• by Katarina Skoberne , October 23, 2008

It's no surprise that marketers are demanding advertising services at a lower cost these days. Some changes need to be made, and, some would argue, reforms to the remuneration process need to be agreed upon. But what about speed? Marketers want their advertising solutions to be more cost effective, but shouldn't they also want them FASTER? I'm finding that more and more do.

As the advertising industry comes to grips with the fact that marketing is no longer a one-way communication, but has become a two-way conversation, the timing (and structure) of generating advertising will be pushed to change. The traditional ad creative ideation response time struggles to accommodate today's requirement of 24/7 responsiveness. Not only is business-to-business communication instant, but the consumer also expects brands to communicate rather than serve messages that were prepared months in advance. Consumers are gathering information about those brands from a plethora of different channels -- all faster than the brands themselves are delivering any messaging of their own.

Put simply, we need to speed things up. We no longer have the luxury of communicating a marketing message three weeks after something has affected our brand equity. As is abundantly clear in today's economic climate, it can be patently embarrassing for a brand to continue to run ads that are no longer relevant given the day's news. Think of all the ads that had to be quickly pulled following the domino-like financial institution falls last month. These same companies really want me to believe that my kids should feel safe knowing our money is with them, that they're going to "be there?" The "trust us" line from banks just isn't going to cut it this year. Similarly uncomfortable, I remember being in India a few months ago, when an airline continued to advertise as "India's favorite airline" despite having run over and killed an airport employee.

Certain situations that require a timely advertising response have less to do with crisis management or attentiveness to the larger business world than they do with pure reaction to market swings -- not only with regard to financial markets, but even taking into account simple sales results and how they correspond to certain messaging modules. The direct marketing industry has moved toward a better understanding of this, and often works to adapt messaging quickly based on measured results of current/previous campaigns. Today, all advertising should be able to adjust quickly based on similar factors.

During this era of instant gratification, consumers expect business' brand communications to address the most current market and cultural forces, and they expect them to be relevant and immediate. The advertising marketplace being highly competitive, the demand for custom creative themes and quicker turnaround is forever on the rise. The Google platform has caused a disruption of the media industry, but it has also offered a solution to the problem. As networking, Web 2.0 and other innovative creative models offer marketers the ability to keep a competitive pace and still achieve creative and relevant brand communications, the advertising industry will need to enact similar fundamental changes to the way that it operates.