• by April 25, 2005

By Lisa Seward

I can't be the only one. Please, someone out there reassure me that I'm not the only media professional who, at least occasionally, finds herself pining to work in the Larry Tate era instead of in today's on-demand-branded-content-product-placement-guerrilla-broadband-dot-com craziness. Most of the time, I agree that this is a brilliant time to be in media, but it's also hard, thanks to burgeoning consumer control.

But sometimes I wonder if we're making it harder than it has to be. In the tangled vortex of so-called "proprietary" media tools, consumer insights, strategic architectures, and endless processes, media people have forgotten that we have to have a great idea at the center of all we do. And that idea, if it's bold, captivating, and magical enough, serves as a galvanizing force to simplify everything we do. Not coincidentally, it also makes our thinking easier to sell to clients, and our work more effective in the marketplace.

Do you remember Larry Tate? He was Darrin's ad-agency boss on "Bewitched" (a show which furnished my first career influence, followed shortly thereafter by a burning desire to decorate store windows like Rhoda on the "Mary Tyler Moore Show"). Larry, frazzled as he was, had a way of making advertising appear... well, simple and straightforward, namely because it always centered on a 'Big Idea.' As I recall, creating campaigns in Larry's world boiled down to one meeting where they'd seize on a 'Big Idea,' followed (after the requisite zany sitcom antics, of course) by the client presentation and cocktails at 5 p.m.

Obviously it wasn't really that simple back then. But when exactly did advertising become so difficult? There are many contributing factors, of course, not the least of which are today's more complicated marketing world and more sophisticated consumers. But we media people have also added to the complexity, largely by unbundling and then selling media services as somehow separate from the overall campaign development process. And in so doing, we've cloaked our work in tools and studies and recycled processes  anything to cover up that it's not an idea-centric business anymore.

Could it be  or, some might ask, should it be  as simple as getting back to the Larry-and-partners meeting and merely adding a media perspective? I say yes. Maybe not all the time, and maybe not always together in one room, but we need far more media/creative collaboration than we have now. Agency management, and especially clients, should insist that media and creative people work together.

For all you doubters, just stop for a moment and imagine what would be possible if today's brightest media minds were toiling away on ideas that turn consumers' heads and hearts, instead of working on how to differentiate identical services from the media shop across the street? Or if our energy was focused not on cross-discipline politicking, but on creativity?

Don't say it's not possible, because too many great agencies and advertisers are proving otherwise. Ad people of all disciplines, media included, can sit down together, make great work their only priority, agree on an idea, and then execute the hell out of it in every channel for incredible return on investment  if we want to  and if our clients insist we do.

We just have to think a little more like Larry.

Lisa Seward is media director at Fallon, Minneapolis. (lisa.seward@fallon.com)