This is an edited version of last week’s Ignition newsletter, my weekly look at a topic I believe is of interest to marketers. If you’d like to receive this in your email each Monday morning, fill out the form on the right.

 
Adapt or Die. Sounds like something recently uttered by any number of marketing gurus. In fact, attribution is owed to former South African Prime Minister, P.W. Botha. But South Africa’s ability to adapt is a tale for another day. Right now I want to talk about how brands are taking this lesson, as well as academia’s “publish or perish” rule, to heart. If you read Digiday, the headlines this past week told you that change was truly afoot. Here’s a sampling:

How Virgin Mobile Fell in Love with Content
Brands Cozy up to Start-Ups
The Onion’s Quest to Make Brands Funny

Or how about this one from Mashable: New York Times Launches Start-Up Incubator

Those are pretty provocative titles if you ask me. I don’t think they signal acts of desperation, but rather an acknowledgement by brands that cultural and business shifts are happening so quickly, and in ways they are ill-suited to react to, that partnerships are the only way they can maintain their footing. Smart brands are realizing that posting “like this if you think puppy dogs are cute!” as a Facebook status is not going to get the job done. As a result, partnerships with Buzzfeed, The Onion, Funny or Die and Vice make sense. Those content publishers have cracked the code. They understand culture and what type of content people want to engage in, something that the vast majority of brands don’t understand very well.

Start-Ups present brands with an opportunity to inject new ideas and perhaps a needed shot of enthusiasm into the mix. The Mashable piece notes, ”The goal is to seek out new ways of creating, collecting and distributing news and information. The Times says it’s primarily seeking startups focused on mobile, social, video, ad technology, analytics or e-commerce who have raised “at least” seed-stage funding.”

Of course this brings up its own set up problems. Which content providers do I partner with? How do I identify which start-ups to engage? What’s a hackathon?

Great questions and no easy answers. So much of this is still new territory, with numerous players and myriad options. This is where a trusted agency partner can play a vital role. With an intimate understanding of the brand, a history of crafting compelling stories and a knowledge of how to engage with culture (that’s my bit), an agency can identify the right opportunity, collaborate and leverage the partnership for maximum effect.

At Y&R we understand the need for this type of thinking, and the process behind it. Through our Spark Plug program we’ve partnered with a variety of small, innovative companies that create some of the most cutting edge technologies around. We work with them in all sorts of ways to create new and compelling communications solutions for our client partners.

I don’t think you have to be an “edgy” brand to benefit from this sort of thinking either. The key is in understanding things like the media consumption habits of your intended audience or how technology could unlock new functionality in your brand. If the articles linked above and this note have got you thinking, give me a shout and let’s talk about how to find a content partner or host a hackathon.

Advertising Week Panel on Sponsoring an Innovation Culture

It’s been a hectic couple of days for me at Advertising Week 2012. Here’s a rundown:

Monday, Oct. 1 NASDAQ Tech Futures 

I was the moderator for a panel called: The Imminent Power of 2nd Screen Consumer Engagement

The panel was packed with experts from a variety of fields, so we had a lively and diverse conversation:

Panelists:

• Jordan Berkowitz, Executive Director, Creative Technology, Ogilvy & Mather
• Sue Kaufman, Managing Director, GroupM
• Brody O’Harran, Sr. Director, US XBOX Specialists Sales at Microsoft
• Thomas Engdahl, CEO, President & Founder, Magic Ruby
• Joe Inzerillo, Sr. VP, Multimedia & Distribution, Major League Baseball Advanced Media

Tuesday, Oct. 2 Sponsoring An Innovation Culture

As the marketing landscape evolves, creating an environment that inspires innovation is a key driver of business success. I was part of an eclectic panel of agency and market leaders who shared insights and experiences on how all businesses can stimulate and leverage innovation. The panel also featured:

• David Shing, Digital Prophet, AOL
• Brian Yamada, Executive Director of Channel Activation, VML
• Yoni Bloch, Founder and CEO, Interlude

Advertising Week – Sponsoring an Innovative… by advertisingweek

Tuesday, Oct. 2 The Great Debate 3:00pm

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY squared off against the VCU BRANDCENTER in the inaugural “Great Debate.” Student teams competed before an All-Star jury of industry leaders to defend whether second screen is the “New Normal” or just a passing fad. The debaters explored ways to monetize second screens and how content owners, distributors, and advertisers should plan accordingly.

I was one of the judges for this, and it was great to see the students tackle the issue. You can view this one split over two videos, here and here.

Wednesday, Oct. 3 Live from the AWE Stage 11:00am

Guy Finley, Executive Director of the 2nd Screen Society, and I spoke about the emerging 2nd Screen ecosystem and what it means for brands, agencies and consumers.

AWE_Second_Screen_Society_100312 by advertisingweek

Also, I was quoted in a Digiday piece, Can Agencies Solve the Talent Problem?, and here’s my first piece for The Huffington Post about Advertising Week - 99 Products and I’ll Pitch Each One -  where I explore the connection between Hip Hop and Advertising.

This post originally appeared on the Advertising Week Social Club blog. If you aren’t familiar with those guys, check ‘em out.

Since the Digital Explosion launched Marketing 2.0, great debates have arisen over which agency should be responsible for what type of execution.

Is it the straightforward ad agency? The news/media-focused public relations agency? Maybe even the “new digital” social media-based agency?

All wrong.

Why?

Because we’ve moved beyond what these shops can legitimately claim to be experts at based on their current makeup, thinking and abilities. Today, there is only one type of agency that matters:

The agency capable of making CULTURALLY RELEVANT CONTENT.

30-second TV spots that people buzz through while using TiVo are not culturally relevant content. Neither are your 15-second YouTube pre-rolls – the ones that I don’t see because I’m focused on the countdown clock until I can skip them entirely; or your press releases or, more than likely, your recent Facebook status updates or your last 15 tweets.

Yes:

These are all forms of content – but chances are they have been ignored, missed or otherwise switched off by the people you are trying to reach.

Why?

Because your message was living within its own hermetically-sealed ecosystem. A world where your brand or product lives in isolation, devoid of any cultural markers that would let a person know they exist in the real world.

Because you’ve decided that people are sitting at home, thinking in silos, waiting specifically and only for a solution to a problem that your brand can solve.

A recent Ad Age/Bluefin Labs report shows that for consumers, commercials are just really, really short shows. They talk about them with the same amount of interest as the network programming. If that’s the case, then shouldn’t marketers be using a wide variety of channels (broadcast yes, but also mobile, online, live event, etc.) to create content that people want to talk about and engage with? Content that is culturally relevant and that acknowledges both the consumer and the world at large?

Of course they should.

But it’s not something that they (or their agencies) are used to doing – and it’s not necessarily easy to do.

Brands and agencies tend to think in terms of discreet campaigns, and often brands have to deal with restrictions enforced by legal departments. That often means that agencies are required to create pre-programmed content – that is approved by legal – before it can be pushed to social networks.

The result?

You know how, before you go to a backyard BBQ at your friend’s house, you take out an index card and write out four or five conversation topics that you can use?

Neither do I – because no one does that.

If you’ve “scheduled” content in advance, what happens when news breaks, or the conversation changes? If everyone is talking about the latest meme to fly around and you’re still pushing your amazing new razzleberry-flavored frozen yogurt, you’re going to be ignored. Content marketing fails when companies try to bend it to their will (and needs) rather than participating in the conversation that consumers want to have.

Being culturally relevant means having a point of view, a unique voice and being quick enough to be where the action is before everybody else gets there.

This takes a type of thinking that most traditional client-agency relationships aren’t currently set up to handle. But the time is coming when brands that don’t take this approach will be pushed aside by consumers who will be more interested in engaging with brands who act more like consumers themselves.

This piece originally appeared in Digiday.

I agree with Jack Marshall that it’s an uphill battle of Sisyphusian proportions for an agency to get in the product development business. If this notion, as commenter Matt Straz, CEO of Namely, suggests, is marked by “a record unblemished by success,” then perhaps agencies need to look in the other direction with concern. After all, their core business as brand stewards is at risk.

It’s far more likely that brands will find success dipping their toes into the world of marketing. Market forces have made it easier, and cultural forces have made it desirable, for brands to engage consumers in different ways, either directly or in ways that can easily circumvent the traditional agency role. The signs have been there for a little while now.

When Moby’s 1999 album, “Play,” became the first to have all its songs licensed for use in films, TV and commercials, it signaled the start of a new era. Now, I don’t think of the Black Eyed Peas as a band so much as a marketing agency that makes music for brands to license. Sure, agencies still play a role, but as a brand that needs to make culturally relevant content, why not just do a deal with Will.i.am and Co. and let them be the creatives on the project? You see this trend already as brands look to the likes of Lady Gaga, Jay-Z and Gwen Stefani to be their creative directors. At the same time, brands that we traditionally think of as distribution channels or platforms like Google and Facebook have their own internal creative teams that are equipped to help brands leverage their sites.

As more and more brands produce content and think of themselves as media companies, they’ll continue to hire people who know how to create content and how to effectively distribute it across and through channels on which consumers are spending time. How much agency involvement does a brand like Nike need to hire Casey Neistat to make a video and post it to Facebook and YouTube, for example? Probably not much, and this video has 6.8 million views and counting. Savvy brands also understand how to create products that are inherently social objects that require less heavy lifting from agencies to promote and that instead rely on the consumer to drive buzz through social channels.

Certainly these developments are just another reason that agencies are struggling to find their way right now and are willing to try things like product development. There’s no easy or right answer here, but my guess is that companies like Goodpenny and Deeplocal, hybrids that create content for brands but are right on the edge of products, are the agency evolutionary equivalent of the first mammal that dragged itself out of the water on fins that were more like flippers.

A big thank you to Digiday for originally publishing this post.

Earlier this week on Digiday, Jack Marshall wrote eloquently on the need for agencies to start “stocking their strategic arsenals in the hope they’ll still be relevant to clients five or 10 years down the line…”  While I certainly wouldn’t argue with Marshall on the need for agencies to provide strategic counsel, I’m not sure that’s what will set them apart, nor keep them in the good graces of their clients.

I believe this to be the case for two reasons, the first of which Marshall states in his article.  While “research suggests 76 percent of agencies now provide strategic services, up from 59 percent in 2009. Only 16 percent of marketer clients surveyed, however, say they make use of them.”  I’m not certain why that is, but my hunch would be that most agencies needlessly over-complicate their strategic counsel in the hopes of making themselves look like all-knowing wizards. Or perhaps, on the other side of the spectrum, clients aren’t making use of the strategic counsel provided because it’s not very good. Regardless of the reason, if only 16 percent are making use of it, few agencies will survive with that being their bread and butter.

The second reason is that the greater opportunity is in execution — just not in the types of executions they are normally used to doing.  Gone are the days of disruptive advertising, ignored press releases or wasteful apps that provide no user benefits.  Agencies have to learn the new new rules of engagement and guide clients towards providing consumers with culturally relevant content that they want to consume, engage with, participate in or otherwise interact with.  While this may include Facebook and Twitter, platforms we now almost take for granted, it also includes a host of new opportunities that few agencies, and fewer brands, are ready to take on.

From gamification to transmedia storytelling, second screen opportunities to Internet memes, consumers are looking for brands to provide new and innovative content that syncs with their lives and provides both entertainment and emotional connection.  These are new territories and in many cases the paint is still wet, but that’s where the people are and that’s what they are doing.

Yes, there will be a need, an urgent one, to create content strategies that integrate these new opportunities; but crucially there will be an even greater need to execute against those strategies as brands will not have the human resources – either in manpower or talent – to creatively leverage these opportunities.

Look for a new breed of agency, one that understands that a “culture first” approach is what wins the day, to emerge to take on these new challenges and win over clients.

Yoni Block, CEO of Interlude, Israeli rock star, Member of Y&R's Spark Plug program

Yesterday you may have read this AdWeek piece on Spark Plug, Y&R’s internal/external initiative to “embrace innovation in the digital space.” It’s a progressive idea, bringing outside companies inside the four walls of our agency. I’ve had the opportunity to play a role in this project, acting as a sort of liaison between the outside companies and Y&R and the Y&R account teams.  As you can imagine, such a proposition isn’t necessarily an easy thing to pull off. It’s new and different and scary for some (because it’s new and different), but at the heart of it, it’s an acknowledgement that things move quickly and providing new, innovative ideas to our clients is our number one priority.

As Y&R’s global CEO, David Sable, says in the article, [advertising has] “always been an innovative industry. It’s [all about] understanding that that’s in the industry’s DNA.” Today, innovation is coming at us faster than ever. The role of the agency partner is evolving and only those agencies that can adapt to, and harness, innovation will have a future.

The agency’s role then becomes how to understand these innovations and marry them to creative storytelling through the filter of the client’s brand. No easy task and not something that a small, specialized agency, no matter how good at their discipline, is likely to be able to do.