• by Dawn Zencka , September 25, 2012

Consumer’s growing dependency on accessing the web 24/7 has wreacked havoc on the ad world’s traditional operating model. For decades, marketers have relied on agencies to help craft and tell stories about their brands in a fairly linear, streamlined process. Today, however, we’re operating in a world
where the storyteller is sharing a stage with its audience and their input is critical to the overall story of the brand. The ad world’s ecosystem of lead-time, project planning and publishing schedules now needs to find a way to take in the consumer voice, and incorporate it into the story.

Finding ways to bring that reverse flow of data into the mix is essential to how media’s role will evolve. This shift is seismic in nature because of its impact on the operational structure of so many organizations. It changes how agencies build practices, communicate their offering to potential customers, train and develop employees, and operate in profitable ways.

The elements critical to media’s success in the future include:

• Real-Time, Fluid Budgeting: Marketers need to think about carving out budgets for real-time dollars. In the online space this is already happening. Last winter we saw a huge surge in smartphone use while consumers were out shopping for the holidays. Some marketers were nimble enough to shift dollars to accommodate the increased volume, however, those that had strict KPIs against certain channels and could not free up dollars missed the opportunity to capture more revenue. Fixed budgets allocations need to be reconsidered as there is a rising need to distribute dollars in real-time, even if it starts out as just a small percentage of their overall budgets.
• Response Timing: During this summer’s Olympics AT&T was able to incorporate the results from Ryan Lochte’s 400M into a commercial that aired less than 24-hours after the event. For Super Bowl XLVI, Coca Cola developed an online world of two polar bears responding real-time to the game’s play-by-play. The live stream reached over one million viewers by the fourth quarter. As we continue down the path of the “immediacy of now” consumers will come to expect marketers to be as up to the minute as possible with their content, their stories.
• Collaborative cross-functional teams: The previous two ideas feed into this last notion and it’s an idea that Google is already advocating via its “Agile Creative” approach that strives to make the creative development and distribution process more nimble. Placing media specialists side-by-side with creative developers and analytics gurus, enables the group to make collective decisions that result in highly successful real-time relevant campaigns, stories that will ultimately resonate more with consumers.

The media world is changing. Agencies need to adopt new models that reflect changing consumer habits; considering their 24/7 dependency on the web and rising influence in contributing to a brand’s story. The agencies that pioneer the way and test new fluid, flexible and collaborative operational models are the ones who will end up on top.

Dawn Zencka, VP Strategic Insights iProspect