The first term I learned when I moved from the traditional side of marketing and media to digital was “Internet time.” Everything I had learned about how long things took and the best processes to get to the desired results went right out the window.
Digital experts were and are required to get to action plans much faster than was the norm in traditional. There were several reasons for this:
- Because no one really cared: Digital was less thought through, less scrutinized, and generally seemed less important to brand leaders – not worthy of months/weeks of thinking and development.
- Because we AND OUR DAY TO DAY CLIENTS were rewarded for activity rather than thought. No one really expected thinking from digital. Instead they wanted banners and KWs up tomorrow.
- Because we could: Many forms of digital creative and media can be executed FAR more quickly than TV or Print.
- Because we were the bastard step children: 8 times out of 10 we were brought into the campaign process at the last minute, expected to slap together some sort of digital program aligned with the traditional effort that had been built with painstaking steps and dedication.
- Because we did it well: Digital attracted some of the best, most tenacious “do-ers” in the world. We proved it could be done again and again.
There are inevitably consequences to an approach focused on NOW NOW NOW. And as digital has grown in importance in the whole integrated media and marketing soup, client expectations have evolved significantly. Clients want solutions to problems, not mindless activity.
Have we evolved to address them? Not enough, at least in my view. Our collective orientation is to move from a challenge – sell widgets at $8 per or generate leads or whatever – straight to execution. “What’s the offer?” “What’s the tagline?” “What sizes do we need?”
It was a natural consequence of our old challenges to behave in this manner. But it resulted in tremendous churn. Quickly developing banners that were ultimately off message, or indistinctive, or whatever. The results, if I may be so bold as to suggest, are banner blindness, assessment on click rate, and a bastardization of the word “campaign” to mean three banners with the same piece of stock art and the same background color.
Digital is uniquely positioned to solve real business problems if we apply our heads to creating distinctive messages and executions that connect with consumers instead of bombarding them. If our output is simply blue banners with flashing red buttons, or “just running the TV ad as pre-roll, we denigrate the medium and have no competitive advantage over freelance designers with a Mac in their garages.
Add to that the fact that we none of us got into this to make bad ads, and you have a recipe for – scratch that, you have no recipe at all. You have a steady diet of bad microwave meals that may “do the job” but at a tremendous cost to the “health” of ourselves and our brands.
IBM used to give out little wooden paperweights to employees that said simply, THINK. It was good advice then, and essential direction now if we are to develop powerful digitally-centered marketing concepts and programs in the future.

When I started in the ad biz in 1987, the largest account at our agency was State Farm. For like…forever, State Farm had worked with what is now DDB Chicago to leverage its agents as a point of difference.
There are few brands that fail to recognize the power of social media on their businesses. But it appears that many brand teams choose to outsource social media to minimally empowered internal or external teams instead of making a genuine commitment to listen, participate, and respond to social discussions online.
About five days ago, a dear friend of mine asked my opinion on whether she should entrust digital to her brands’ existing agencies or hire digital specialist agencies. Currently they do both, but are somewhat dissatisfied with the results.
Digital has profoundly changed our ability to share and spread the word on things we care about. The democratization of influence is such an important cultural force that its ultimate impact is nigh on unpredictable. We know it will be huge, but as to how huge and how it will alter the human order, we haven’t the foggiest idea.
Oh what a seemingly overblown headline. And yet, if you think about it, it’s not that far from the truth. Because with its broad potential reach, and its likely ability to get people to pay for valuable content, the Fire seems poised to provide a counterbalance for a “free” web, while also giving people the freedom to choose.











