Google sales emperor Tim Armstrong helped open this morning's AAAA media conference with a presentation entitled, "Why Google Is Not Out To Disintermediate Agencies," but for a
moment there, it looked like Microsoft might be looking to disintermediate Tim Armstrong.
As is frequently the case when
cuing up high-tech presentations at these events, Armstrong experienced a few glitches getting his Powerpoint presentation going. Flummoxed, he turned to the audience and invoked, "Damn
Microsoft!"
Then he produced an image of Disney’s Dumbo on the screen, which, as it turned out, had nothing to do
with Anne Sweeney, or even Microsoft, but had everything to do with disintermediation. Or, as Armstrong described it, "The elephant in the room."
That, of course, is what he sought to dispel, making an ample case for why Google is more friend than enemy, drawing from seven and a half years of calling
on agencies, and revealing some of the "secret sauce" Google has created to help agencies do their jobs better.
After
seeing the presentation, which was chockfull of spiffy new workflow tools that would enable agencies to manage and process, not just their online media buys, but their offline ones as well, Armstrong
had me convinced that Google is not out to disintermediate agencies. It’s out to disintermediate Donovan Data Systems, and the ilk vying for its dominance of Madison Avenue’s data
processing business.
What should scare Donovan, and even its new age competitors like MediaBank, is not whether
Google’s systems are better (which Armstrong seemed to suggest they might be), but the fact that they are free.
As good an offer as that might seem, Armstrong might want to think about how he sells it to Madison Avenue. Said one very big media agency chief to me as we strolled away from that
session, "The problem with Google is they always sound like they're talking down to us."