My initial thought on Google+ brought to mind my kids’ favorite cartoon – the evil Dr. Doofenshmertz on Phineas and Ferb.  I need a social media-stream-inator.  Something that will either truly and seamlessly join them all together, or destroy all but one.

As those in the know in the ad industry have been predicting the key things that will evolve, change or simply finally actually happen that probably should’ve happened years ago (I’ve heard this isn’t just the year of mobile, but the year of the confluence of mobile, social and experiential or something like that), I’m electing to take a more introspective, unvarnished look at us – we knowers of knowledge, trackers of trendy and paramours of prognostication.  Allow me to guess how we, the ad professionals, will act in this new year…

Prediction #1

We will be amazed (read: myopic) by seemingly profound and new (read: more or less slightly tweaked) hardware, software, applications, websites, and whatnot now coming into our collective consciousness.  We will expound their virtues, rush to try them out, gush about paradigms shifting, and maybe even spend some of our own money to buy one or two of these things. 

At some later point, we will demand accountability for all this stuff, stating that the time for exploration and “test and learn” is over, these things need to prove their worth.  And we will demand that accountability at roughly the time we begin to hear what will be profound and new at CES 2012.  Hey, it’s tough to hold the old stuff in your head when you need to free up space to be properly amazed by and have enough exhalations to use in describing all the new stuff.

Prediction #2

We will have an epiphany that the buckets we classify media into shouldn’t be ever smaller based on new hardware that delivers media (Hey, where’s the Directorix of Advertising that Occurs on the Android Platform?  She needs to connect with the Grand Poobah of Platforms that Show Up on Tablets and Other Things Like Computers but Aren’t!), but larger (or at least simpler) based on how people actually use media to get things done – seeing how what’s being delivered is probably video, sound and/or textual content of some sort.

Once had, said epiphany will quickly dissolve as we try to grok the meaning of a tablet that has most of the functionality of a mobile phone (not to mention being roughly the same size), a landline device that allows a person to text, and (GASP!) Internet that shows up on a TV screen.  How do we deal with these things?  Who can buy them?  Who can create things for them?  Who?  Somebody get the Imperial Leader of Stuff That’s Never Been Done Before!

Advertising has become many things, but at its heart and on every level, it’s a people business.

Audiences aren’t collections of behaviors and mindsets that technology has allowed us to gather up and aim our work at. Audiences are people seeking to do things with their most scarce resource – their time. Our #1 goal should be to help them get those things done and our most important investment is in their time – something that will never be a commodity.

Clients aren’t a portfolio of investment opportunities that serve just to provide scale, leverage or clout.  Clients are people who want to do what’s right by their various constituents – their customers, their shareholders, their employees – who are all people, too. If we act as partners in achieving our #1 goal, clients are happy people.

Media companies aren’t commodity traders looking to receive the dollars associated with leverage or clout. Media companies are stewards of people’s time. People choose to invest their time with media companies’ products and those choices become opportunities to invest client dollars to help people get things done – whether buying ads, building experiences or having conversations.

And those working in media at agencies – whether they use connections, communications, investment, activation or some other word to describe what they do – aren’t cogs in a machine facilitating leverage or clout via a portfolio of clients. Folks in media at agencies need to be laser-focused on delivering the intersection of what people are trying to do and how their client’s product or service helps those people get things done – whether that’s at scale or not.

Will technology take this industry in amazing new places that make markets operate more efficiently? Of course – I’ve been lucky enough to be close to a number of the people who have developed or are developing many of these tools. Will the need to report to bottom lines continue to increase? No doubt – and I much prefer managing a P&L vs. a budget. Am I excited about and engaged in the possibilities presented by these evolutions? Absolutely.

But of late, I’ve had many conversations with and messages from people who have been in this industry for a good amount of time, from all sides of the table – client, agency, sales – expressing disappointment in what has become of it. To be clear, these aren’t luddites pining for some golden age of three media to plan and buy and three martinis to have at lunch. These are smart people who have driven and thrived in dynamic media marketplaces. 

What they want is something all people want. Not to be purveyors, receivers or shepherds of scale, leverage or clout. What they want is something encapsulated nicely by words from one of our founders, Judy Trabulsi, on the wall at the entrance to our media department at GSD&M Idea City:

The Value of Relationships and the Relationship of Values

For an industry in flux, it can be easy to lose sight of what’s important.  For the players who put people and relationships first, great work – and even profits – will follow.  

I’ve had more than one person re-tweet or comment on posts of mine saying how “big” or “old” media don’t “get it”.  To be clear, that is not my intent.  My goal is to not be seen as from some sort of “new” school of media anymore than it is to be viewed as from an “old” one.

Though I am fascinated with, not to mention pretty much vested in, the media business and have plenty of thoughts and opinions on the matter that I’ve shared and will continue to share freely, I am more fascinated with why people do the things they do with the hardware and software that makes up their experiences with media – which ultimately drives the media business.

Perhaps this fascination with why people do the things they do with media is the “it” the “big”, “old” media companies don’t “get” in their pursuit of profits.   Fully respecting they are indeed in business to turn a profit, said profit cannot be turned without understanding that the dynamics of why and how people use media has changed.

I felt this confluence of what people hire media to do vs. what media companies’ need to do to turn a profit come to life as I read the cover story from Wired, The Web is Dead, a well done chicken-and-egg, point-counterpoint on the shift from web usage to Internet-driven app usage (Yes, Virginia, they're really is a difference between the web and the Internet). 

My abridged version:

·         The benefit of the shift to Internet-driven apps for people is they can easily get what they want, when they want it, and it works better and faster than a web-based experience.  People save time two ways – by not having to look as hard for what they want and apps tend to perform better/faster than the web.

·         The benefit to media companies is these are semi-walled or entirely walled experiences they can fully control for which they can charge – either directly for the app or using the app as a gateway to charging for something that the app links to. 

·         And due to the aforementioned benefits of time savings and better experience, people are OK paying for it.

One thing “big”, “old” media does “get” is producing content or experiences that are contained and they have full control over (see TV programs, magazines, newspapers, etc).  And now they can allow people to build upon and share this content and/or experience via the Internet thru connections to other apps for social networks – or maybe even on the web (though it is apparently on its last legs – hold that thought).  Thus, the value – both in terms of the value people perceive from being able to do what they want with the content as well as the potentially claimed media value from more impressions - increases for everyone involved in this foodchain.

Ta da.  “Big”, “old” media gets “it”.

But I do believe the “death” of the web is greatly over exaggerated – obviously in order to sell magazines (oh, those “big”, “old” media and their marketing tactics).  In spite of the bleakness of the cover, Chris Anderson – editor in chief of Wired and the man who literally wrote the book on Free – does come around as he closes:

“…the great virtue of today’s Web is that so much of it is noncommercial.  The wide-open Web of peer production, the so-called generative Web where everyone is free to create what they want, continues to thrive, driven by the nonmonetary incentives of expression, attention, reputation and the like.” 

This makes me think of the web as a big, old R&D sandbox for figuring out the next great app – dare I say “killer” app that could deliver a monetary incentive.  And maybe now we can stop having to hear “big”, “old” media lament the “pennies” they make on the web compared to the “dollars” of profit from their “old” media outlets.

“In addition, the growth of the Internet has brought countless new video options into consumers’ homes through services like Hulu, NetFlix, Amazon, and the programmers’ own websites. Right now, the broadcast TV networks generally offer that programming free over the Internet — and free over the air to any household with an antenna — but believe that customers who receive the exact same programming from their cable, satellite, or telephone company should pay a fee for it. That’s like putting a tax on the customers who get it from cable, in order to subsidize the viewers who get it for free online or over the air. We just don’t think that’s fair.” (TWC’s emphasis)