Existential evolutions

When I first started working, I was in advertising. A decade later, I’m in marketing communications.

This is supposed to be an improvement. Or evolution. Or revolution even. It certainly sounds more…oh, how should I put it? Impressive?

But why stop at one word when you can add two? Integrated marketing communications. There. That sounds better than impressive. That sounds downright intimidating. It is meant to intimidate people into not asking the most obvious question.

Err…what exactly does that mean?

Well, we used to be in advertising. But then there was this media explosion see, and the whole world went and got themselves a computer. And then some busybody up to no good figured out how to connect computers to phone lines and other computers and they created this Internet thingy and the whole world got into it and suddenly people weren’t watching TV like they were supposed to anymore and they were surfing, blogging, tweeting and oh there was this whole mobile telephony thing that happened around the same time and so everybody got like really into texting too and we had to do something coz nobody was paying attention to our brands anymore so we expanded our role and went after consumers wherever they were by creating these three sixty degree brand communication platforms that are high on interactivity and created total brand immersion experiences which are like, totally cool.

The jargon is everywhere.

We used to have single minded propositions; now we have sixty slide presentations.

If we can successfully make some sense of the afore-mentioned sixty slides and come up with something cogent, it is pre-tested, and then post-tested along a pre-determined set of KPIs (don’t ask), which often include the rather curiously titled parameters of aided and unaided recall.

There should be only one kind of recall. Instant. To score well in the ‘aided recall’ category means this: when reminded of your brand, respondents successfully remembered your brand.

Shall we pop the champagne then?!?

Ideas needed to be simple and insightful. Now they need to be media-neutral, so they can be adapted with the same impact, or lack thereof, into myriad above-the-line and below-the-line spaces.

What line? When did the line appear? Who drew this line?

Perhaps the same folks who created the distinction between buying audiences and advertising audiences. It seems that in the 21st century, you speak to one group of people, while another group goes out and buys your brand.

It isn’t that I mind the verbal gymnastics and the linguistic contortions. It’s not the bigger canvas I have to operate on that bothers me. And I don’t care if the business is evolving. In fact, that bit I like. Integrated communications is the future. It is here to stay. And everybody is going to have to embrace it.

But it seems to me that for the most part, the industry is focusing on the packaging, at the cost of the product. There are only a couple of companies that really understand integrated. And it’s no coincidence that these companies aren’t getting mired in the terminology; they’re sticking to the basics.

When we first started working, we were in the business of producing ideas. Turns out, we still are. 

(The author is Executive Creative Director, Dentsu Creative Impact)