March 2009 Archives

Thanks to Advertising Age, I've had a chance recently to reflect on my favorite advertising and marketing books of all time. Alas, the book I believe is the best did not make the Top 10 list. It is Strategy in Advertising: Matching Media and Messages to Markets and Motivations by Leo Bogart.

First published in 1967, "Strategy in Advertising":http://adage.com/columns/article?article_id=105066 remains the best single-volume work on the science of media mix modeling and allocation. That's not surprising, because its author was a brilliant and widely respected social scientist, who for years served as the executive vice president of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau and the de facto dean of media researchers in the United States. Bogart (who died in 2005) was of that generation of sociologists who saw both the bad and the good that managed communications can do. Born in Poland, his observations as an American soldier in Europe at the end of World War II -- his confrontation with the horrifying results of Nazi propaganda -- prompted him to become a sociologist. Among his post-war projects was the research that underlay the desegregation of the U.S. armed forces.

I mention Bogart's background and his grounding in science because the second page of his classic book on advertising strategy contains one of the most contrarian lines ever written by a scientist. "Advertisements," he writes, "may be evaluated scientifically; they cannot be created scientifically."

Leo Bogart no doubt would be amused that, some four decades after he penned his great book, we're still fighting the old art vs. science war in advertising. But we are -- and it's a war worth ending, because it misses the point entirely.

Two weeks ago, I published a clog titled, "A Bigger Idea: A Manifesto on Interactive Advertising Creativity." The observations and hypotheses -- that our direct response heritage has hindered this medium's hospitality to brand advertisers, that we must incentivize creative excellence, that we need to integrate technologists as full partners into creative teams -- apparently have resonated.

Ah, hell -- they became the talk of the clogosphere, and for that we're extremely grateful. The French Revolution began in salons and coffee shops, so no reason the interactive creative revolution can't begin here!

We furthered the cause subsequently at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Orlando, FL -- the Ecosystem 2.0 conference, as we call it -- earlier this week. There, I disclosed that, for the first time, IAB will invite creative agencies into the interactive advertising format standardization process. We also announced the formation of IAB's first Agency Advisory Board, with senior executive representatives from a dozen top creative, digital and media agencies, including:

• Brad Brinegar, Chairman and CEO of McKinney, and Chair of the Agency Advisory Board
• Tom Bedecarré, CEO, AKQA
• Jeff Benjamin, Interactive Creative Director, Crispin Porter + Bogusky Advertising
• Alan Cohen, CEO of OMD USA, OMD Los Angeles.
• Colleen DeCourcy, Chief Digital Officer, TBWA Worldwide
• Brian DiLorenzo, Director of Integrated Production and Executive Director of Content, BBDO
• David Droga, Founder and Chairman, Droga5
• Sarah Fay, CEO, Carat North America
• Maria Luisa Francoli, Global CEO, MPG
• Jean-Philippe Maheu, Chief Digital Officer, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide
• Benjamin Palmer, Co-Founder, CEO, Barbarian Group
• Steve Wax, Partner and Chief Narratologist and Co-Founder, Campfire

But this is not a revolution against science, as some have characterized it. It's a war against the mismanagement of marketing communications by people who don't have the background or experience to help marketers use all the tools and services available to them to grow profitably. In that war, as IAB Chair Wenda Harris Millard put it so eloquently at our conference, both art and science have a place.

It's important for all of us who would offer our services to marketers and consumers to know how to arrange the seats at this table.