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Will the Future of Advertising Be a Blend of Old and New Media?: Knowledge@Wharton
(http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2344)
Unsettling Times
The Future of Advertising Project comes in the midst of what is arguably the most unsettling period in the
advertising industry since the rapid growth of television in the 1950s. And this time, it has been harder
for experts to get a complete handle on how to respond to technological change. The reason, in part, is
that the global economic recession has slashed advertising budgets at virtually every company across
most platforms, for an overall decline in spending in 2009 in the 13% to 15%, according to reports by the
major ad-tracking firms.
The recession has hardly dimmed the fact that Internet advertising continues to gain at the expense of
so-called traditional media, such as 30-second TV spots or newspaper display ads. One tracking firm,
WPP's Group M, said that online media will go from 13% of all ad dollars this year to 15%, or $65
billion, in 2010. John McDonald, a spokesman for GM, recently told the Wall Street Journal: "The old
days of carpet bombing the U.S. with network TV ads and expecting to reach everybody are over."
Still, most experts agree that merely dropping and replacing traditional media overnight with a strategy
that seeks to serenade customers over social networks such as Facebook is too simplistic a solution, as
some marketers have already learned the hard way.
"One conundrum for advertisers that they're trying to figure out is how to get into that conversation --
how to get into it and tell the story without annoying people," says Michael Donahue, who is the
executive vice president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, or the 4As, as well as an
advisory board member of the Future of Advertising Project. In fact, Donahue said he organized a seminar
around the topic of advertisers, social networking and intrusiveness after his college student son told him
that too many profit-seeking applications were spoiling his experience on Facebook.
Indeed, the early findings of the Future of Advertising Project have been challenging some of the current
conventional wisdom, including the notion that traditional forms of advertising are dead. In fact, one of
the project's first major efforts -- publishing 21 research papers in the Advertising Research Foundation's Journal of A
Journal of Advertising -- included a paper by the ARF's chief research officer Joel Rubinson on the
efficacy of TV advertising; it found there was no erosion of television's impact in recent years, even with
declining audiences and the use of devices like a Tivo player that allow ad-skipping. Another study
presented through the project found that the impact of DVR devices like Tivo may not be as negative as
marketers have feared, perhaps because brand messages can be effective even as a viewer fast-forwards
through them.
Wind believes the failure to develop innovative marketing strategies that integrate the power of television
with the potential of social media is part of a broader structural problem in the ways that large advertising
agencies are set up to handle accounts -- exactly the type of problem he says will be tackled by the Future
of Advertising Project. New knowledge, Wind notes, can help break down the "silos" in the top agencies.
"The current model doesn't work because the mega-agencies have silos that don't offer multiple solutions"
across different media. Right now, there's no mechanism for bringing these silos within an agency -- or
across organizations."
The Future of Advertising Project aims not just to change the techniques that advertising managers use,
but also to promote broader and more radical changes in style that are possible in advertising, where a
running two-way dialog with consumers is not just possible but critical to success. With the public's trust
in business so badly damaged in the wake of the economic meltdown, Wind is bullish about the potential
for advertising to promote social change -- such as with the Unilever push for both cleaner clothes and for
child recreation. "We're saying that, in addition to your business message, how can you have a positive
social impact?"
The project has evolved since it was launched last year, looking to move beyond the staid formats that
academics like Wind are most familiar with, such as published research papers leading up to a printed
book. As the effort picked up steam, organizers realized that it needed to be an online and interactive
conversation, similar in style to the new ways that advertisers need to build two-way customer
relationships over the Internet.
"That's why I'm using this model to manage the project, to show that we can 'walk the talk' of the things
All materials copyright of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Page 2 of 3
Will the Future of Advertising Be a Blend of Old and New Media?: Knowledge@Wharton
(http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2344)
that we are trying to document ourselves," explains Catharine Findiesen Hays, executive director of the
Future of Advertising Project. "We are using multimedia to get the word out, and the lesson we have
learned is that you have to vary things according to the medium -- you don't just put a TV show into a
mobile device."
One of the goals of the project is to make full use of its global advisory board, a group of some 40 top
agency executives, marketing experts and academics who will be contributing their own research by
bringing other campaigns or research findings to the attention of the group, as well as offering their own
analysis. Hays notes the board's involvement is critical in the next phase, which involves assembling a
detailed data base of papers and case studies of the best practices looking toward advertising's future.
Project leaders hope that each of the 40 participants can offer two or three significant pieces.
Beyond that, Hays says, the next phase will be to develop the best technological platform to allow both
the advisory board members as well as followers of the project to engage in a running discussion about
the data and other studies, perhaps similar to the style of group editing that is found on Wikipedia.
Google Videos
A major goal of The Fast.Forward project launched in a partnership with Google is to take the discussion
about advertising's future online and expand it to a much wider audience. Wind and Hays explain that
Google -- which generates most of its revenue through search advertising -- agreed to get involved in the
project even though many of the discussions will promote advertising in other media, occasionally
involving competitors, such as Microsoft. "Google feels that providing value to anyone involved in
marketing will encourage them to make decisions that will ultimately benefit the company, Wind notes.
Cindy Goodrich, the Google business marketing executive who is working with Wharton on the
Fast.Forward project, notes that the search-engine firm got involved in the project because so many
executives were coming to Google seeking broad advice on marketing. It decided to partner with Wharton
and to help develop a site that is open and democratic, even as it spotlights one of Google's prime
properties -- the popular YouTube video site. Indeed, Fast.Forward was modeled after a popular
Google-backed site in the United Kingdom called Survival of the Fastest, which features video about best
practices and new ideas in e-commerce.
Goodrich agrees that Google executives have no problems with Fast.Forward promoting videos or hosting
discussions that call attention to other forms of media and marketing in addition to its own brand of
online-search advertising, or even posts about its leading competitors. "We welcome this kind of
communication because it makes everybody better."
When it's done, the Future of Advertising Project will offer one last reminder that Old Media can be as
powerful a tool for marketers as the web or newfangled social media. At the very outset, Wind's vision for
the project was leading up to a book. Even with the YouTube channel and the other high-tech bells and
whistles, Hays says that book will be published as planned, for those who still prefer that oldest of media
format. "But we won't just wait for the book," she adds. "We're hoping to take the sources of our
information and use it -- whether it's on the YouTube channel or in partnership with other organizations."
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