Crossing the Line

I find it rather amusing, but I guess I have evolved a bit. While I cannot claim to have had a reinvention plan, I can say that I feel lucky to have had my eyes opened. I recommend that others take a broader view as well. Let me explain.

For 25 years, I did whatever I could to build a solid career in advertising. I grew up at Ogilvy, learned from true legends and had enormous passion for doing the kind of work that made brands famous.

Back then, we were all about the big television campaign. We judged our success through market share, tracking studies and industry awards. Our hearts were in the right place, but to be fair, we were advertising snobs.

The big, glamorous advertising work was all that mattered to us. We were above it all — or at least we thought we were.

I realized recently that this must have been how we got to the concepts of “above the line” and “below the line.” Today, I know these concepts should be eliminated from our vernacular.

It was during my years managing a hotel business and a beer portfolio that I began to see things differently. No matter how brilliant our television campaign was, our brand would come to life — or not — in the hands of a franchisee, a distributor, a club owner or a local promotion shop.

I realized then that those who were doing smart, strategic activation work were making their brands stronger and locally relevant. They were magnifying the power of the mainstream idea in ways that would resonate in their market. And they were winning.

Three years ago, I was asked to lead the activation arm of the Ogilvy Group. Here was an opportunity to make activation a strategic part of our 360-degree proposition. It was a chance to remove the line that prevented agencies from delivering effectively, in a media-agnostic way. I took the job and it has been an enlightening experience.

Some find this new world of marketing rather intimidating. Marketers are squeezed like never before. The consumer is more fickle than ever. The retailer has enormous control. The return on traditional media remains elusive.

Every day, there is a new hunt for how to best engage a consumer, how to effectively gain trade support and how to truly measure performance. Agencies are in a unique position to help clients navigate the constant change. I believe this should be an exciting time for those ready to embrace it all. 

I guess that’s the point: Now is the time to embrace it all.

Our clients need expertise and thought leadership from us. They need to know that we are ready and able to activate their brands in whichever ways make the most sense. And just about anything is possible.

There is one thing that will never change in our business: the power of the brand. Today, there are few limits to how we can build a brand relationship. We must avoid being one of them. We must be willing to open our minds.

We need more media-neutral engagement leads, touch-point planners and creative talent who leverage everything at their disposal to activate a brand. And we need to appreciate when certain people happen to know more than we do about their part of the mix.

Never before have I had such respect for data miners who discover consumer engagement opportunities otherwise hidden, shopper marketing pros who see what will change a person’s actions at the point of sale, trade experts who can make a retailer advocate for our brand and analytic wizards who help prove ROI.

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