• by Kendall Allen , December 8, 2008

As a communicator, I always appreciate the deepening quality of conversation over time. Within friendships, romances, business relationships and the intellectual space I share with any number of group, I crave this; I stir this. In fact, immersed this past weekend with a national group of agency executives -- ever-restless, as I am, about the "agency" moniker itself -- I was most enriched by the elevation of business and marketing themes. Getting beyond the buyer/seller call and response, keeping the transactional in a more critical context -- we are talking about advertising in a different way. As we should. This is a crucial conversation and point of connection with my peers that I greatly value  as we manage our client business during times of change.

Planning Relics and the Habit of Thinking Small

But, there are levels of conversation and of change. Like many of you, I read the piece "Not Ye Olde Banner" a week or so ago in The Economist and kind of enjoyed it. Ultimately, I felt this was a tiny window into a much meatier conversation on how we do what we do for our clients.

There were some evocative passages: the usual eMarketer blurb on trends and spend shift by percentage; Mary Meeker dishing reality check; random musings to illustrate the changing face of advertising.

I found this especially curious: Randall Rothenberg of the Interactive Advertising Bureau is quoted on what he feels is the obsolescence of above- and below-the-line distinctions. True, this lingo lives in a room with other agency nomenclature like role-based planning, Day in the Life modeling, and any number of funnels and pyramids. As we know, the above/below construct typically delineates between methods deployed to create demand or generate awareness and those that are about action and conversion. This point engaged me because, to me, whether or not this distinction is obsolete -- and I'm not sure that it is or that this even matters -- it leads to that point we've been discussing on attribution: which media does what.

"Online" is credited in the piece with moving us away from this construct. It goes on to say that online has essentially made advertising much less speculative. In all its measurability, online has served to change the conversation about advertising. The inference is that online is powerful in its ability -- when well-conceived and unleashed -- to hit awareness, consideration, preference, loyalty and conversion. Online is the complete package. Not so fast. Bigger thoughts, please!

I think the focus on "online" and banner advance is kind of interesting but, truthfully, too small. What online has done is gotten us in touch with the potent values of consumer demand and influence, opening the door to integration. What in fact makes advertising less speculative today is the work the best marketers and agencies do to thoroughly understand consumer demand and influence -- and what a whole array of digital advances has done to enable that devotion.

Speculating on the Maturity of Emerging Media

Recent conversations about emerging media spur the same area of thought. Given the state of overall digital advances, focus on consumer-led driving insights, and the progress of platforms themselves -- we watch for maturity in a more meaningful way. We care about it in a more mature way. This is great to see. No longer are we just stating that the new is no longer new or watching the next cool thing become adopted or passé. But as any given emergent media demonstrates consumer resonance, delivers volume, and services marketing objectives -- all increasingly backed up by data -- we may more confidently call something mature and call it our own, as marketers.

As the improvement of discourse dawns, as we speak from both a business and marketing standpoint, as the advertising point is no longer isolated -- it's been great to see social and emergent media become a very real part of our marketing and programming considerations. "The line" is still there -- but thankfully, our best work is about so much more than having nailed it through the line.