4A’s Conference Round-Up
The Yahoo! Advertising blog’s got you covered
This week, your indefatigable Yahoo! Advertising correspondents went on a field trip to the 4A’s “Transformation 2010” conference in San Francisco. (Those 4A’s stand for the American Association of Advertising Agencies.) While there, we did old the meet and greet, tweeted, and posted to Facebook our take-aways from some the smartest minds in the advertising world. We even did a little live blogging and took some video, too. (Lookin’ good, Carol!)
Below is a round-up of some the most interesting sessions, in case you couldn’t be there in person.
How Social Media Has Transformed the Communications Landscape
Who: Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor in Chief, The Huffington Post
What: Huffington spoke with considerable humor about how the Internet in general and social media in particular have changed the way people interact with media content. “We”—meaning users as well as media outlets—“are consuming news, sharing news, developing news. We are all part of that story,” she noted. Online readership is up 34 million in the past few years, while newspaper viewership is down 7 million. The key for understanding and engaging the online medium for publishers and advertisers is “transparency and authenticity.” At the 4A’s conference, she mentioned what she calls the “four E’s:” engagement, energy, empathy, enthusiasm, enrichment. These are the real drivers of audience behavior online.
So What?: The shift in attention to online presents a huge opportunity for advertisers and marketers because the most engaged consumers are the most loyal consumers. Notable quote: “If Carol Bartz is outspoken, what does it make me, a demure shrinking violet?” Probably not, Ms. Huffington.
More on this session via AdAge.
How Social Media is Transforming Everything
Who: Pete Blackshaw, EVP Digital Strategic Services Nielsen; Ian Schafer, CEO Deep Focus; Bryan Wiener CEO 360i
What: Traditionally, paid media is the hub and earned media are the spokes; social media puts earned media at the center.
So What?: Tremendous opportunity to measure consumer reactions and emotions as real-time feedback holds us accountable. Social media does not replace TV, it enables communication and feeds curiosity and advocacy in the purchase funnel. Social will also never scale like TV and won’t get the same margins. Agencies need to reengineer themselves for this new business model.
A Message From Magazine Industry Leaders
Who: Cathleen Black, President, Hearst Corporation; Ann Moore, Chairman and CEO, Time Inc.;
Jack Griffin, President, National Media Group; Jann Wenner of Wenner Media
What: Speakers talked about how the vitality of magazines has not been compromised by the Internet but complemented by it. It is a myth that magazines are losing readership; readership is actually up dramatically, especially with young people. As long as magazines continue to innovate, they will remain popular.
So What?: Digital companies should work with magazines to develop new ways to deliver magazine content and advertising Notable quote: “We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines.”
More on this session via AdWeek.
YouthQuake: Transformation of Young Customers
Who: Jeffrey Cole, Director, Center for the Digital Future, USC Annenberg School and Sr. Associate, Media Link LLC
What: Based on consumer data collected from his research, Cole says that just concentrating on what 12-24-year-old customers want at the time sets a bad precedent for advertisers, because what you really want is to figure out how their purchasing power will emerge as go into their “prime purchasing years.”
So What?: Cole says youth are all about social media and predicts the death of print newspapers within 6 years because of falling readership among this age group. To capture and keep teens into the future, advertisers must turn to social media. Notable quote: “While they don’t read newspapers, teens are active social media users and they will stay in communities for the rest of their lives.”
Transforming Marketing
Who: Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer for, VivaKi (Publicis Groupe)
What: Tobaccowala talked about talent retention for agencies. He riffed on Yahoo! CEO, Carol Bartz’ Science, Art and Scale keynote, concentrating on what he feels is the most important factor for getting and keep the best talent: “art.” Talented young people don’t want to just sell soda pop, they want to create art and messages that reach people’s hearts and minds. He made a distinction between what he called “builders” who create great, inspiring advertising and “bean counters” who run the spreadsheets. Today advertising is too often run by the bean counters and it needs to get back to its creative roots.
So What?: While advertisers and agencies need metrics, we also need to inspire creativity. Notable quote: “During the Renaissance, they built; they did not manage only, they did not data read. They built, they painted, they sculpted.”
More on this session via AdAge.
It’s Still All About the Data
Who: Bruce Biegel, Managing Director, Winterberry Group LLC ; Adam Gerber, Chief Marketing Officer, Quantcast ; Scott Hagedorn, CEO, PHD USA ; Bryan Wiener, CEO, 360i ; David Smith, CEO, Mediasmith Inc.; Geoff Ramsey, Co-Founder and CEO, eMarketer
What: The effectiveness of advertising and media is only as good as its intended targets. Some say 28 percent of U.S. marketers plan to shift larger portion of their budgets to online over the next few years. Other estimates range from 59 percent to 70 percent. The group also discussed the advent demand-side platforms.
So What?: If agencies can scale and cooperate with publishers, we should be able to normalize ad data, plug in solutions and be able to plan better and do better post analysis. But we have to “scale that and scale that rapidly.”
For more on DSPs see “Audiences on Demand.”
Are Tablets the Future of Media?
Who: Chris Anderson, EIC, Wired Magazine
What: Anderson talked about how he thinks tablet computers, such as the iPad, will change the way people read magazine content and how advertisers will reach them. He noted that tablets “could provide the most measurable advertising ever”—and a rich experience for the user online or off.
So What?: A tablet computer user doesn’t always have to be online to view magazine content that has previously been downloaded, and the device and programming will continue to track what the user is seeing even in an offline state and that could be a big opportunity for advertisers and agencies.
More on this session via MediaWeek.
How New ‘Cloud’ Technology Can Transform the Agency Enterprise
Who: Greg Smith, Chief Information Officer, McCann Worldgroup
What: On-the-ground ROI benefits for all agencies from the emerging technology of cloud technology— Internet computing that shares computer resources instead of using software or storage on a local PC.
Technology has to be included in biz decisions and cloud technology is playing massive role at McCann
So What?: Agencies need to think like software companies. Currently 70% of tech budgets are spent on maintenance. Cloud tech will help save on those costs and let agencies concentrate on creative. Kelley Blue Book saved $100k by shifting to cloud. McCann itself saved 30 percent on tech costs. Quote: “21st century ads are not something just looked at, but something to be used.”
Transformative Research on Integrated Media
Who: Artie Bulgrin, Senior Vice President for Research, ESPN
What: Bulgrin says while TV is still the biggest medium, many ESPN users are now multimedia users (46 percent) are now multi-platform users, who cross media freely, representing 71 percent of its overall media time. In 2008, Disney and ABC TV created a new, state-of-the-art media lab in Austin, Texas, where media users are researched so that the company can better understand consumer behavior with regard to both content and advertising through advanced techniques like eye- and skin-tracking.
So What?: One notable finding of the lab was that ads in mobile often out-performed ads on the PC-based Internet, and that It only takes two seconds for user to process and recognize a brand. If Bulgrin’s findings are correct, it confirms assertion that the message is as important, if not more so, than the medium.
More on this session via MediaPost.
Lastly, enjoy 4A’s Flickr page, as well as our own.
— Michael Mattis, Jeff Sweat, Christine Tseng
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