New Line's Paddison: 'Cut The Fat' Out Of Integrated Plans

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- Calling at least some campaigns "overpriced garbage," Gordon Paddison, executive vice president of digital marketing for New Line Cinema, called for media buyers to "cut the fat" out of cross-platform marketing efforts during a lively panel discussion at MediaPost's OMMA Global Expo in Los Angeles.

Big publishers with extensive cross-platform assets are some of the worst offenders, the rambunctious Paddision said, because they think their size and resources gives them the leverage and leeway. On the other hand, the relatively new interactive medium "has been very good at delivering value to clients," he conceded, and online publishers and agencies alike are usually willing (although not always able) to cooperate with other media.

Echoing Paddison's last point, Charles Mangano, the chief marketing office of Minyanville, said he sometimes finds himself working with advertisers and media buyers "who have good instincts but don't know how it all fits together." Mangano explained that in many of these cases, the buyers are enthusiastic about creating cross-platform campaigns, but neglect the foundations of advertising, including "positioning, segmentation, and all those old-school kinds of things."

Rounding out the panelists' wish list, Samantha Maltin, senior vice president of integrated marketing and partnerships for Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Groups, reiterated the need for accurate cross-platform metrics that "wrap up" all the other metrics in a comprehensible way. While the measurability of digital media is "all upside," Paddison remarked that there are still no metrics for engagement or to understand the relationship between "push" and "pull" media.

But marketing executives shouldn't expect too much of cross-platform measurement, cautioned Scott Shamberg, senior vice president, marketing and media, Critical Mass, the "token agency" representative on the panel. Imagining a scenario where the consumer is simultaneously watching TV, surfing the net on a laptop, talking on the phone, and watching kids play a video game, Shamberg opined: "You can't possibly measure all that and make sense of it now." The best marketers can do is analyze the individual data streams and prioritize them in terms of perceived importance.

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