencies as brokers for their brands.

Ubiquitous, mass-market media will become niche and selective, personal, niche communications will become ubiquitous.

Future 1 ÷ Future 2 + Action Pathways = Activities (action plan)

From the previous sections, the collective vision for the future of Advertising and Marketing operates on the below statements:

1. The ultimate goal of Advertising and Marketing is to be more efficient and beneficial for those in the industry and in the public

2. Relevance in communication enables efficiencies but true relevance in Advertising and Marketing communication can only come through the knowledge of and acceptance by people

3. Knowledge of individual permission and preference, matched by citizen access to their own information; helps breed trusted environments

4. Trusted and relevant environments are essential as device personality increases

5. Within trustworthy and relevant environments, there is a reduced need to filter out diminishing, unwanted communication, hence increasing the effectiveness and benefit of Advertising and Marketing communication

The above statements outline a future that is based on practices of permission, privacy and preference, as mentioned earlier.

The future vision shows that permission must be sought and gained, therefore the existing practices in Direct Marketing must be considered for potential application in other types of Advertising and Marketing approaches. As for privacy, in the above context, it relates to where people’s data is and how it is used. Therefore, this part involves mechanisms to enable inquiry and administration by the people who own the data (i.e. the individual citizen). Finally, preference is not solely about the content of Advertising and Marketing communication, but also the context. Preference of media channel is as important in this thesis, as preference of product type.

The actions required, to help bring the desired future into reality, need to be sympathetic to the issues, challenges and existing infrastructure of the Advertising and Marketing industries.

There will be companies that succeed and companies that do not. If the people of the world win, then we all win, because we are all people, after-all.

There is no single party that can ’solve’ this. No single opinion that can guide this, but, perhaps as a catalyst, I believe we need to create a roadmap so that people and companies, at their own pace, can move forward in whatever way they decide.

This roadmap contains an order of action points, which are to be carried out in association with an external resource. The approach is created so as to ensure that the approaches outlined earlier, can be assessed, tested, proven and implemented in a pragmatic way.

The 7 steps of this roadmap are as follows:

1. The lay of the land. We need to know where we are and what it looks like. It is named as such due to the need for ongoing research and deep insight into the state of the communications world, from citizens through to CEOs.

It is a regional barometer reading of where we are at any given moment. Whilst research is carried out, country-by-country, information needs to be collected as a comprehensive, global resource.

The logic follows that once we know where we are starting from, we can better plan where we are going.

2. The protocol of adventure. We need to have an understanding on how we can be adventurous and curious whilst not harming core business. It is an assessed agreement of how a company or organisation intends to innovate and implement change based on the Lay of the Land.

In an environment of resistance and fear of the unfamiliar, we must find ways to be adventurous within structures that are not necessarily built to accommodate change.

The need to change is still paramount so the Protocol must balance legacy structure with disruptive methodology.

3. Modelling of scenarios. We need to run thought tests to see ‘what would happen if..’

This stage involves discussion of approaches, illustration of concepts, reference to data and analysis of potential outcomes.

It is vital in any plan to discuss ‘what would happen if..?’ once we have agreed our Protocol of Adventure.

Scenarios that are modelled are guided by objectives that a company or organisation has – however, it is possible that objectives may change if potential outcomes become more realistic.

4. The pilot programs. We need to test-drive the scenarios we favour in accordance to our protocol of adventure and what we have learned from the lay of the land.

By this point we have access to all relevant information concerning the current position and have agreed on the ways we intend to be adventurous. With this information we have been able to model scenarios that show potential outcomes – some of which may be attractive and others may not.

The scenarios that resonate most should now be tried in controlled environments, ensuring that existing business models (if applicable) are not put at risk.

These are the Trial Programs.

It is worth noting that the companies that get to stage 4 the quickest have the highest chance of success. This is due to most companies assuming the future rather than trying anything – hence step 3 is the most common end point in the journey.

Those that are still around in step 4 are almost always in the minority. Often this is the minority of 20% who make 80% of the revenue leaving the 80% at step 3 to share the 20% left over.

5. The API layer. We need to apply code to the driven scenarios so they can be side-loaded and implemented into our wider companies and organizations

The Trial Programs, in the preceding step, were bespoke activities, specific to the requirements of the company or organisation involved.

Now, in the 5th step, the successful trials need to be made into replicable, automated processes. Applications and platforms may already exist that can be applied here to enable benefit for citizens and companies or organisations.

This enables positive activity to be scaled – however, there is one more step before then.

6. Sense and respond. We need to listen-up with humility and take any result, pass or fail, as a result nonetheless.

There is an ongoing need for learning and applying new information to activity. This is inherent within each step. However, at this point, the need ‘Sense and Respond’ means more than standard awareness and (re)action.

In the preceding step, we looked to scale trial programs into full implementations. It is critical that the benefit calculated in the Scenario stage and proved in the Trial Programs, is not lost due to bad execution when creating scalable systems. Due to this, applying the necessary components to enable scale must be carried out whilst sensing and responding to barriers, bugs, politics, technological improvements and any other issues or opportunities.

Modifications can and will be made at this stage but the minimum requirement should be to accentuate benefit and not to dilute positive affect in any way.

7. Scale. Once we have sensed the effect, responded accordingly and have the code in place to replicate, we need to enforce scale as soon as possible

At this point, everything is in place to horizontally scale (across territories/markets) and vertically scale (increased activity/revenue). Scale should be rapid, aggressive, viral and relentless. Anything that limits the scale should be cut out, immediately. Anything that could fan the flames should be adopted, immediately.

In my opinion, the citizen biased, collaborative and trusted communication methods will scale quickest and result in an environment of mutual benefit that is tremendously hard to stop let alone compete with.

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Summary

I believe that the only way of achieving the type of future outlined in this thesis is to follow this logical path of steps. We need to connect those who have the will to change with those who have the skill to help. Positive change is possible and the future of Advertising and Marketing will, given a chance, be significantly more collaborative and beneficial for all parties.

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At Ogilvy, Jonathan MacDonald is a Senior Consultant to the CEO & Chairman and is structuring the Global mobile strategy.

Prior to this, Jonathan was a Director of the world’s first purely ad-funded Mobile Network: Blyk.

As one of the original team, Jonathan shaped the overall business strategy in the sales, operations, analytics and creative departments.

Before this, Jonathan was the Commercial Director of Ministry of Sound, CEO of a Sky TV Channel, Chairman of the Music Industries Association and consultant to over 100 companies over 18 years.

He is also the founder of a communications movement called Every Single One Of Us which seeks to unite a wide cross-section of mobile operators, advertising agencies, big-name brands and members of the public; to educate the industry and encourage discussions about emerging business models and to facilitate a step change in communications.

Jonathan has over 120k readers of his blog, is an award winning keynote speaker and runs regular thought-leader seminars across the world in advertising and marketing.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/jmacdonald

Blog: http://www.jonathanmacdonald.com/
ESOOU: http://everysingleoneofus.com