Chris Anderson on Next-Gen PR

The always interesting Chris Anderson has an interesting post up about the direction in which PR is heading online. By and large, I agree with his perspective as well as the tips for basic blocking and tackling at the end of the post. The only comment worth adding is that as transparency increases a greater burden is placed on the shoulders of the PR folks to know more than what they're pitching that day. They need to know the product, the market, the industry etc. so that they can initiate and carry on informed conversations on behalf of their clients. Another example of how traditional agency models are being disrupted these days.

The DNA of Marketing Strategy

One of my favorite concepts relating to online marketing and commerce is the "Architecture of Participation". Coined by Tim O'Reilly a few years ago, the idea behind the term is that pages, sites, and networks should be built with the notion of user participation in mind. Likewise, online advertisers and marketers are coming to understand the importance and value of constructing campaigns and creative in ways that engender active responses and contributions from consumers. In biology, a genotype is essentially the genetic code (DNA) that an organization carries around with it in each of its cells. A phenotype is the expression of that genotype in the form of features, chemistry, behavior, etc. While the former is the product of conception and does not materially vary over time, the latter evolves and changes through the infinitely complex interactions of specific genes and environment. Interesting (perhaps?) but what does this mean in the context of marketing today? Glad you asked... I find the analogy useful because it makes a clear distinction between what is knowable (the sequence of DNA) and what is virtually unknowable (looking at an individual's DNA and using that to predict his height, hair color, weight, personality, etc.). Today, we're still in control of the DNA of our marketing strategies and messaging but what those actually look like once consumers begin to participate in our campaigns is fraught with a lot more uncertainty. In the next post, I'll share some ideas we have around how to embrace and benefit from the new order of things that puts consumers in the drivers seat.

The Agency Party is Coming to an End

So according to this story in Ad Age, Google is offering a small, select group of advertisers the opportunity to buy radio ad inventory through AdWords. The service is called Google Audio. There is certainly some wisdom to this in that it expands the size of the market for radio advertising thereby driving up competition for necessarily scarce audio ad impressions. Economics 101. From Google's perspective, the more AdWords becomes a full-service platform offering advertisers the opportunity to bid on ad inventory across multiple channels (Web, print, radio, TV (anyone know if Spot Runner and Google are talking these days?)). By combining a low cost of entry auction model with inventory across multiple channels, Google can become the first and last place advertisers need to go for campaign management and reach. Smart, savvy, and entirely within the realm of possibility. A question this raises is what, if any, impact this new, more integrated, and more dynamic pricing and sales model will have on the radio industry in general. By exposing the true market-value of radio ad inventory to advertisers, will Google Audio have the counter-intuitive effect of putting downward pressure on advertising radio rates in general? Competition in the "long-tail" of radio ad inventory will certainly increase and drive up effective prices for those spots, but what about the drive-time spots? Will advertisers continue to spend as much as they have given the additional visibility they'll have into what's happening in the market for similar kinds of ad impressions? When you add the two together (tougher to sell ads at "premium" rates, easier to sell ads at off hours etc) do publishers stand to gain or lose? It is truly fascinating to see how the Web in general and companies like Google in particular are driving a new level of competition and transparency in markets that have been closed since inception. By offering market-driven, dynamic pricing and virtually real-time performance data, the likes of Google and others are creating a vastly larger and more efficient market for advertising. While the promise of more transparency and accountability from publishers to advertisers makes for exciting times if you're a marketer (or a performance-oriented marketing services firm like ours at Spring Creek Group), it no doubt makes traditional advertising and "traditional" full-service marketing agencies more than a little nervous. Afterall, a lack of transparency is what created the opportunity to charge a hefty percent of spend with little-to-zero accountability for the end result. As the market becomes more efficient, the longstanding revenue model for the established ad agencies looks more and more like its history.