Throughout Mad Men’s entire seven-season run, journalists and marketers have written extensively about what’s changed in the ad world since the 60s and early 70s. It’s been empowering for us as advertisers to talk about how far we’ve come from the days when brands’ fortunes could be made or lost on the ideas of an isolated, Don Draper-esque ad man.
Research! Technology! Analytics! Multi-channel campaigns! Social!
These advances have all made Mad Men’s depiction of advertising as antiqued as Harry Crane’s gigantic, room-sized computer.
Sounds great right? Except it isn’t true.
As an industry we’ve advanced and grown, but at its core brand owners looking for the “the big idea” are often going down the same old path and arriving at the same old destinations. Meanwhile, we’ve coined new phrases to undercut different approaches to getting to a big idea. A phrase like “tactical execution” which in many circles means any creative that’s not a TV spot undermines the potential of an idea that may not need TV’s exposure to thrive.
Maybe more than we’d like to admit, the perception is still pervasive that big ideas are those that are built for TV campaigns, created in pitch sessions around poorly defined notions of a product and its target customers. The source of today’s big ideas is often just a rotary phone away from being a Mad Men set.
Don’t get us wrong, this isn’t diatribe against TV – TV is great and in many cases it’s the best channel to reach your target audience. But to bastardize Marshall McLuhan: the medium doesn’t determine the value of the message. We’ve seen big ideas manifest themselves across channels – a compelling idea in digital, out of home, or print can be a big, brand defining ideas. An idea informed by research, improved through analytics, and amplified across channels can be a big, brand defining idea.
Rick Webb states it simply in his new book Agency – “It is to our detriment that, in advertising, we focus on the one large brand positioning as “the idea”.”
We know, it’s not breakthrough thinking or even a particularly new concept – you’ve probably read it in one of the many “what’s different since the Mad Men era” articles – but despite all of the talk, our dirty secret remains: at a time when other industries have been revolutionized by technology and new thinking, most advertising is still firmly entrenched in the past.
The “big idea” ought to be laser focused on what your consumers say about you, not what you say to them. Brands have to start walking the walk, not just talking the talk with pithy headlines and 30-second spots spread as far and wide as possible. Instead, ask yourself: How does our brand vision get fulfilled at every touch-point and how do we create a reason for consumers to be the voice of the brand?
As Mad Men ends its run this year, it’s time to finally put aside all of the biases that the series depicts: let’s consider the fact that a good idea can be a big idea, no matter where it comes from or how it’s executed.
