Only the brave will reap the benefits of creativity

There’s an old saying in screenwriting: If you want to reveal the truth of a character, dial up the pressure and force him or her to make a choice. Well, it seems a choice is being forced upon our industry, and I think it’s a great thing. A recent Forrester report, “The Cost of Creativity,” suggested—or rather, lamented—that “The value of agency creativity is at risk of disappearing.” It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out how we got here. Margins tighten, media fragments, agencies diversify their offerings in order to “stay relevant” and grab new revenue opportunities. Play it out and it’s easy to see the cost: an industry plagued by short-termism, seeking guarantees that aren’t there from data and analytics, and searching for answers in old debates like big agency-vs-small and AOR-vs-not. Perhaps most importantly: A creative discipline that has forgotten its only truly effective product offering. If it sounds like the sort of rhetoric that we typically dish out to clients, it is. So, what happened? If it’s any consolation, where we are today is largely of our own doing.  Like most change, it didn’t occur in one sweeping, easy-to-detect moment, but in lots of small incremental steps, including: —Defining the quality and bigness of an idea by the variety of media placements in which it appeared. —Putting the priorities of the media platforms on which our our brands live before those of our own brands. —Taking way too long to realize that digital media... Continue reading at 'Advertising Age'

[ Advertising Age | 2019-09-26 07:00:00 UTC ]

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Yet another brutal week for American journalism

On Wednesday, without prior warning, Pacific Standard, an award-winning magazine that has done substantive journalism on environmental and social justice, announced its imminent closure. The Social Justice Foundation, a nonprofit backed by SAGE, an academic publisher, yanked its funding from... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review

[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2019-08-09 12:12:17 UTC ]
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How Hearst’s Product Team Helps Build Audience, Revenues

“We don’t do anything without an audience opportunity and a revenue opportunity,” Robertson Barrett, President of Digital Media at Hearst Newspapers, Continue reading at Editor & Publisher

[ Editor & Publisher | 2019-08-08 15:06:02 UTC ]
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Cisco names Dentsu's Isobar its digital marketing innovation agency of record

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[ Advertising Age | 2019-08-06 18:07:06 UTC ]
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UM promotes Deidre Smalls-Landau to U.S. chief marketing officer

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[ Advertising Age | 2019-08-06 16:00:00 UTC ]
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SmartNews becomes first unicorn news startup since 2015

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[ Crains New York | 2019-08-05 20:24:37 UTC ]
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SmartNews becomes first unicorn media startup since 2015

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Drake is bringing LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s Uninterrupted to Canada

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How Google Is Thinking About Its Upcoming Changes for User Privacy

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Pampers’ new smart diapers give parents smartphone pee alerts: Marketer’s Brief

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Bustle Digital Group Acquires Tech and Science Site Inverse

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Another brutal week for American journalism

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Ro’s vp of growth Will Flaherty: ‘There’s no silver bullet for attribution’

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