Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time working and meeting with industry partners who work on the publishing side. Earlier in the month I got to chance to speak with my friend Alan Schulman in a program put together by the Upstream Group to train and inspire some of the top sellers from some of the biggest publishers on the web. And just this week Brand New World had a nice re-meet and greet with some of our friends over at Google.
I must admit, I wasn’t really sure what would come out of these meetings, but I’m and happy to find that the opportunities formed from these new relationships are really productive and exciting. This was a pleasant surprise to me, because traditionally, and forgive me if I offend with this crass generalization, when creatives and publishers talk, they are usually just annoy the hell out of each other.
In my experience in the interactive, I’ve come to realize that there is one big bugbear that causes friction between publishers and creatives. It should come as no surprise to anyone. It’s good old-fashioned lack of communication- destroyer of good business relationships and creator of sky-high blood pressure on all sides.
On the creative side for example, specific ad placements tend to be one of the last things considered when a campaign is designed. Creatives talk about placements in broad and general terms, (ie. “We are probably going to be running ads on 25+ sites where male sports fans go for news – like ESPN.”) because early in the project the media partners still haven’t fleshed out the buying plan at that level of detail. Creatives are working without the specifics that could help them not only target their ads better, but take advantage of opportunities which maybe be unique to a specific publisher.
Most of the time, the creative strategy, concepts, designs, and even exhibitions are already complete by the time they are actually notified on which sites the creative will be running. At this point, if there is any communication between the creative agency and the publisher, it usually involves someone saying “you can’t do that on our site,” and some Creative Director having an Christian Bale style hissy fit.
So you get a publisher who thinks the creatives are nuts, or worse, inept, and a creative team that thinks the publishers are obtuse, lazy, and actively oppressing the projects potential. No one is happy. And even if that doesn’t happen, you still end up with creative that has been designed for a range of sites based on generalized specs, often the lowest common denominator, rather than more effective finely-honed campaigns.
This doesn’t need to be the case. If publishers and creatives have a dialog all along, before a campaign is designed, they can work together to everyone’s mutual benefit.
It makes perfect sense that there are a lot of publishers out there that have a brilliant technical and marketing staff members who are coming up with innovative ways for brands to sell on their site. Exciting news that too often we creatives don’t get to hear about because often times technical innovations develop at a pace and scope that puts them outside of large media plans. Additionally, there are some publishers out there looking for great creative ideas to give them an advantage over their competitors, and would love nothing more than to have a brainstorming session with a smart creative agency willing to talk.
This could be one of those virtual win-win situations.
It’s good news for me and my teams as well. We would welcome a chance to sit in a brainstorming meeting with our publisher friends and come up with new ways to get our client’s brands out of the banner ghetto. We would love nothing more than to be given a unique opportunity to be the first out the door with creative that does something no one else has ever done before.
We just need to talk, people. If advertisers and creatives can really get together and communicate, I believe we can move interactive advertising forward by leaps and bounds. If we don’t, all we get are more headaches, and what we lose is the chance at real progress and innovation.
So, a final word to all my publisher friends out there…. Use us. We’re here, and we’re not hard to find. For example: I’m on Google, I’m on Facebook, I’m on Linked In, And I’m on BrandNewWorldus.com
We may seem like an odd couple, but I’ll bet that given time, we can make beautiful music together.