Art as a source of inspiration for ad agencies (part one)

Clients often ask agencies to come up with distinctive ideas for exclusive brand experiences, original engagement solutions with consumers.

Take a look at what two artists did last year in Paris. Out of the blue, Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann (better known by their abbreviation L/B) have managed to create an amazing artistic project with their Hotel Everland.

It consisted in a hotel room that used to be located on the roof of the Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary art museum on the right bank.

On the way up

On the roof

As you can see on the photos, the design was striking and the location pertinent.

There was a digital trick though, which made the whole story even more enticing and intelligent: people were unable to book through their usual travel agents. The only option was to log on the hotel’s website  approximatively two months before the d date. At one stage during the day, an icon would appear… and the first person who would click on it would win the right to spend 444 Euros for a one-night stay.

This is what I call “meta exclusivity”. Even Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, with their deep pockets, would have been unable to book a night, unless they were willing to spend hours refreshing the webpage in question in order to win the virtual lottery.

The digital aspect of this project certainly added a universal dimension. People from the four corners of the world were suddenly able to participate in this original experience. A physical experience, indeed, but triggered by a digital platform.

This is Art.

But if it had been conceived for a brand, what a communication excercise it would have been! And what a smart way to blend digital with physical.

This is surely a source of inspiration for ad agencies and brands.

Again, look at the view.

Facing the Eiffel tower

Will digital agencies collapse?

Suffice to say that, with the advent of digital, “traditional” agencies have had to re-invent themselves, to change, to innovate.

The real difficulty has not been to develop digital capabilities, but to integrate them in the overall offering. On the one hand, there is the fast-moving, project-based, technology-led, disruptive and full of surprise digital activity. On the other hand, there is the well-known, slow growth, retainer-based, old reflexes-driven and rather predictable traditional marcom business.

The key was, and still is, to foster innovation and change, without destroying the mainstream business.

Well, one can argue that many agencies did successfully integrate digital.

In short, today, a genuine – and somewhat ideal – multidisciplinary approach to client service could equal to: (ATL + BTL + PR + media + design + content) * (digital + non-digital).

Now, let us talk about pure player digital agencies. In the last three years I met a few of them, whether independent or part of a ad network. Interestingly, some of them seem to be totally un-interested in integrating tradional advertising. Digital is all they breathe.

In other words, traditional agencies got our of their comfort zone to understand and internalise digital… while some digital hotshops now refuse to venture into the jungle of traditional advertising.

Does it make sense? Will they loose business if they don’t adapt soon to the current paradigm, where clients want agencies to be not only media neutral, but also “idea neutral”, both in the physical and digital worlds?

This is what John Gapper, associate editor at the Financial Times, recently wrote: “The proliferation of agencies not only feels to many advertisers like a luxury in straitened times, but is also ill-fitted to the new digital world.”. He added “It did not matter while clients had plenty of money to throw at the problem, but they are no longer willing to pay lots of agencies for overlapping roles, and are squeezing fees”.

In a world where integration and multidisciplinary skills are important to clients, what will happen to digital agencies who remain allergic to the non-digital stuff?

TV versus Internet TV

I am going to participate to a debate on the Internet and the future of television broadcasting at the University of Oxford Internet Institute on Friday 16th October.

All participants were asked to provide initial comments that would be discussed during the debate. Here is my opinion piece:

The television broadcasting industry is in danger.

And once again, this is all the fault of the digital revolution.

On the one hand, it is evident that the advent of broadband access for the general public is disrupting, if not destroying some sectors such as the music industry.

However, one could argue that broadcasted television’s lack of appeal is not just due to the superiority of digital platforms, but also to its intrinsic limits: in an age where computer and mobile screen interfaces can do wonder, watching programmes on a TV set is indeed a frustrating experience.

Take for example the problem of screen sizing. How many times have we ended up watching people on the screen who look wide… simply because the TV set is enlarging the image to the panoramic view? Apparently, there is a “smart” option on TV sets, which automatically re-sizes images. So if TVs have a brain, it is smaller than that of my other media players.

Just like a landline telephone handset compares poorly to a mobile phone, television interfaces and remote controls are inferior to PC and Internet interactivity. As the Duke of Edinburgh elegantly put it this week: “to work out how to operate a TV set, you practically have to make love to the thing. Why can’t you have a handset that people who are not 10 years old can actually read”. No further comments needed!

I concede these considerations may be trivial… So, amongst a long list of more serious issues, I am highlighting two critical topics for our forthcoming debate at the University of Oxford’ Internet Institute on the future of broadcasting:

First, let us talk about QUALITY OF CONTENT.

From chess to foreign affairs through to football, military history, economics or ballroom dancing, our post-modern society provides such a variety of hobbies and passions that television programmers are confronted with the impossible task of addressing the wide interests of the audience.  This Sisyphean mission must have frustrated countless TV executives, hence their propensity to aim for a common denominator.

How many evenings per week do we think: “there is nothing interesting tonight on TV… once again”?

Take architecture: I am a fan. Why can’t there be a decent programme on the latest news about buildings and urbanism? We all know that cost is king, especially when the target audience is not massive. But a one-hour programme dedicated to architecture could be in the form of a debate between academics, practicians and amateurs, nothing more. A monthly discussion would be sufficient to satisfy my curiosity and passion. More would be perfect, but I cannot be too demanding.

The same could be said about jazz music, diplomacy, roman noir, philosophy, archaeology, etc.

By catering for the masses, TV cannot compete with platforms such as social media, blogs or video aggregators, where niche topics strive.

If TV channels want to retain their freshness, “live” effect, utility and relevance, they must diversify their offerings. With TV channels such as SciFi, Film 4 or Cartoon Network, they have started to do so years ago. However, rather than solely betting on specialist channels, they should also think about mainstream TV channels that would offer different programmes, that are not just cop dramas, soaps, news and reality shows. There is room for mainstream channels… with a lateral twist.

Second, there is a problem with regards to GEOGRAPHICAL AVAILABILITY.

Evidently, for media broadcasting industries, legal frameworks are of national nature. This is a critical issue in Europe, where a significant proportion of EU citizens do not live in their country of origin. For those “expats”, watching a TV show from their native country is difficult. There are ersatz of TV channels, such as French-speaking state-funded network TV5, which are supposed to select the best of French, Swiss and Canadian programmes. In fact, it is an illogical and confusing amalgamation of disparate programmes. And in addition, you often need to pay for these kinds of un-attractive TV channels!

Because radio needs less bandwidth, or thanks to a more relaxed legal framework (?), it is far easier to listen to foreign radios channels. Coming back to my experience as a French expat, there is a wonderful iPhone application called France Radio, which allows me to listen, live, to all French state-owned radio stations. Believe it or not, this service is provided for free by two Spanish software programmers…  Either they are in love with French culture, or they have something against state radios!

With the arrival of Hulu and Boxee in Europe next year, what happened with radio will be repeated with television.

There will still be an issue with advertising and legal restrictions.

For the former, addressable advertising may be the panacea. Germans living in Italy will have their TV show interrupted by an ad for a local Italian retail chain, thus allowing advertising revenue to be maintained (the multiple problems generated by addressable advertising will be discussed in a separate blogpost).

For the latter, the EU must simply come up with a pan-European set of rules that will allow the emergence of a “broadcasting Shengen” agreement. Let TV programmes freely cross our frontiers! Knowing the efficiency of European lawmakers, I presume this undertaking should take a couple of months.

With all these issues around traditional TV broadcasting, the future success of Internet television as a flexible and value-added service will not come as a surprise.

Still, “classical” television broadcasting is not dead… at least for now.

TV is also about feeling a sense of community: we all love to watch, at the same time, something unique, enticing, extra-ordinary. We just enjoy so much the sense of sharing an amazing experience, live, with a few friends, but also with millions of people.

In a world where multi-tasking and “always-on” seem to prevail, and where interacting with friends, strangers and even brands is commonplace, traditional television’s main weakness, that is the passiveness it implies, may be its ultimate strength: What a delight, after a day spent struggling with a continuous flow of emails, SMS, instant messages, tweets and blogposts, to peacefully watch a great TV programme. With no red button to click on… Am I that old school?

Google: mighty giant or ephemeral phenomenon?

Google could be seen as the modern equivalent of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil – a sort of quasi-monopoly with a take-no-prisoners mentality.

In “classical” industry sectors – by classical I mean pre-digital – like automotive, mining, telecoms or oil extraction, economies of scale and entry barriers provide corporations with a crucial layer of protection.

Is it the same on the Internet?

And if not, is Google a giant with feet of clay?

Let us take a look at the directory-publishing sector as a benchmark – a relevant choice, since Google is nothing less than a universal version of a yellow pages operator.

These companies used to run large and expensive sales forces. The sheer amount of money needed to set up a competing business was usually too great to be worth the effort. With the advent of digital technology, however, automated space booking replaced sales forces, lowering barriers to entry.

Combined with superior algorithms and a first-mover advantage, this favoured the emergence of Google.

But the digital nature of Google’s activities is in fact both its weakness and its strength. Even with disproportionate scale and substantial competitive advantage, a digital business is not as well-protected as Standard Oil or yellow pages firms used to be. As seen with Netscape a few years ago, companies can be wiped out in a matter of months.

And the Internet is intrinsically open to any kind of attack, and not just that of known competitors. Tomorrow, an 18-year-old Swedish genius could come up with a better search engine or a better monetisation model.

It is difficult to raise funds for and perilous to launch a new TV channel, a new car manufacturer or a new mobile operator; it is feasible to launch a search engine, a social network or an online video site with a worldwide audience.

That is the very nature of the digital economy: it can rapidly transform or even destroy whole industry sectors. It did this to music, insurance and travel, and it could do it again to the online search business.

Another reason to doubt Google’s longevity is that the value of sponsored links on search results pages – the bulk of Google’s revenue and profits – could decline.

In 10 years, will we continue to click on sponsored links when we search for information? Will we be interested in opening a link that was paid for by a company that simply wants you to visit its webpage? Or, will there be a Tivo-isation of search, with a growing number of users systematically skipping advertised links?

I would also argue that the big battle in search is around the qualification of results, a giant leap from the neutrality – read lack of added value – of the yellow pages. If you want to spend a nice evening in Barcelona, combining theatre, restaurant and bar, online search services of Lonely Planet, Michelin, Time Out or Wallpaper may be more helpful than Google, which in this case looks like an uninspiring amalgamator of basic information. Even better, you could use social searches by asking your Bebo, MySpace or LinkedIn acquaintances.

Finally, with regards to privacy, there is also the possibility of a backlash against intrusive information-gathering – see the recent Phorm debacle in the UK. In this “1984 scenario”, web users could decide, in order to protect their privacy, to spread their searches across various and unconnected services, so that no one search engine could capture their whole behavioural profile. For example, you could use Bing at work, Google at home, Wolfram at university, Twitter while commuting, and Facebook while travelling.

All these concerns may undermine Google’s supremacy.

I bet, though, that its management have already anticipated all these issues, and have stockpiled weapons of mass retaliation…

Still, in the end, what really strikes me about Google is the amazing energy it deploys in innovating in myriad areas, and not always inter-connected ones. Isn’t this a sign that Google is consciously enlarging its portfolio of activities – just in case search, the cash cow, does not perform as expected in the future?

Or, conversely, is it just a candid and optimistic expression of Google’s self-confidence, where even not-for-profit activities are commonly included in its corporate strategy? As if it knew it can magnanimously afford to mix mercantilism with charitable actions – see Eric Schmidt’s surprisingly open comments about Google’s plans during a video interview by Ken Auletta of The New Yorker.

Digital media is such a volatile and open-ended industry that it makes cinema tycoon Sam Goldwyn’s famous saying “Never predict anything – especially the future” even more pertinent.

Let us see where Google is in a few years – I shall stop drinking Pinot Noir for an entire month if Google is as prevalent as it is today…

McKinsey is looking for creative people!

Just joking… It is very unlikely to happen.

Really? Read this:

Imagine you are the top guy at McKinsey: what would be your next move?

McKinsey is rich and famous, and excel at providing recommendations. They are often criticized for not being interested in following up their power point presentations with implementation solutions… But to their defense, one could argue that this activity is not part of their core competence. Fine.

However, should McKinsey seriously think about diversifying?

They cannot continue to advise their clients to re-engineer their business, reshape their organization, and revamp, transform their corporate strategy, without at one stage applying these very prescriptions to themselves!

Actually, McKinsey has already been reinvented.

From corporate strategy in the early days, the consultancy developed a marketing strategy practice in the 1970s, and then moved to brand strategy at the end of the 1980s by buying a small brand consultancy called Envision and then by simply spreading its knowledge to all partners around the world in view of becoming a leading expert in brand portfolio management… which indeed happened!

So, again, what’s next for them?

Logically, after marketing and branding, communication should be the next move, no?

In this case, they would have to hire creatives…

This strategic move could relegate advertising agencies to mere production/adaptation outlets.

Or, it could have counter-productive consequences for McKinsey: full of anger, agencies would retaliate by becoming less addicted to the communication matter and more of a marketing-at-large consulting partner (a phenomenon that has in fact already started).

I still cannot imagine jeans and trainers running down the corridors of McKinsey with drawings in their hands and big ideas in their heads!

But since the 21^st Century is full of surprise, who knows what will happen… Watch this space.