- Free Agent: The Benefits of Extinction in
Media Magazine on
07/14/2009
Call it crappy-economy-inspired paranoia, but lately I've been feeling increasingly concerned that media planners and buyers could become extinct. My worry is not that the people themselves will die
out (although enough years in the ad trenches can have that effect), but that the positions they work in today will be outsourced, downsized and flat-out eliminated.
- Digging Out From Under in
MediaDailyNews on
04/28/2009
Think back about three months to the inauguration of our new president, a breathtaking moment the likes of which many of us had not experienced in our lifetimes. People from every corner of America
are giddily hopeful, thrilled at what We the People are capable of, and our intent to change not only this country but the world.
- Free Agent:Something Old, Something New in
Media Magazine on
02/02/2009
Are you kidding me? Those words reverberated in my head upon reading a recent column in this magazine. The piece, "Don't Give Up Just Yet" (October 2008), reported on a major study conducted by
Yankelovich and Sequent Partners that revealed what was posited as a silver lining amidst the storm clouds facing traditional media today: Despite their rapid migration to new media, consumers like -
and are more responsive to - advertising in traditional channels. The author, J. Walker Smith, suggested this finding might be a reason not to lose faith in old-school media quite yet.
- Free Agent: The Customer's Always Right in
Media Magazine on
12/02/2008
Here's a phrase you don't often hear: "I had the best customer-service experience the other day." But I really did, and it made me think about how rarely marketing communications actually serve
consumers' needs in a valuable way.
- Free Agent: Seeing What Sticks in
Media Magazine on
10/02/2008
What a difference a decade makes. This thought struck me recently while I was dining with some colleagues from the interactive advertising ranks. They were talking (okay, complaining) about clients
and agency partners who spend too much time and money trying to perfect their ads - even relatively simple banners - on the front end rather than just putting them out on the Web and seeing what works
best. Their experiences sounded surprisingly similar to those of my colleagues in more traditional ad arenas.
- Free Agent: All Talk and No Action in
Media Magazine on
06/23/2008
It seems fashionble lately for people in our business to eschew the word "advertising." Somewhere along the line the term became distasteful, linked to earlier times when one-way, one-message
communication was enough to do the job of selling goods to the public. Heard of any new ad agencies launching lately? Probably not. Instead, we hear terms like "brand studio," "brand-messaging lab"
and myriad other newfangled labels that make what we do for a living sound far more complex and sophisticated.
- Free Agent: The Power of Multiplicity in
Media Magazine on
05/20/2008
You know you're getting old when you start looking back at certain parts of your career as the good old days. I admit I fall victim to the rose-colored-rear-view-mirror mentality once in a while. But
you know what's worse? Thinking back on those halcyon days and realizing just how antiquated and irrelevant the work you were doing then is today. It's humbling.
- Free Agent: A Separation Anxiety in
Media Magazine on
02/22/2008
One of the key reasons I became a consultant was to help agencies figure out how to reinvent themselves in order to meet the need for modern, media-influenced communications solutions. More and more
shops were questioning how to build for the future, usually by some means of getting media and strategy and/or creative to work together more closely, and in my 20 years on the agency side one of my
favorite parts of the job was breaking down the walls between those disciplines.
- Free Agent: Collaborate or Die in
Media Magazine on
11/29/2007
A realization hit me as I started on the road home. Hours and even days after leaving the first-ever connection-planning conference, hosted by New Orleans agency Trumpet, I still could feel all the
fresh, provocative thinking reverberating in my brain.
- Free Agent: A Cart With No Horse in
Media Magazine on
10/01/2007
In the pressure to be (or at least appear) current in today's onslaught of new-media opportunities, many in our profession are finding themselves making or receiving channel dictates like this - which
is fine, as long as one critical criterion has been met beforehand: the core idea has been cracked.