Sorry, no, you're not off the hook with ROI

By Eleftheria Parpis

Where's the ROI?
  If anyone thinks the recession has lowered expectations for marketers to produce financial results for shareholders, think again. If anything, it's the opposite. "The pressure for companies to produce tangible measurable financial performance [is becoming] greater and greater, especially in a low-growth economy," said Miles Nadal, MDC Partners chairman and CEO, who hosted an Advertising Week panel discussion titled "How the World Of Return on Investment Has Changed and What It Means to the Industry" with David Kirchhoff, CEO, Weight Watchers, Leon Cooperman, chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors, and Russ Klein, former president of global marketing strategy and innovation for Burger King.

  The panelists discussed how to produce positive results during these tepid economic conditions and the marketer's role in creating that momentum, with both Kirchhoff (top) and Klein (above) stressing that marketing and spending is a critical part of the equation. "Any study worth its salt would say it's almost impossible to save your way to long-term sustainable shareholder gains," said Kirschhoff. "Marketing has to be accountable, and it has to drive growth."
  The business climate will continue to prove challenging, said Klein. "We are in for an economic ice age as it pertains to marketers," he said. "It's going to be slow growth for a long time."

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September 28, 2010 | Comments (6)

Lloyd Braun on the rancor of the ad business

“You have five or six people at a table, and half them want to kill each other. I'd never seen anything like it until I got into the advertising business.”

—Lloyd Braun, CEO of BermanBraun, on the problems of matching advertisers and content producers.

September 28, 2010 | Comments (6)

Agency CEOs on what we can (and can't) learn from 'Mad Men' today

By Andrew McMains

Mad Men spiced up an otherwise predictable panel discussion of agency models, creativity and talent recruitment (the old agency model is broken! Effective marketing stems from understanding the consumer! It's all about ideas!) at Tuesday's Bloomberg CEO Summit, part of Advertising Week.
  Panelist Bob Jeffrey of JWT injected the first reference to the popular AMC series in response to a question about how to retain talent. Mad Men, he argued, "has been a positive recruiting thing for our industry. Even though it's advertising in the 60s, it shows people having fun. There's a certain sexiness, a certain glamour." JWT's worldwide CEO added that "we have to get back to the entertainment side of what we do. I'm part of a big holding company. The holding companies in some ways have had a negative impact on the agencies. There's so much pressure on the agencies … that we forget where we are in terms of the creative side. Mad Men is a good reminder of that."
  Jeffrey's pop-culture reference quickly became fodder for one-liners from Arnold global CEO Andrew Benett and GlobalHue CEO Don Coleman.
  "You mean you're allowed to have fun in this business?" Benett asked sarcastically.
  "Those were before the days of sexual harassment," Coleman quipped, triggering a roar of laughter from the audience.

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September 28, 2010 | Comments (47)

JWT's Bob Jeffrey on 'Mad Men' and recruiting

“Mad Men … has been a positive recruiting thing for our industry. Even though it's advertising in the '60s, it shows people having fun. There's a certain sexiness, a certain glamour.”

—JWT CEO Bob Jeffrey at Tuesday's Bloomberg CEO Summit.

September 28, 2010 | Comments (10)

For all the excitement, mobile marketing is still more tomorrow than today

By Brian Morrissey

Agency executives are of two minds when it comes to mobile. On the one hand, they see a potentially huge market. On the other, it's one that's still quite small. Tuesday's Mobile Ad Summit in New York, part of Advertising Week, attracted several top agency chiefs, including IPG CEO Michael Roth. And the message was that mobile is a big part of the marketing world's future, even if it isn't a big part of the bottom line today.
  Reuben Hendell, CEO of IPG digital shop MRM, said his agency is formalizing its mobile practice as the MRM Mobile Net. All together, mobile is now 10 percent of MRM's revenue, he said. Matt Seiler, global CEO of fellow IPG agency Universal McCann, said mobile hasn't become as big of a business for UM, estimating that it accounts for less than 5 percent of revenue. "It's a great platform that we look forward to doing something with, but we're not there yet," Seiler said. Roth is bullish on mobile for the same reason Willie Sutton was fond of banks: It's where the money is—or will be. He cited a study that found one-third of people would prefer to give up sex for a year than their mobile phone. "That will give you an idea of how important [mobile] is," Roth said.
  On the creative side, apps and location-based services provide yet another way to reach customers with marketing that is less interruptive and more of a service. Scott Prindle, executive creative technology director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, said he believes mobile has the potential to act as "the glue" for campaigns, connecting the digital and physical worlds. In some cases, advertising ideas begin in mobile. CP+B's recent work for the carrot industry includes a mobile application that's a video-game controlled by the crunching sound of biting baby carrots. (See the trailer above.) The game ended up influencing a TV spot.

September 28, 2010 | Comments (11)

Nielsen unveils Online Campaign Ratings system

By Steve McClellan

In a bid to help marketers measure audiences for ads across TV, online and (eventually) mobile platforms by a common metric, Nielsen unveiled a new system Monday—to be launched commercially next year—that will provide, for the first time, TV-type ratings for Internet display and video spots on sites like Facebook and Yahoo!
  The new system, called Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings, presented during Advertising Week, will enable Nielsen to combine data from its own online rating panels with data from third-party contributors like Facebook to more precisely measure how many people—by gender, age, reach and frequency--are viewing ads online. The data is combined through the use of tags known as pixels that alert Nielsen each time a particular ad is displayed in a browser.
  Media, marketing and agency executives heralded the service as a breakthrough. "Impressions and clicks aren't doing anybody a favor" when it comes to understanding the effectiveness of online advertising, said Mike Murphy, chief revenue officer at Facebook.

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September 28, 2010 | Comments (12)

VIDEO: CP+B's Winston Binch on creativity and digital media

By Brian Morrissey

The hot topic of Advertising Week is the nature of digital creativity and how agencies can reinvent for digital media. In this video, Winston Binch, a partner at Crispin Porter + Bogusky and veteran of digital shops, talks to Adweek's Brian Morrissey about the nature of technology in the creative process, why CP+B is hiring developers and how agencies need to change their thinking when going from campaigns to platforms.

September 28, 2010 | Comments (14)