Mike Caguin

Chief creative officer Mike Caguin gave a longer version of this speech at the Student Advertising Summit in February. For recent, and not-so-recent, grads heading into an advertising career, it’s also a good reminder of why they found this path so alluring in the first place.

It’s 1962 in New York City. Don Draper is looking at a second round of creative concepts for Mohawk Airlines. He sent his creative teams back to the drawing board just 24 hours ago because the work wasn’t good enough. Peggy Olson, a young, talented copywriter, and her art director partner, Sal, lay their work on Don’s desk with conviction. They’re confident they’ve nailed the campaign. They show two ads. Each concept overtly depicts an attractive woman in a short skirt. Pop quiz: who’s the target audience? It’s an attempt to deliver upon one of the oldest clichés in advertising: sex sells.

Don hates it. He steers the conversation in search of a deeper meaning for the fledgling airline. When Peggy challenges him, he counters, “Just so you know, the people who talk that way think that monkeys can do this. They take all this monkey crap and just stick it in a briefcase, completely unaware that their success depends on something more than their shoeshine. You are the product. You—feeling something. That’s what sells. Not them. Not sex. They can’t do what we do, and they hate us for it.”

Like any good period fiction, “Mad Men” is an exaggeration of what was the truth. Many of its characters carry enough personal baggage to fill a Boeing 747—they chain smoke, drink heavily, use drugs, cheat on their spouses. They are almost all morally questionable. Sounds like the best job on the planet, doesn’t it?

Of course, all of that juicy stuff helps keep the storyline interesting, but when you strip away all of that, you’re left with an industry and career choice that are still unbelievably exciting. What Don Draper meant when he said, “You are the product. You—feeling something,” was that when advertising is at its best, it stirs your soul in a big way.

It’s the reason why every first Sunday in February we debate at great length and measure in infinitesimal detail the most memorable commercials of the Super Bowl.

It’s the reason why we all know someone who’s cried or gotten goose bumps because a commercial tugged on their heartstrings.

It’s the reason why some people proudly and permanently tattoo their bodies with company logos.

Or share something hilarious—it just happens to be an ad.

Or decide to train for that marathon after all.

Or feel compelled to help those in need.

And, whether we admit it or not—or consciously think about it or not—every person in this room owns the things they own, at least in part, because somewhere along the way those brands we wear, share and evangelize made us feel something.

It’s the same in 2013 as it was in 1962. When marketing is done well, it not only connects with people, it becomes a part of people. The only difference is that today, things are more exciting than they’ve ever been. Today, with technology changing every minute and the lines separating advertising, design, digital, media, product development and public relations blurring all the more, our creative sandbox is now infinite.

Here’s the best part of all this. You will find many moments throughout your career where you will say to yourself, “I get paid to do this?” Yes, yes you will. And it’s a beautiful thing.

Tom Douty

So, the social world is all aflutter with news first reported by The Wall Street Journal that Facebook is working on incorporating the hashtag function into its platform.

As marketers we’re excited because hashtags on Facebook would provide a new search enhancement allowing users to group conversations and sort messages about one topic or news event. As social counsel, it gives us another tool to help brands find fans and get into conversations. It also could give us another tool on Facebook to promote conversations and much like Twitter, use hashtags to find fans, aggregate stories and react to trending conversations if relevant to the brand.

Not knowing what’s exactly coming though, our initial take is, “Why?”

The common language on Facebook is wordier and more conversational than on other social media platforms. It doesn't have the same post-length constraints as Twitter and Instagram. It’s even stranger when you think about Facebook's rollout of Graph Search, which is supposed to be so semantically smart in its parsing.

Why build a cornerstone feature that is so reliant on users to appropriately tag something with a hashtag? Why not build a search function that is actually smart enough to determine what’s relevant or recommend topic meta tags based on content without the distracting hashtag?

But rest assured, there’s a long-range plan behind it. Maybe it’s a positioning move to unseat Twitter as more people do all their socializing on their phone. Maybe it’s part of a grand plan for Facebook to bump Twitter from their hold on the instant feed.

Our faith is in your hands team Zuckerberg. We’re #waitingwithanxiousanticipationforyournewhashtagcoolness.

Mike Schwab

Dear Marketer,
While everyone else in our industry attended SXSW as a developer, advertiser, designer, or what have you. I actually attended SXSW as your consumer. And what I learned is that your entire industry is slowly getting in on my little secret:

It’s all about ME.

Yup, you used to think that you could bucket me with a bunch of other people who have similar HHIs, genital parts and ages. You were essentially saying that Marilyn Manson, Bobby Brown and Tim McGraw were the same person and had the same values. Turns out that we all want to be spoken to individually and that technology and the digital space are enabling that. Not only do we want to be spoken to individually, we want it on our terms and on our own schedule. I don’t want to wait for episodes of my favorite show; I want the entire season and I want it now on any device (see: Netflix’s “House of Cards.”)

And I want to be the star of the show. At SXSW I got to sit on the throne from HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones.” I got my picture taken and of course I put it on Facebook so all my friends could see ME. The New York Times made a profile of my face out of words, but then I learned that the words weren’t about ME—not cool. I visited the GE Brilliant Brew truck for a free latte and got my face drawn into the foam. I could have gotten a free latte with a GE light bulb drawn in the foam and only waited a few seconds, but instead I waited 45 minutes to get ME in the foam. It ended up looking like a mash-up of Abe Lincoln and Mr. Clean. But it was well worth the wait, Why? Because it was a picture of ME.

I was also shocked to see that brands were actually offering me things that I needed and wanted rather than yelling at me with a megaphone. Chevy offered me free rides around town through their “Grab a Chevy” program. AT&T let me power up my phone in a secure locker as I roamed the conference (while feeling naked without my phone). And countless brands gave me free stuff, like 3M post-its, battery packs and cell phone cases. The cell phone case came from a company that lets me customize and design my cover with—what else—pictures of ME.

The sessions were great, and, shockingly, they all revolved around ME. A few sessions touched on the power of humor, and I like to laugh—as long as you make it easy. And storytelling—I love a good story and you’re actually starting to learn that I would rather hear about the story behind your products than the features of your products. I attended Jonah Berger’s session (he’s the author of Contagious) and realized that you’ve started to figure out what makes things contagious. And as you suspected, it’s the content and type of content that makes things memes, not just calling them “viral” or making sure the right blogger or TV show mentions them. And, speaking of contagious, I waited in line one hour to get a picture of Grumpy Cat (and ME).

I even found it comforting to hear the stories of how Panera Bread and Whole foods are becoming more meaning-driven. It makes ME feel good when I eat there.

So keep it up marketers.

Best regards,

Your consumer (ME)

Dan Mandle

Senior editor at The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal, last year published a blog post about social media and its impact in generating web traffic: “Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong.”

With approximately 5,400 Tweets; 4,600 Facebook Likes; 1,200 shares on LinkedIn; and 1,100 +1s—to say nothing of the blog commentary and other related discourse in digital channels—it’s fair to say that “Dark Social” was a sticky idea that went viral.

To me, the main point of the post is that today's web analysts are decreasing the perceived value of social interactions in their reporting by relying on tools that track visits by referral sources—tools that invariably allocate otherwise socially driven traffic coming from, say, instant messenging and email to generic sources such as “direct” means.

Other, more general implications include:

1. The notion that optimizing for social media means more than looking at Facebook and Twitter. The content itself has to be appraised.
2. Formal social networks have brought a form of structure to social interactions that did not previously exist (in as simple a format).
3. Along with the structure of formal social networks there is not only a loss in privacy, but a gain in social record keeping.

There have been plenty of counterpoints to the Alexis piece. For instance, the notion that the web has only been social since the rise of social networks (ca. 2005) ignores the fact that the Internet—of which the worldwide web is a part—has been social since its inception. Is anyone up for a dial-up chat on a local bulletin board service (aka BBS)?

Regardless of semantics about the Interwebs, I was intrigued by the notion that our analyses might be downplaying the true role of social interactions simply on account of our toolsets.

I therefore replicated the Chartbeat methodology Alexis outlined in “Dark Social” and ran a test of the site Colle+McVoy launched earlier this year for the Pedal Minnesota campaign (www.pedalmn.com).

Methodology

• Exclude Sources (relevant to the site I analyzed)

• Specific media vendors/partnerships (i.e., exploreminnesota, bringmethenews, tuneupstation)

• Exclude Media (relevant to the site I analyzed)

• CPC, organic, email

• Exclude Landing Pages (clearly not “Dark” in their nature)

• Home page (i.e., /)
• Main section header pages (i.e., /map/|/events/|/resources/|/pedal central/|/contact/|/partners/

Results

My results reflected the general patterns Chartbeat isolated with traffic data to The Atlantic. At first glance, this might suggest we need to be more thorough with any site reporting that requires us to be 100 percent certain about all socially derived visits. However, owing to other truths about site analytics and methodologies (deactivated cookies, for instance, decreasing what we can actually report as full and complete records), we will never be 100 percent certain about all such visits.

Analysts working in agencies should keep this in mind. As much as we'd like to report firm campaign results to our teammates and, ultimately, our clients, courtesy of web analytics tools that purportedly count unique visitors to your properties and tally the sources of their arrival to those properties, we need to be transparent about the fact that—unless we're pulling server logs—our data is always going to be directional.

Mike Caguin and Eric Husband

The Super Bowl is the most anticipated and talked about event in the advertising industry. It’s our Oscars, Grammys and Fashion Week wrapped into one. We expect to see some of the best creative, soundest strategy and most effective marketing of the year. But with all the flash and hoopla, how does it affect the average marketer? What can the millions of marketers, business leaders and entrepreneurs take away on Feb 3rd?

First, they should ask, “What is my Super Bowl?” Instead of looking at the event as the advertising star-studded night it is, consider it just a platform, a launching pad that top tier advertisers decide (or can afford) to leverage.  Every marketer has a “Super Bowl” or big stage and you don't need $4 million plus (average cost of the Super Bowl media buy) to own it. While helping Caribou Coffee with a major rebranding effort, we approached the design of their coffee cups as their Super Bowl. After all, to the nation's second largest premium coffee shop, their cups actually garner the sort of impressions a commercial during the Super Bowl does. All of a sudden, the cup designs became a lead element in the campaign and everything followed.

And with Land O'Lakes, we treated their new mobile site as their Super Bowl. Today's busy Moms (and Dads) are turning more and more to mobile devices to plan and prepare meals, so we placed great emphasis on creating a user experience that was intuitive, simple and inspiring. After all, it will be used by millions of people.

Once you identify your Super Bowl, it might not reach hundreds of millions of viewers in one fell swoop—or feature the mishaps of Janet Jackson— but there are some things we can all learn from the big game that can be applied.

It's not just about showing up, it's about standing out.

Whether it's at a trade show such as CES, packaging on a store shelf, or something as simple as a sweepstakes—just think, what would happen if you treated it as if everyone was watching? Pretend for a second that USA Today is going to gauge your efforts with a meter the next day. That your family and friends are going to point out "I know the person who did that…" The reason so many Super Bowl spots are memorable isn't just because they cost a lot of money. It's because a lot of thought went into them. No one wants to disappoint.

Make sure it’s the right kind of memorable.

Too often, in their efforts to stand out, advertisers make the mistake of not linking their creative idea to the uniqueness of the product. They do a great job making people laugh, or maybe even coaxing a tear or goosebumps with a heartfelt message, but the viewer is unable to remember what brand moved them in the first place. Will your audience walk away your Super Bowl message the way you'd like?

Get the most out of your investment.

Two trends have emerged from advertising during the big game. First, creating buzz for your ad prior to game day is a great way to make your marketing dollars work harder. Can you tease your Super Bowl effort before it launches?

Second, advertisers are doing an increasingly good job of tying a social component to their spot, whether it’s an online game or asking viewers to vote for the ending of the spot on Twitter. By doing this they engage consumers, increase conversations and build buzz. Be sure you’ve employed all the tools in your marketing toolbox to promote your Super Bowl.

Casie Cook

At a time when many bright-eyed college graduates are embarking on their first internships or “real” jobs, it seems appropriate to offer some advice on how to be successful. First, you must understand that you cannot fail. Every new endeavor is an opportunity to learn and to grow. Sounds cliché, but it’s true. 

You know you’re smart. Now you have to prove it. Based on my experiences, you can do this by being an incessant learner, thinking critically, building strong relationships, understanding expectations and showing passion along the way.

Keep learning

Learning doesn’t end after college. In a very real way, it’s the start of you creating your own curriculum. Look for inspiration everywhere. Read articles and books, study people and places, attend events, talk to smart people – just get out there and soak it up. 

Think differently

If you’re asked to do something, don’t just do it. Recognize the end goal and over-deliver. Find a different, better solution. Combat ambiguity by asking good questions. Asking questions demonstrates curiosity and the desire to better understand what’s trying to be accomplished. You’re not expected to have all the answers. No one does. 

Build good relationships 

Whether you’re extroverted or prefer to keep to yourself, you must create connections with people inside and outside of where you work. Cultivating strong relationships will help you navigate through your career – and your life. The easiest way to do this is to just be you. People will recognize when you’re being genuine and get to know you for who you really are – professionally and personally.

Understand expectations

One of the biggest barriers to surpassing expectations is not knowing what they are in the first place. Ask! On your first day, ask how your success will be measured. Then follow up after about a month by requesting a review to understand what you’re doing well and what you can work on. 

Wear your passion

Finally, show that you’re passionate about what you’re doing. People don’t want just anybody representing their brand. They want a team of passionate, ambitious leaders who will advocate for the organization. Enthusiasm should shine in everything you do. 

In short, be so remarkable that you make everyone else aspire to your awesomeness. Work every day to make yourself, and everyone around you, better. You’ll know when you’ve found what you’re meant to do because you’ll feel like a better you with every bit of effort you contribute to it. You’ll also know if you haven’t found it. You must continuously expose yourself to new information and experiences to find what makes you happiest. Remember, you cannot fail – so long as you try. 

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – H. Thurman 

Bethany Iverson

As advertisers, we have incredible influence to move things forward and take on challenging issues of culture, society, technology and economics. We can spur honest conversations (even if they’re difficult), and create work that broadens discourse instead of reducing it.

In order to accomplish this, our industry needs diverse intellectual talent — people who see and experience the world in many different ways. But a disturbing trend is emerging: women and men who would have once pursued a career in advertising are being lured away with tempting offers from startups and tech companies (see 8 Reasons To Choose A Startup Over A Corporate Job). Attractive new job offers, coupled with a less-than-favorable reputation as an industry (advertising is the 10th most hated profession in the U.S. according to Gallup), means that advertising could be facing a very real shortage of diverse intellectual talent in just a few years’ time. A lack of talent means our industry’s point of view will become staid and our ability to create change will quickly fade.
 
The issue of talent is precisely what we set out to address in our recent collaboration with the 4A’s, a leading ad association looking to jump-start a dialogue with the next generation. The project was designed to share untold stories of real people who work in agencies. But before we could tell their stories, we needed to know what we were up against.

We began by talking with college students and young advertising professionals in order to understand the gaps that exist between students’ perceptions and employees’ reality. We asked similar questions of both groups and then compared their responses. The results were staggering: the things that students are most wary of are the same things young working professionals enjoy most.

In general, students believe that 1) You have to be a brilliant creative genius to make it in our field, 2) There aren’t enough ad jobs to go around for those who are interested, 3) Digital agencies are the only ones that work with new technology, and 4) Agencies are cutthroat, backstabbing places that eat their young.

Most of these perceptions are unfounded. First, young professionals told us that they thrive on the creativity in agencies, whether they’re an account executive or a copywriter. Second, they found jobs by landing internships, meeting the right people and having the right attitude, even when the job search sucks. Third, they work with emerging technology every day — it’s actually an area where they feel the most empowered. Finally, those just starting out in advertising told us story after story about how much they enjoy collaborating with coworkers, how welcoming agencies are, and how most of the folks they work with are driven to create great work rather than clutter the world with more garbage.

The disparity between perceptions and reality means that it's up to us to redefine creativity and show that there are many seats at the table, help students understand that finding the right internship is the first step toward finding the right job, communicate that technology is the lifeblood of every agency and an area where young talent rules the roost, and last but not least, show that advertising is the new team sport.

On the heels of our research came a new website, openadvertising.aaaa.org, designed to open up the walls of our agencies and welcome those who are skeptical, excited or curious about our field. The site features short videos from art directors, writers, strategists, analysts and account executives that show what a day in the life is really like, which we hope will dispel misperceptions along the way.

Colle+McVoy had the pleasure of creating four videos for the site that feature our employees. Take a peek at our stories (and the new OpenAdvertising site). We’d love to hear what you think about where our industry is headed and what we could do to make it better than it’s ever been before.

Grant Olson

Maintaining a social media presence has become an essential part of the marketing mix for just about any consumer-facing brand. In fact, enterprise class corporations now have 26 employees on average creating social content on their behalf (Owyang, Jeremiah. Social Media Management: An Industry Perspective).

Although marketers realize that a social media presence is crucial, social media (or community) management is still a young discipline. Over 80% of enterprise-class corporations’ social media programs are less than three years old (Owyang, Jeremiah. Social Media Management: An Industry Perspective). The exciting part is best practices are still being forged all the time. This includes the emergence of a handful of social media engagement tools that aim to help social media teams listen to and interact with their communities.

It’s important for marketers to stay abreast of the tools that can make us more effective while engaging in the social space. That’s why we’re constantly evaluating social media engagement tools. Most of these tools include features like:

• Conversation streams from various social networks to keep an eye on what’s being said about your brand
• The ability to flag or assign posts for follow-up and facilitate collaboration between team members
• Publishing capabilities for multiple social networks to broadcast content to your community
• Post-level analytics to gauge the effectiveness of your content

Of course, you should always keep your specific social media objectives in mind when evaluating these tools. But, to help narrow the list, a recent evaluation from Colle+McVoy identified three frontrunners: Hootsuite, Buddy Media and SocialVolt.

In our particular case, we were looking for a tool with a good balance of collaboration features, real-time listening, post-level analytics and publishing capabilities across multiple networks.

HootSuite provides the most bang for your buck. It offers solid analytics, a decent user experience, and standard collaboration features like assigning community posts to team members for follow-up, for $5.99/month, plus $15 per additional user per month.

Buddy Media is a true enterprise solution, with a scalable offering that spans just about every social network. It is one of the few tools that provided options for publishing to a YouTube channel.

SocialVolt is solid across the board. Although more expensive at $1,800 per month for the professional edition and a website that leaves you needing a live demo for the full picture, we were still very intrigued.

The most important thing we learned through our evaluation is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. No silver bullet. It’s extremely important to articulate your goals for the social space and tailor your team and tools to them. We did arrive at a clear decision for the tool that best fits our particular needs: HootSuite.

HootSuite provides all the necessities a social media team needs in a clean and intuitive interface. Collaboration is streamlined. Publishing capabilities include almost all social networks and post types. Analytics are integrated across the board. Customizable conversation streams on the home screen allow you to keep an eye on the conversation. And, perhaps an often-overlooked benefit, the training necessary for a team to use the tool would be minimal.

If you’re part of a social media team that could use some streamlining, there’s a good chance one of these tools could make your life easier. Just don’t forget to consider the whole picture before jumping on the bandwagon of any single one. It’s a long list.

Allison Janney

Bloggers can get a bad rap. “Who even reads blogs?” is often a question posed by teams or clients when discussing a potential blog outreach program. Actually, a lot of people read blogs. According to eMarketer, the number of blog readers in the U.S. will reach 122.6 million in 2011, representing 53.5% of Internet users.

I’ll be the first to admit that not all blogs are good blogs. It’s like finding websites – there’s the good, the bad and the ugly. However, when you want a third-party endorsement for your brand online, bloggers hit the sweet spot.

Here are some points of differentiation that make bloggers a powerful influencer group, and some ideas for how you can best work with them on behalf of your brand. 



Passion


Personalization


Creativity