• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, May 3, 2006

I like San Francisco. The weather can be a bit strange, but it always seems to show its best version when the tech-geeks are in town, and last week was proof. I spent the week at Ad: Tech, chatting with lots of people about lots of great ideas. While I came away in shock concerning the growth our industry has seen over the last few years, I also came away wondering if everyone was paying attention to the details. I was wondering if everyone saw the forest for the trees.

First of all, I saw too many people preaching direct response for an industry that has spent the last five years since the bubble trying to convince brand marketers that our industry was a good place for them, too.

There were many companies basing their business models on direct response models of advertising and not embracing the development of the brand. In my estimation, half the companies on the exhibit floor seemed to have "CPA" or "ROI" in their titles or taglines.

A few years ago I coined the term "Brand Response" in some articles and preached the model of finding the correlations between traditional brand metrics and direct response advertising. After all, what purpose does spending money and building a brand have, but to sell product and build a business? In the end all advertising serves to drive sales, so though they may be indirect, it's still about response.

What I found short-sighted about many of these companies was they were too narrowly focused on direct response, not paying attention to the strength in building a brand. I saw descriptions of ad-tagging and database analytics, which I love, and I still think are completely necessary in the age of accountability, but I found myself asking these companies if they saw the forest for the trees. I found myself asking them what they believed to be the balance between direct sales (or calls, or leads, or whatever they were focused on) and the strength of a brand. Companies are built on many pillars, and a brand is certainly one of them. These companies weren't thinking of that--and they were unable to provide me with an adequate response.

My second observation from last week was that search is still hot (duh). A little less than half the remaining floor was dedicated to search marketing and optimization companies. I tried to understand the differentiations between all these companies, but I found my mind becoming fuzzy and the benefits of each blurring together. They were still all focused on text results via the traditional browser interface and I found myself wondering why none of them were focused on delivering solutions or optimizing solutions for the next wave of search, the aptly titled buzzword of "Search 2.0."

I heard too many companies saying they were the "Google of" this or that. I wanted to hear about innovations rather than a "me-too" strategy, and I once again found myself asking them if they saw the forest for the trees. Did they understand that what made companies like Google so interesting was that they fundamentally changed the way in which consumers solve a problem? These pioneers attacked a consumer behavior from a completely different angle in order to modify an existing behavior, fundamentally changing the ways in which consumers find information.

These were revolutionary changes, and though evolution is nice, revolution is more effective. Remember; it wasn't called "The Industrial Evolution," but "The Industrial Revolution"! To be a successful brand in an environment of speed and change, companies need revolutionary ideas to draw the attention of those around them. I saw too many companies with similar business models attempting to stand out without a unique concept or a revolutionary idea. The forest I was looking at was full of the same kind of trees.

What I did see when I walked around and chatted with people was reforestation. I saw areas of the industry where, five or six years ago, there were burn marks--and now there were trees. It was a very San Francisco moment when I realized how well our business was doing, and that we were poised for more growth. Even though I disagreed with some of the companies, I was excited to see the energy and the buzz around ideas being discussed. I saw the forest for the trees in that, even though I don't always agree with the ideas and the methodologies, it was a Renaissance movement and one that would flow for many years to come. The forest I saw was growing,and that is something I look forward to for many years to come.

What did you see when you looked out on the Ad:Tech floor and listened to the discussions?