• by May 25, 2005

Need help navigating Time Warner's marketing and media assets? Many clients of the world's largest media company do. "We are definitely applying much more creativity and marketing to the preeminent assets in the house of Time Warner, trying to address the more complex client challenges that are out there," says John Partilla, president of Time Warner's Global Marketing Group, the company's in-house marketing and creative consultancy.

Global Marketing was restructured a year ago when Partilla joined the media giant after heading Young & Rubicam's Brand Buzz unit. By tapping closely into properties within each of Time Warner's divisions, including America Online, Time Warner Cable, Time Inc., Turner Broadcasting, and Warner Bros. Entertainment, the unit is attempting to offer marketers and their media agencies more holistic and integrated approaches to their marketing problems.

Even as the company's divisions run ad sales operations on their own, it's often not apparent to Time Warner's biggest clients - Fortune 500 companies like General Motors, Procter & Gamble, Verizon, and Wal-Mart - the kinds of marketing and media opportunities that Time Warner can package. One example of a program strengthened by Global Marketing's involvement was Revlon's "Revlon on the Red Carpet," which involved Time Inc. magazine properties, AOL, Turner, and the WB. "We took nuggets of ideas and made the program bigger and more robust," Partilla says.

Partilla, along with Mark D'Arcy, the group's chief creative officer, work closely with TW division heads, marketers, and media agency executives. Partilla takes pains to emphasize that the group doesn't function as an ad agency: "There are some general agencies and media agencies that are unclear as to what we're doing. But for the most part, that's an exception. Media agencies are, more often than not, confident about being the architect of the brand. They tell us what they need to accomplish in terms of price efficiencies, as well as brand growth objectives."

Even so, Partilla says the group is asked on occasion to collaborate with agencies. "Our competency is in creating more possibilities out of our assets," he emphasizes. "No one has a monopoly on creativity. We're trying to develop more creative possibilities for clients within the house of Time Warner. We want to talk and work with everybody for now, but we are talking a great deal with some of the more creative of the general agencies," Partilla adds. Tobi Elkin

THE NEW AD AGENTS
Anti-Agency Agent
No creative, no media, just pure thought

Reason Inc. is an advertising agency the way the hit TV series "Seinfeld" was a "show about nothing." Reason doesn't create ads, it doesn't buy media, and it doesn't even conduct research. All it does is think. Moreover, it only has one employee - founder, president, and sole thinker Marc Babej.

What Reason does have is clients, and some pretty influential ones at that. And while Babej demures when it comes to discussing them, he occasionally lets it slip that he was doing "this thing" for Time Warner and "that thing" for one of the vice presidential candidates. But just try to get him to talk about what those things are.

Most likely they are some fairly strategic marketing projects. Consider the primary services the agency offers: "reason-based strategy," "motivation engineering," "marketing contingencies," and "actionable futurism." Babej, a former brand strategy director at big agencies like D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, and smaller shops like Kirschenbaum Bond + Partners, is cutting out the middleware and going straight to the thinking process. Sounds reasonable to us. JM

THE NEW AD AGENTS
The "Non-Linear Platform"
Embracing return on involvement

"What if we're wrong about all this stuff?" That's a question you normally don't hear posed in many industries, especially on Madison Avenue where confidence, hype, and spin reign supreme. And you certainly don't expect to hear it from someone peddling advertising services. But that's just what Greg Wilson, founder of San Francisco agency Red Ball Tiger, has been saying about the traditional TV advertising model.

People aren't necessarily skipping commercials, he says, they're using digital video recorders and other technologies to avoid being interrupted from what they're trying to do, like watch TV. Sounds simple, right? Wilson has used that simple logic to develop a new economic model for TV advertising which he calls "return on involvement." He claims it's the only sensible revenue model for advertisers and agencies operating in a world where viewers control television.

"Advertisers pay for outcome rather than effort," Wilson says. Instead of avoiding what he refers to as "non-linear platforms" - things like DVRs, video-on-demand, and broadband video - Wilson says advertisers and agencies should embrace them as a way of knowing when consumers are actually involved with ad messages. That's easy enough for Red Ball Tiger to suggest, because the agency is leading the way in developing "non-linear" ad formats such as TiVo Showcases, but it may not be easy for some traditional agencies to adopt. JM

THE NEW AD AGENTS
The "Marketing/PR" Guy
VNRs are the new PR

Nearly a quarter century ago, Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt coined the phrase "marketing myopia" to describe the near-sighted way many traditional ad agencies look at the marketing process.

For them, it's a process that begins and ends with an advertising message. The problem with that approach is it's not the way most consumers actually get information about brands. They're just as, if not more likely, to get it from a multitude of other media sources, especially the news media itself.

So while Madison Avenue toils at the relatively thin slice of media impressions that are comprised of ad messages, the PR industry is moving quickly to capture the brand turf in the bigger part of the mix.

One of the people who's been moving fastest in that direction is Larry Moskowitz, the chairman-CEO and founder of Medialink, the world's largest producer and distributor of VNRs - video news releases. According to Moskowitz, VNRs represent the future of brand communications. With consumers increasingly avoiding advertising content, Moskowitz is developing ways of getting brands mentioned directly in the editorial content. Sound like branded entertainment? Well, it sort of is, but it's the PR industry's version. Moskowitz calls this approach "marketing public relations." Others have called it "branded journalism." The idea is to provide TV, radio, Web sites, and news organizations with information about a company and brand in a way that will ensure the media will cover it and that people will see it. JM

THE NEW AD AGENTS
The Talent Shop
Mega talent agencies steal some thunder

If Madison Avenue didn't have enough to worry about, it can add Hollywood über-agents to the list. Talent shops have encroached on the territory of traditional ad agencies over the last few years by expanding into branded entertainment and snatching revenue away from the incumbents.

Talent agency client rosters read like the who's-who of marketers, including blue chip brands like American Express and Coca-Cola.

Talent shops like Endeavor, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), William Morris, and The Firm have all muscled into the world of branded entertainment.

Endeavor created a new division more than three years ago called Endeavor Marketing Solutions to serve large companies like Mattel, Time Inc., and American Express, says Jimmy Yaffe, managing partner for the division. He refers to the division as an "innovation" lab designed to build brands through "cool stuff." Such opportunities include non-traditional marketing like video games, premieres, and mall-based communications. Endeavor helped convert Bravo show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" into a lifestyle brand with books, records, calendars, and consumer products through its work for the show's production company Scout Productions.

The goal of talent agencies is to both create opportunities for existing talent and to devise new marketing initiatives for companies. CAA has corralled projects for Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Hasbro. Daisy Whitney

THE NEW AD AGENTS
Communications Planning
Stirring the media mix

Before the British invaded Madison Avenue in the 1990s, zero-based planning meant demonstrating little preference among broadcast network media buys. Radio, outdoor, and print also were used liberally, along with the occasional dash of online media. While agencies thought they were becoming more media neutral, it was really more of the same - media neutrality within the traditional mix.

Thanks to innovation, technological and otherwise, a new breed of media strategists is taking hold. Media planning using the old standbys is giving way to communications planning - a mix of TV, print, outdoor, online, along with buzz and viral marketing, experiential stores, sampling, and other forms that have yet to be determined. The emphasis is on meeting the clients' business goals no matter the media or strategy.

After pressure from clients and waves of consolidation among media buying agencies, U.S. shops have shifted from full-service providers to the media neutral specialists of the U.K., France, and Australia. It took those markets a quarter of a century to get down with the idea, but America adopted the tools and technology and pledged allegiance in less than a decade. Though individual planning executives have made the jump across the pond, the world's dominant media market remains a tough nut to crack for progressive media shops abroad. Communications planning executions are expected to accelerate exponentially as planners identify when consumers are open to receiving messages. Hillary Chura

THE NEW AD AGENTS
The Software Play
Ad zapper as ad agent

It's the perfect oxymoron. TiVo, the device best known for its ability to render ads moot, also sells ads. Through its TiVo Showcase introduced in 2002, the box that became a verb has pioneered long-form advertising of the flashier ilk, like two-minute trailers for movies or videos from automakers. TiVo has struck deals for films like "Austin Powers" and "Lord of the Rings," as well as General Motors, Walt Disney World, and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. That's the sort of content marketers say they must disseminate to fight the ad-skipping phenomenon TiVo spawned six years ago.

More recently, TiVo lured the very networks whose ads are being passed over. NBC, Fox, Discovery, and others have promoted programs in the Showcase, says Kimber Sterling, director, advertising, and research sales at TiVo. TiVo has also worked closely with media and ad agencies.

TiVo offers its ad partners audience data - how many viewers watch a promotion and then record the show, daily usage, clips watched, and total time watched.

Despite its popularity, TiVo, with its 3 million customers, was on deathwatch until Comcast announced a partnership this spring to develop a version of the TiVo service that will be integrated into its set-top boxes. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts also says TiVo will work with Comcast to develop a system to deliver more targeted and relevant ads.

Says Sterling: "Our vision is to provide opportunities as well for advertisers and networks that may offset the [TiVo] threat and turn it into a more valuable platform." DW

THE NEW AD AGENTS
The Clients
Putting the zing in in-sourcing

Something about being on the ropes makes it difficult to cede control of pretty much anything. It's also part of the reason Target Corp. and Apple Computer have some of the coolest marketing around.

Target and Apple used to have about as much zing as a thrift store. Apple, while cool, innovative, and sexy, had seen better days. Now, both brands are soaring.

While other marketers farm out advertising and media decisions, a small group of Apple and Target executives come up with groovy lifestyle marketing; execution is outsourced to myriad agencies. You could call it in-sourcing.

An in-house team at Apple handles buzz marketing, and Steve Jobs, the company's iconoclastic co-founder and CEO, has been behind much of the creative work since rejoining the company in 1997 when its market share looked like Silicon Valley's version of the Atkins diet. Omnicom Group's TBWA/Chiat/Day and OMD earn their fees, but largely by complementing, rather than defining, their client.

Target's Minneapolis headquarters, meanwhile, is ground zero for marketing activities ranging from copy writing and planning to merchandise presentations. The red bull's-eye pulls in talent from a raft of agencies including Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, Peterson Milla Hooks, and Periscope. HC

THE NEW AD AGENTS
The Media Agencies
The cart leading the horse

If the medium really is the message, then maybe media shops will emerge as the new ad agents, relegating their "creative" counterparts to the purely tactical function of writing, art direction, and production.

The new breed of media agency is certainly positioning itself that way, abandoning its "media buying" roots. These new agencies are becoming strategic visionaries that drive both medium and message. In the interactive space, there are plenty of examples of media shops driving creative.

In many ways, this is a return to Madison Avenue's roots. Agencies began as media brokers who ultimately produced ads and conducted research as a means to an end: placing media. Now they're flipping the process, developing communications strategies that pinpoint where prospects are likely to be most receptive to an ad message. JM