Stop Commoditizing Communication – Capture the Strategic Creative Advantage
This column by creative director Tim Meyers has developed a virtual life of its own, so if you have not already seen it, enjoy!
Stop Commoditizing Communication – Capture the Strategic Creative Advantage
By Tim Meyers, Creative Director, The MEK Group
Is automation driving your marketing? Is your advertising and creative work dependent on templates and populated by clip art? Does your social media messaging automatically appear on Facebook, then on Twitter, then on your Web site – popping up over and over again until it’s digital tapioca?
What ever happened to the all-compelling “big idea” that drove brand messaging home, regardless of the channel or the platform?
This type of high-octane creative – which still exists today – represents a Big Idea that re-positions an entire company for success. It represents what companies used to go to advertising agencies for: a hot, creative idea that drove the business. An idea that transformed. These transformational ideas create strong, believable brands that literally became part of our culture.
Today, with all of the advances in communication, one might think that this principal is even more true. Ironically, the opposite has manifested itself in many instances, blurred strong communication elements down to meaningless blobs of redundant obviousness. Differentiation in an automated world is the next best thing to an oxymoron.
Advances in communication technology, in desktop publishing, in video production and in portable mobile devices should have created communication excellence. Instead, it’s created a new level of communication clutter that is nearly incomprehensible. Much of what passes for communication today is simply awful.
Because production capacity has become cheap, communication has lurched toward commoditization. A great idea, a great brand, a great campaign – these all take time to nurture, develop, produce and execute. Instead, it is far easier to cut budgets, slam together template ads, spots or PowerPoint presentations and then call it “communication,” even though few are certain to what it’s communicating or even whether it’s communicating. It’s incredibly – and unfortunately – easy to think that one is communication, when in reality all that is happening is the creation of more and more confusing and brand-busting clutter.
With clutter comes anxiety, so bad communication bruises brands – some fatally – even though people may not be aware of it.
At MEK we’ve found three things that will help change the world and get us back to real communication.
1) Automation is not a bad thing, as long as it adds real value to all points of a transaction. Quantity is not necessarily quality, and in an era where plenty of alternatives exist, you want to ensure that you are tantalizing and delighting your customers with real authentic messages.
2) A strong creative idea, fueled by relevant and strong content, can change the world. Or it can at least change the world that you and your customers are used to. Communication platforms like Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist a few years ago. Their replacements – or the platforms that will enhance them – are probably already in development.
3) Accordingly, it’s not about the platform or the technology. It’s about the idea, the content and the message.
Industry labels like advertising, PR and media buying are changing right in front us. What many PR people do today – compared to a decade ago – is in most cases dramatically different. And there’s a reason for that change.
Want to be successful in the second decade of the 21st century? Resist the ease and the siren call of commoditization. There used to be a popular saying in advertising that went something like this: cheap, fast, effective – pick two. In today’s incredibly cluttered communication environment, the saying should perhaps go like this: savvy, simple, relevant – pick three.
Strategic marketing is not a commodity. It doesn’t come in a ready-to-use box. So, fight back and champion the big idea, the big brand, and cheerfully reject those efforts to commoditize real excellence in communication.
By Tim Meyers, Creative Director, The MEK Group
Is automation driving your marketing? Is your advertising and creative work dependent on templates and populated by clip art? Does your social media messaging automatically appear on Facebook, then on Twitter, then on your Web site – popping up over and over again until it’s digital tapioca?
What ever happened to the all-compelling “big idea” that drove brand messaging home, regardless of the channel or the platform?
This type of high-octane creative – which still exists today – represents a Big Idea that re-positions an entire company for success. It represents what companies used to go to advertising agencies for: a hot, creative idea that drove the business. An idea that transformed. These transformational ideas create strong, believable brands that literally became part of our culture.
Today, with all of the advances in communication, one might think that this principal is even more true. Ironically, the opposite has manifested itself in many instances, blurred strong communication elements down to meaningless blobs of redundant obviousness. Differentiation in an automated world is the next best thing to an oxymoron.
Advances in communication technology, in desktop publishing, in video production and in portable mobile devices should have created communication excellence. Instead, it’s created a new level of communication clutter that is nearly incomprehensible. Much of what passes for communication today is simply awful.
Because production capacity has become cheap, communication has lurched toward commoditization. A great idea, a great brand, a great campaign – these all take time to nurture, develop, produce and execute. Instead, it is far easier to cut budgets, slam together template ads, spots or PowerPoint presentations and then call it “communication,” even though few are certain to what it’s communicating or even whether it’s communicating. It’s incredibly – and unfortunately – easy to think that one is communication, when in reality all that is happening is the creation of more and more confusing and brand-busting clutter.
With clutter comes anxiety, so bad communication bruises brands – some fatally – even though people may not be aware of it.
At MEK we’ve found three things that will help change the world and get us back to real communication.
1) Automation is not a bad thing, as long as it adds real value to all points of a transaction. Quantity is not necessarily quality, and in an era where plenty of alternatives exist, you want to ensure that you are tantalizing and delighting your customers with real authentic messages.
2) A strong creative idea, fueled by relevant and strong content, can change the world. Or it can at least change the world that you and your customers are used to. Communication platforms like Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist a few years ago. Their replacements – or the platforms that will enhance them – are probably already in development.
3) Accordingly, it’s not about the platform or the technology. It’s about the idea, the content and the message.
Industry labels like advertising, PR and media buying are changing right in front us. What many PR people do today – compared to a decade ago – is in most cases dramatically different. And there’s a reason for that change.
Want to be successful in the second decade of the 21st century? Resist the ease and the siren call of commoditization. There used to be a popular saying in advertising that went something like this: cheap, fast, effective – pick two. In today’s incredibly cluttered communication environment, the saying should perhaps go like this: savvy, simple, relevant – pick three.
Strategic marketing is not a commodity. It doesn’t come in a ready-to-use box. So, fight back and champion the big idea, the big brand, and cheerfully reject those efforts to commoditize real excellence in communication.
Labels: advertising, brand, brand development, creative, marketing, PR
posted by Michael A. Snyder @ 6:36 AM
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