Second, in the spirit of full disclosure, my blog topic is about an app that belongs to one of my agency’s clients.  I don’t work on the business and we had nothing to do with the app, but there is a connection so I’m laying it out now.

The app in question is the TWCable TV app for the iPad from Time Warner Cable.  This is one of those “well, duh” apps, brilliant for both its simplicity and functionality—a wireless, mobile household TV.  I can’t believe every cable/subscription TV carrier doesn’t have one of these.

For those of you outside the Time Warner service area or sadly lacking an iPad (accept no substitutes, BTW), here’s the deal:  click the app and you instantly have another TV.  In your bedroom, in the laundry room, in the bathroom, wherever you happen to be standing within reach of your WiFi.  Wicked cool.

But here’s the downside:  many of Time Warner’s channels have complained, so you only get a limited subset of your channel lineup.  The reasoning, as I understand it, is that the channels don’t get paid for our impromptu viewership.  Where’s Seth Meyers with a “Wow, Really?” SNL segment when you need him?

The single biggest reason for jumping headlong onto this bandwagon is exactly the concern the channels are voicing—free extra eyeballs.  It makes no sense.  This is great for advertisers.  Impressions they weren’t getting are suddenly begging for access.  I’ll argue that an iPad viewer is potentially a far more captive audience than a regular TV viewer.  The iPad is a much more intimate viewing experience.  You don’t have it on in the background; you have it on in your lap.  You’re less likely to get up and go do something else, because you’re probably already doing it.  In fact, there’s a huge opportunity to make the app aware of the commercial being shown so more of the iAd functionality could be built into the experience.

If embraced by the content providers, this is a potentially giant leap toward more interactive TV.  Since Day One, Apple has been touting the iPad as a new medium; here’s the perfect bridge between traditional TV and personal TV.  Awesome and exciting—and perhaps doomed because distributors can’t think beyond their traditional model for making a buck.  I can understand why the premium channels would have a quibble (and I’d be willing to pay a couple extra bucks a month to watch HBO on my deck while the steaks are grilling), but advertising-supported networks should be clamoring to promote this simple, brilliant extension of our TV viewing experience.

Or we can be content with getting past the latest pesky Angry Birds level while half-listening to Chopped in the background.

1. Denial:  In certain circles, there have been whispers that this is just the latest of many attempts over the years to fix what’s either not broken or or not so broken as to need replacing.  To a certain extent, there’s a mild air of”humor them and this, too, shall pass.”
2. Anger:  Now, that we’re signing everyone up for a series of training classes, we’re encountering pockets of push back.  ”Why do I have to take these classes?”  ”I’m fine with the new process, but it doesn’t apply to me….”  ”What’s wrong with the way we do it now?”  As we move from theory to practice, it’s understandable that now folks are paying attention—and might not be as comfortable with the changes as they thought.
3. Bargaining:  I suspect that once we get through the training, we’ll hear from a lot of folks looking for exceptions or suggesting that our new processes don’t or shouldn’t apply to them.  We all think our circumstances are unique, but they rarely are.  Generally, with a little tweaking, old ways can shift seamlessly into the new.
4. Depression:  I fully expect some sadness to set in as the new process takes hold.  We have a lot of great people who are pretty used to doing things in the manner that works best for them.  However, if we’re going to maintain our edge moving forward, we absolutely have to make sure everyone—from our CEO to our newest assistant AE—able to confidently perform against the same sheet of music.
5. Acceptance:  Eventually, I think everyone will accept and embrace our new approach.  We have a great agency loaded with great minds.  Although change is difficult (and not without its hiccups, missteps and in-line enhancements), it is absolutely necessary.  As we move through the process, folks will accept what we’re up to.

Then comes the hard part:  changing individual behaviors to engrain the new process as a new, agency-wide habit.

I want to delineate between awareness tactics and lead generation tactics thusly:  an awareness tactic is one that requires an individual to take more than one step to engage.  Lead generation tactics are defined as single-step engagement drivers.

For instance, banner ads, search, emails and QR tags are lead generation tactics; PR, advertising and postal mail are awareness tactics.  Why?  The vast majority of engagement tactics today are online (e.g., web sites, mobile content, etc.).  If I get an email, I’m one click away from engaging with the brand.  If I see a great magazine ad (that doesn’t include a QR tag), I have to remember the URL long enough to type it into my browser.

For metrics purposes, I think this distinction provides a clean demarcation line for determining where to credit engagements.  Of course, this methodology divides direct marketing into two camps:  online and offline.  The online methods—email, SMS, etc.—would be safely in the lead generation camp.  However, postal mail would be considered an awareness tactic.  Traditionally, it has been simpler to classify lead generation as any tactic where you’re sending a message directly to an individual.  My approach says postal mail is really an awareness tactic with a higher response rate than its advertising and PR cousins.

The goal is accurate measurement and appropriate attribution of a tactic’s impact.  It seems to me that the actions-to-engagement parameter is a better classification when it comes to tracking than the traditional direct marketing vs. mass media approach.  What do you think?

So, as I spend this weekend working on the training that will make the promise of transformation an irrevocable reality, it dawns on me that the hard part hasn’t started yet.  Sure, giving up most of my nights and weekends for over a year to help ensure we pull this off cleanly has been exhausting—but absolutely worth it.  However, the first rays of the real hard part, the “I was behind this until I realized it impacts my job” part, are just now peeking over the horizon.

The marketing communications industry finds itself in a perfect storm of a jobless recovery (if, in fact, we’re actually in recovery), the dawning of the Social Age, the rise of the third screen (e.g., smartphones and iPads) and a new inquisitor near the head of the agency selection table (i.e., Procurement).

At the agency level, nobody survives this storm on his or her own.  If we cling to that piece of turf we thought was ours, we’re doomed.  “That’s my job” or “that’s my billable hour” absolutely has to be replaced by “how can I help today?” and “what do I need to learn for us to be successful?” or we’ll never navigate our way to calmer waters.

In any symbiotic environment, the organism dies if the symbiants enter self-preservation mode.  And if the organism dies, things don’t end too well for the symbiants either.  To survive, we have to be willing to surrender preconceptions and historical responsibilities.  We have to embrace the new challenges presented and trust that, for a change, good deeds will not only go unpunished but that the rewards on the other side of transformation are worth the effort, the uncertainty, the self-doubt and the short walk off the long pier.

Agencies that reconfigure to weather the perfect storm will emerge stronger, I believe.  And the marketers we serve will be all the more successful for it.

But first, a change is gonna come.  On behalf of change agents everywhere, please check your pitchforks and torches at the door.

Any agency looking for more than a supplier relationship with its clients these days should be carefully rethinking its account leadership talent mix.  It has always been pretty easy to separate account management responsibilities from creative duties (although inside every Pete Campbell there’s a Don Draper dying for some daylight; I’m not so sure the opposite is true!). I think, though, that as agencies strive to keep a seat at the client’s strategy table while also making sure that assignments move through the execution process, it may be time to divvy up account leadership to ensure that all masters are appropriately served.

From a strategy perspective, understanding the competing voices of the customer, the marketplace, the brand and the client have never been more important.  Big creative ideas support integrated marketing efforts that help solve business problems, but they’re not the solutions.  Keeping a continual eye on where the puck is headed (to borrow from Wayne Gretzky) from customer, market and brand perspectives—in terms of trends analysis, on-going insights and strategic planning—is more than a full-time job.  Add in juggling multiple tactical assignments in various stages of completion while maintaining regular consultative support and it’s no wonder that account executive turnover is high and burnout is higher.

For agencies that haven’t already figured out that dividing and conquering is worth the handful of extra hours on a job, here’s an approach to consider:

1. Make your account leadership the conductor in the agency orchestra, not a one-man band.  Inside the agency, the account manager is responsible for representing the voice of the client.  For the client, the account manager is responsible for representing the agency and bringing the right team members to the table as needed to ensure indispensability.  The account manager is the focal point for the agency-client relationship and the broker for all activities, but not the sole provider of any offering.
2. Develop an insights, strategy and planning practice that can keep the account manager and creative director skating where the puck is headed.  Demand that this practice result in on-going insights into the intricate and ever-changing relationship between customer, market and brand.  Account managers need to be getting briefed, not trying to stay in front of every single occurrence of importance to their client.  If your organization isn’t willing to invest in this effort for a client, it’s time to find clients that are worth the investment (or start shopping your resume to more enlightened agencies).
3. Create an Office of Project Management and turn tactical execution over to dedicated project managers.  A good project manager will recoup any strategic investment tenfold.  It is impossible to watch the forest and the trees.  Let your account manager worry about the forest; profit or loss is determined in the trees.  Project managers are equal partners with account managers and strategy teams.  They have client contact and maintain an open ear for new strategic thinking that can result in a better overall execution.

Margins are too thin to place the burden of client management, customer-market-brand intelligence and project throughput on the shoulders of a single position (even if you dedicate multiple people to the position).  Specialization of labor has worked pretty much since humans started clanning up.  The best, most profitable client relationships to be had today require a team effort.

If you’re worried you’re going to lose your job or become irrelevant because the “whole” this approach creates is vastly greater than the sum of its parts (all of which used to be you), it’s probably time to change careers.  If you try to carry all the water yourself with a marketing client in 2011, you’re likely to find yourself with a sore back, an empty bucket and wet feet.  And the marketer will still be really thirsty.

It didn’t quite turn out that way and the U.S. learned an extremely difficult—and devastatingly costly—lesson:  when the rules of engagement change, no amount of traditional strategy, tactics or muscle are going to override the new rules.

I was fortunate to participate in a clear bellwether that the rules of engagement for marketing communications are in the midst of irrevocable change.  On September 23, Lift Summit 2010 was held in Atlanta, GA.  The theme of the one-day event was “practical, applicable ways that social commerce drives sales,” but the real vibe came from the emphatic nature of each speaker’s tacit proclamation that the real business of marketing is shifting dramatically out of the control of marketers and into the hands of the consumer (for our purposes, “consumer” refers to B2B or B2C targets; we’re all consumers, we just wear different hats at home and at work).

From Eric Bradlow (@ebradlow), Co-Director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, to Sam Decker (@SamDecker) of BazaarVoice, Erik Qualman (@equalman), author of Socialnomics, or Boland Jones of PGi, the undertone was clear:  if you want to optimize sales, you’d better get on the stick when it comes to participating in the social conversations that will drive your business (or drive you out of business).

(One aside:  I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to attend a conference that wasn’t filled with Marketing 101 speakers; the Lift Summit was definitely a graduate course.  It moved quickly and demanded more than a cursory understanding of the social landscape from attendees who, based on the plethora of in-conference tweets, seemed to be eating it up.)

I won’t recap the conference here (you should check out #liftsummit on Twitter or visit an excellent blog recap at http://blog.liftsummit.com/ for more info), but it did completely reinforce how catastrophically wrong it is for marketers to ever accept a traditional marketing plan ever again.

As marketers, we’re literally bringing a knife to the gunfight that is social commerce today.  It’s time to fully embrace that traditional advertising, PR and direct marketing are now merely support tactics for social engagement and nurturing.

We can complain about it all we want, but the marketing funnel of our future is a social graph.  We still need traditional tactics to create “aha” moments and fill in the knowledge gaps that will undoubtedly be created by the less-than-expert UGC opinions that will surround our brands, but—for better or worse—the shopping mall just got razed.  In its place is a bazaar that’s more rave than flea market.  So grab your glow stick and dive in; the only way to understand this world is to immerse yourself in it.

PS:  Don’t confuse “social media” with Facebook and Twitter.  They may be the best known to the masses, but this revolution is way, way bigger.  Oh, yeah, and the fastest-growing social interaction device also makes phone calls.

This is frightening on a number of levels.  Evidently, to be academically gifted or at least perceived as intellectually superior to one’s peers gets you the same scarlet letter Emma Stone has donned this weekend for “Easy A.”  President Obama is labeled an “elitist” and an “intellectual” derisively by the Fox News-devouring masses (on a side note… I’m not a Republican, but if I was I would be very, very afraid that my party was being overrun by fear-mongering simpletons and that “Red State” is becoming increasingly synonymous with “Red Neck”….).  I won’t retread an excellent essay Joel Stein contributed to Time Magazine a few issues back, but the United States didn’t become a world leader by rewarding and regaling the left side of its IQ bell curve.

The same thing is happening in marketing communications these days (in case you were wondering if I’d be reeling this week’s post back to our usual topicsphere…).  Today’s marcom landscape is incredibly complex, wide-ranging and fluid.  Every message we deliver has even less of a chance of reaching and impacting the intended audience than the ones we delivered last week.  We are sitting at the nexus of shrinking marketing budgets and expanding competition for mind share.

And yet, many marketers are getting increasingly impatient when their agencies respond to requests with intricate, multifaceted solutions.  “I just want something easy” or “we need to start small” are frequent responses.  I promise you, the marketer that wants to solve their business problems by only focusing on tactical band-aids won’t last long.  Marketing is getting exponentially more difficult as social media and mobile channels entrench themselves.  Now that you have fairly instant access to everyone and everything, how much harder will it be to get you to focus on any thing, much less get you to concentrate on that thing I want you to do.

Now is the time when we need to embrace the systems thinkers in our industry (it would be cool if we could embrace them in all aspects of society, but first things first…).  Complex problems require critical thinking to uncover the best possible use of your limited marketing dollars.  Don’t hire Sexy; don’t let your procurement office talk you into hiring Cheap.  Hire Smart.  Surround yourself with thinkers and you’ll save enough to execute cost-effectively and return enough to your bottom line to maintain your employment status.  If enough of us embrace inspiration over perspiration, maybe the intellectuals in our industry can come out of the self-imposed exile necessary to “just get along” and join us at the table.  Marketing is hard enough without killing our companies and our careers looking for the “Easy” button.

It feels like the marketing communications industry is in the midst of a similar debate.

In one camp, we have the Purveyors of Basic Math.  An assignment is considered; the number of hours estimated are multiplied by either the various hourly rates of the team members to be involved or blended into a single rate that makes the math even easier for the prospective client.  In theory, it makes for an apples-to-apples comparison between agencies.  Clients can determine how well they like an approach within the context of the estimated amount and cost of the labor involved.

In the other camp, we have, well, lots of other camps. But one rising unifying principle seems to be compensation based on value, either perceived or derived. So, we’ll call this camp the League of Extraordinary Admen.

The League looks at an assignment, determines level of effort and solution’s potential value.  The solution is then priced and provided to the client, along with a Statement of Work that clearly defines deliverables, timelines and performance criteria.  Clients can then determine if the solution offered is worth the price quoted.  Hourly rates aren’t required in the quote; all the client needs to do is decide what they’re willing to pay for the solution.  If the quote is $100,000 and the agency can deliver the solution in an hour, then the hourly rate is $100,000; if it takes 100,000 hours, the hourly rate is $1.00.  It’s up to the League to make sure achieved hourly rates are delivering the best margins.

To-may-to, to-mah-to, you say?  In both scenarios, hours are being calculated and multiplied by the hourly rates of the team members involved.  The only difference is client transparency, right?  Actually, there are a couple of subtle but important differences.

The first difference is internal.  If you’re billing hours, you’re incentivized to use all available hours to complete your task.  If your productivity is determined based on your billability and there’s no backlog, you have no incentive to deliver your greatness as expeditiously as possible.  You’re also necessarily concerned about bringing others into the mix, because billable hours are perceived as a zero-sum game (an hour for you is an hour I don’t get anymore).  In an increasingly interdependent, multi-channel world, we should be rewarded for connecting minds, not worrying about putting ourselves in hours-deficit situations.

In a project-oriented world, efficiency and collaboration are rewarded.  Get the best ideas delivered quickly and everyone profits.  I’m not suggesting cutting corners; I’m saying that incentives should be tied to ecstatic clients and solid margins, not racking up billable hours.

The second difference is external.  The sourcing pendulum has swung away from strategic partnerships between marketers and agencies; we’re suddenly being referred to as suppliers and spending more time with procurement spreadsheets than helping clients enhance their businesses.  We’re being beaten up by number-crunchers who have little to no interest in winning the hearts and minds of an increasingly distracted marketplace; their compensation comes from helping companies manage the expense line, not enhancing the top or bottom lines.

If we’re going to survive, we can’t just compete on hourly rates and nuts-and-bolts efficiency.  We absolutely have to deliver more with – and for – less until we can prove to our real clients that what we do is worth more than Basic Math.  Customers are won with Extraordinary Admen.  Our best shot is to incentivize our teams to drop jaws and deliver results that are truly valued by business owners.  The next generation of Mad Men will be led by talent that shares in the profits that result from creating passionate customers for clients while maximizing the margins derived from value-based pricing.  We are only worth what we believe we’re worth – and the results we’re capable of delivering.

Email prospecting feels a little like trying to find your soul mate by speed dating.  If my brand gets in enough faces, surely one or two will find me attractive.  If I just find the right subject line, creative hook or offer, surely I’ll get some phone numbers.  Or, maybe we’ll just hook up for a quick white paper….

Unlike other forms of online lead generation, unsolicited email violates our personal space.  We can ignore banner ads.  Searches are our ideas.  But email pierces the thin veil of virtual personal space we call the inbox.  No wonder response rates are falling, while the cost of renting decent names is rising.  Maybe it’s actually worse than speed dating.  It’s more like calling everyone in the phone book and asking if they’d like to catch a movie.

We didn’t mean to spam; in fact, we created very strict(ish) rules to set ourselves apart from the spammers.  But maybe we were just kidding ourselves.  Maybe email wasn’t just postal mail without the printing, postage and fulfillment costs.  Our potential customers have to walk to their mailbox before they toss out our slick, oversized postcards; with email, we’re interrupting their trains of thought every time Outlook announces our uninvited presence.

So, as the Age of Reputation takes hold, we have to think extra long and hard about every impression.  Yes, if those potential customers are only made aware of our great brand promise, surely they will bring us willingly into their worlds.

But maybe the manner of impression matters more now.  Perhaps one of Marshall McLuhan’s famous utterances can be slightly amended – maybe, in the Age of Reputation, the modality is the message.  Hot modalities are those that draw us closer to potential relationships (like social media and opt-in conversations, such as Twitter or requested email); cold modalities, like unsolicited email or poorly designed contextual ads, at best annoy and at worst alienate.  A marketing drink in the face, if you will.

Maybe if we want to create lasting relationships, we need to stop speed dating and build our reputations in a way that get our customers to set us up with their friends.  Then, when our email hits their inbox, it might just be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Reputation management has always been a critical component of any decent PR strategy, but now that we’re living in a perpetually connected social media bubble, it’s high time we make room for reputation in the creative bullpen.

Why?  Because the best foot we as advertisers want to put forward can’t even begin to compete with the foot our target market thinks we’ve got in our mouth.  People talk.  And they’re not talking about our brand’s message – they’re commenting, blogging, Digging (down or up), liking and/or tweeting and retweeting about our brand’s actions.  Dialoguing about great and lousy experiences interacting with the brand’s true value – its performance relative to its promise at purchase time.

We can’t advertise our way out of reputation issues, because it’s not what we say that counts.  It’s what our brand does and how the company behind the brand behaves that matters from now on.

Can we continue to tout the benefits of our brands?  Absolutely.  In fact, we have to, in the most affectionate, relevant and trustworthy way possible.  But we also have to understand that inconsistencies and contradictions are going to surface – and be discussed ad infinitum on the Social Web.

So, I suggest you do two things this week.  First, completely embrace every possible marketing channel – traditional, leading edge and bleeding edge – and be sure you’re at least involved in all of the conversations about you.  You can’t control them (and you might be pleasantly surprised just how strongly your advocates defend you against the flamers), but you can influence them.

Second, go make friends with your agency’s reputation management specialists.  They may well be the best wingman you have as your brand hurtles headlong into the Social Web – and the Age of Reputation.