Musings: Derivative of Function = Why?

Derivative:
“… the instantaneous change of one quantity with respect to another, as velocity, which is the instantaneous change of distance with respect to time.”  –dictionary.com

I just finished reading Ad Age’s article Book of Tens: Ideas of a Decade. The article is just that—ideas. It depicted some CEOs’ attempts at a digital-age Ogilvy status by engendering buzz terms that merely amount to all things obvious or mediocre, or, in the worst case, both. Lacking examples of how advertising’s stepped up to the digital plate, we’re regaled with trends in creating emotional connections between consumer and brand (yawn); the marriage of entertainment and advertising in mini soap operas (hasn’t that already occurred with product placement in movies?); word of mouth trend setting via peer to peer influence (duh); crowd sourcing—the newest buzz term to influence advertising trends; and, the worst of the bunch, consumer control, where one-way conversations with the consumer end and interactive virtual engagement begins—though the process of engaging and retaining the consumer is still a bit of a mystery.

Converse to any proof, without any substantive cited examples of how these trends moderated or influenced a digital decade and consumers’ decisions, all of this was stamped, collectively, as ‘best of the decade.’

The article’s celebrated ideas eventually blend into an intellectual puree: brown, lumpy mush pointing to one thing only—that despite all the digital outlets available out there, we still need to talk to the consumers in order to tell their stories. It’s not a novel idea, but for some reason it’s one that evades even the top minds in marketing and advertising.

If you get them to buy your product, you’ve started a relationship—the courtship has begun. Now, in order to keep the person interested, much like dating, you have to let them tell his or her story. That’s where advertising needs to grow as a medium—as storyteller, documenting why and how consumers need products to not only sustain themselves but to feel connected to a community.

My initial complaint of the movie, Avatar, was that the plot was lost in showcasing animation technology. I think advertising faces the same debacle—that if we can’t properly tell a consumer’s story, then we’ve literally shelved the brand or product as pointless object.  Humans are still very much hunters and gatherers, though now, that primate quality is relegated to seeking and accruing information more often than physical objects.

The Derivative: ideological movement or change based on provocative, new ideas.

I love that most definitions for derivative immediately point to velocity as a common derivative—being that velocity is changed distance with respect to time. Observed from my ten year stint in advertising, I’d say the excelled rate of velocity belongs to the interactive boutique agencies—whose lifespan is ten years or less. For example, companies like Big Spaceship and Huge have quickly climbed to the top of the interactive ladder by seeming to emphasize creativity’s marriage to technology, and then consummating this combination in uniquely interactive campaigns that, for the most part, serve to entertain and engage users.

Big Spaceship’s microsite “HBO Voyeur’ is an eminent example, as users clicked within different apartment windows in an NYC cityscape and then watched looped videos of generally macabre or bizarre scenarios in what looked like a bunch of animated dollhouses. There was no consumer-derived objective to the site: it subliminally branded HBO as an online innovator and a leading storyteller, and it provided users with a subtle entertainment site that could play in the background or as a screensaver. It leveraged proof that not all sites have to showcase a product or USP to either engage or entertain users.

But these are companies that, I’d surmise, first explored their creative options from an intent to become innovators rather than just service-providers. The prominent service you’re selling to clients is the creative. What hasn’t really changed is the amount of process, discussion of process, and attention to process dominating advertising agencies’ work flow. Granted, this is conjecture, but I surmise that the combined total of project managers, account people, and administrative staff out-numbers creative staff to an extreme ratio. (Perhaps for the amount of work a creative does, there’s a mountain of paper work for account people to handle: the Excel flow charts, Power Point presentations, billing invoices, etc., that, if not handled properly, could make for a very unhappy client. Who knows.)

I’ve only worked at a couple agencies that sprinkled account execs and creatives together in the same space so they could work and communicate without the onus of having to arrange constant meetings.

I haven’t seen many changes in the ad industry in the last 10 years more prominent than the materialization of more boutique and digital agencies. The monolithic dinosaur agency is still alive, but barely kicking, it seems. Also, the transition from consumer to pharmaceutical advertising seems to have plagued the 2000 decade; it was realized that pharm advertising made more money…

Americans need drugs, and apparently they see sunflowers and blue skies when taking them.

To be continued.

-Melissa

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