In a move that is even more lame than Time choosing “you” as person of the year, AdAge chooses The Consumer as Ad Age Agency of the Year, which is not only lame on its own, but also completely derivative.
A sad state of affairs when Advertising Age thinks it’s cool to copy Time Magazine. They explain why, and it is a lame explanation, too, “we might end up looking derivative, but we felt we were right. And we still do. But we look forward to you, our consumers, telling us what you think.” I think you’re lame. I also think you don’t want to bring too much attention to all the embarassing “growing pains” that advertising, PR, and marketing firms are having as they blindly navigate their ways through the new media consumer minefield.
More excerpts from Ad Age Agency of the Year: The Consumer:
‘What it does mean, however, is that big agencies — great companies that once cast long shadows over corporate America — are losing more of their control within a marketing process that for decades they have dominated. They’re already being squeezed by procurement departments and jostled by media companies and nibbled at by a host of other kinds of agencies that grew in importance as TV ceased to be the only game in town.’
‘”Traditional agencies have never had to think about distribution because they’d been told what media to color in,” says Nick Law, North American chief creative officer at digital shop R/GA, New York. “Creatively, it’s all been about creating punch lines. For years, there’s been a guild mentality. Clients came because agencies created the magic behind the screen. The new environment has blown open the idea of being an expert, so you can be very good and working in a bedroom in Dundee, and the world can be seeing your work.”‘
‘”We are forced to work faster and to try to spend less money, and that’s a positive thing,” he says. “It changes the way we validate certain kinds of ideas, and it allows for a lot of inexpensive rapid prototyping.”‘
‘Whether and how the state of “perking up” becomes something more is the next big question for consumer control. Events like the explosive growth and sale of YouTube, along with the popularity of Lonelygirl15 meant that 2006 was, as Time noted in its widely reviled choice of “You” as Person of the Year, the year of consumer creativity. Just about every barrier to playing in the wide world of media, from creation to distribution, dropped to the ground.’
‘And that stands as a pretty open-ended question given how short some early attempts have fallen. For every Diet Coke-Mentos clip that’s grown organically into a viral craze, there are several marketer-orchestrated Chevy Tahoe or Wal-Mart social networks, to pick just two consumer-generated content faux pas. And you can be sure there will be more gimmicky, awkward attempts to cash in. Just wait for the Super Bowl.’
‘But, at least nominally, big marketers are starting to think in the right direction. Even Coca-Cola Co., after it initially sulked about the Grobe-Voltz experiment, decided to incorporate the videos, and other user-generated footage, into its website. Meanwhile, Mentos marketer Perfetti van Melle USA just went happily crowing about that $100 million of exposure it got for, uh, free.’
