#AWIX: Embrace The New, Don’t Toss The Old
Without a doubt, Advertising Week in New York is a time and place to talk about what’s new and what’s next in the world of advertising and media. Dozens of brilliant events and hundreds of luminaries will shine a spotlight on the latest trends and tools.
And with all of these visions of the future, it’s tempting to toss your old playbook in the trash so that 100% of your bandwidth can be devoted to drinking in the newest innovations.
That would be both a mistake and a tragedy.
Instead of looking at new media as displacements of old media, we must look at them as enhancements. QR codes don’t displace printed materials and outdoor ads, they give them new capabilities. Social media and web video change the game in the TV industry, but they open up new avenues for interaction and extension of traditional TV content. Mass adoption of smartphones opens the door to eCommerce anywhere, but also opens up a world of enhancements to in-store marketing.
Want some recent examples? Here you go:
- Shazam has been evolving from just a song identification app into the equivalent of an audio hyperlink, allowing consumers to extend their interaction with both TV shows and commercials.
- Nike used Twitter as a source for their out-of-home Life’s a sport. Make it count. campaign. They also used it as the target action for the campaign, creating an engagement feedback loop.
- Walmart and Home Depot are among retailers enabling shoppers to use their mobile phones to find items inside their stores. Just think about the new ways to target an ad when you know the shopper is walking over to Aisle 7 to buy Brand X diapers!
- IKEA gave their 2013 printed catalog an entire digital overlay, making it a truly interactive print piece.
TV shows, commercials, ads on subway walls, printed catalogs and retail stores.
None of these are new media.
They go back to the Mad Men days, sure, but each one is being enhanced by a combination of new technologies and sharp consumer insights – both things that Advertising Week offers in abundance.
The same goes for trends.
So people are leaving behind print magazines in favor of online and tablet editions.
That doesn’t invalidate a century of innovations in magazines.
Techniques in editorial planning, ad placement and audience development still apply to digital consumers. They need to be adapted for digital consumption patterns, but you don’t have to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.
As you bounce from one Advertising Week event to the next, think about how the new things you learn about can blend with the old. And if you do decide to leave an old method behind, try to figure out what made it work in the first place. Salvage the best bits to make the new methods even better.
Tinker, twist, test and tweak, just like Steve Jobs did.
Advertising doesn’t always have to be revolutionary – it can be evolutionary and still be brilliant.
Remember that all of the technologies, media and techniques are not the end, but the means.
They are our tools. We are the artisans.
And the more tools we have at our disposal – and the better we understand how they can be used – the greater the masterpieces we can create.
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- by AWSC
- posted at 10:39 am
- October 4, 2012
