Mary Meeker Annouces the Start of World War I (originally published 3 August 2014)

Last week Mary Meeker of Kliener Perkins Caufield Beyers (KPCB) gave that company's yearly overview of internet, and really all, media usage. (No, she didn't announce World War I, bear with me, and I will talk about why I used the title below). The presentation covered media usage habits and at one point she mentioned that marketing and advertising companies have not figured out how to take advantage of cross channel usage yet and brands and sales were currently not at levels they should be because of this.

I think I know why, or a big reason why.

This announcement comes at the 100 year anniversary of World War I. 100 years ago, this week in fact, the early combatants of the "War to End All Wars" had started mobilizing their armies and via calling on defensive pacts and the doctrine of Balance of Power within a few months most of Western Europe and a good part of the Middle East would be in the midst of war that went on longer than anyone foresaw, wanted or hoped and that would see at least 9 million dead.

I have been fascinated by WWI for a number of reasons, but particularly for what I see as an analog to our business. Simply put, much like WWI, I think technology has overwhelmed our tactics and our institutional constructs to handle it.

Let me demonstrate my point. Military leaders in 1914 appreciated the devastating effect of machine guns but they hadn't really hadn't come up with a way to solve for the fact that men couldn't march fast enough to not all get killed before they reached the enemy trenches.

Equally the leaders couldn't figure how to bring the doctrine of combined forces to bear as largely cavalry had been made obsolete by the rifle and certainly by the machine gun (something that had started by the American Civil War some 50 years earlier).

The doctrine of combined forces is a sort of "rock, paper, scissors" concept. If one of your elements was stymied by say the enemy's "rock" your "paper" was close at hand to change the balance of the battle and break the stalemate.

I'm not alone in saying that the carnage of WWI was largely due to a lack of imagination on how to bring the doctrine of combined forces to bear. The leaders wholly and willfully overlooked the nascent technology of air power and armored vehicles. They were dragged into the future by a pockets of visionaries only after the loss of millions of lives and the destruction of the world order, national and country boundaries and much else.

So what do these have to do with each other? It seems to me that we are this same sort of paradigm change in our industry. Most of our agencies are built to provide a means of production. Creative production, media plans, public relations releases. In fact most of the fees agencies receive is for "back office" trafficking, production and moving of "creative elements" or managing of budgeting and billing.

The simple fact is that this isn't really required any more. A recent grad with Abode Premier can shot a "commercial". There are now online media management systems that can do the same thing the multi-million dollar enterprise software programs can do, our very measurement systems have for a long time seemed from another era. I mean a "GRP", really? What is a rating point in our current era anyway?

Agencies continue to silo themselves by means of production, and are not bringing "combined arms" to bear. This is in-and-of-itself a problem, but the bigger problem is that large clients continue to allow this. Just last week a major agency win was announced as a "consolidation" with Ogilvy doing creative, Digitas doing "digital" and content and Starcom doing media.

No wonder we can't get to cross channel campaigns, with "consolidation" like this it is little wonder how that company gets to a campaign much less one that crosses channels and is really effective -- just setting up the status meetings is going to take two weeks.

To me it all sounds like more huddling in a muddy trench, waiting out the artillery bombardment and listening for the command that will send us "over the top" hoping that we can run across No Man's Land faster than the enemy can reload his machine gun at the end of which most of our colleagues and friends will be gone and the only thing we will have to show for is that the general can claim he moved his drink's cabinet 200 yards closer to the enemy capital.

It's time for something more asymmetric, less siloed and certainly less ponderous.

Recently I parted ways with the agency I was at and started a new media and strategy company affiliated with production companies, creatives, web designers and so on. The best of them who came to the same conclusion as I, get out of the agency.

We come together on projects as needed and then go our separate ways when the project is done. It's faster, it's smarter (because all channels are integrated from the start), and it costs the client a whole lot less and we make more money because we don't have to ship our money out to some holding company.

Have we been hired by the likes of P&G?

Well, no, we haven't.

But then again if it was 1914 and I told the generals and politicians that we would win the war via a combined arms attack including airplanes, tanks, artillery, infantry; each of which would be brought to battle based upon the changing circumstances on the field, and we would get the job done with a whole lot less people and whole lot loss of life...well... they would have thought I was crazy too.

A Modest (Internet) Proposal

Dear Reader,

As we all know internet speed and access has become a source of much enmity the past months as a number of our more wealth and worthy internet suppliers have been much burdened by supplying internet access to the whole of the populace, particularly those companies and corporations that have been egregiously taking up bandwidth in a gluttonous effort to communicate videos, news, email, opinion, information and general entertainment. Equally, a number of so-called "start-ups" in small buildings called "garages" and "basements" and "dorm rooms" have been horrifically trying to curb the profits of the suppliers to start even more of these gluttonous so called businesses.

As such, it has fallen upon our much exalted rulers to protect these much put-upon internet providers because they simply have no way of making the profits to which they are accustomed. I ask what could be more un-American than standing in the way of increasing profits for monopolies, dear Reader?

Far be it from I, a lowly user of bandwidth, to issue proclamations; however I have traveled extensively throughout the land and visited many web sites and even, off-line and in a physical manifestation, visited a number of our villages and towns and seen with mine own eyes the burden that these bandwidth gourmands have visited upon the land and our cherished internet providers.

So it is to these gourmands and to those who would say that access to communications should be like the air or water or radio or television, and to our visionary rulers; that I offer the following modest proposal:

We all are now aware, via recent scientific experiment, that the human body is capable of carrying electronic pulses and, wanted or not, is by its very existence a sort of conductor by means of which electricity can pass. And, this being the case, isn't it therefore theoretically possible that electronic messaging could be sent via means of the human body as well?

Additionally, we are aware that a frightfully good number of our citizens have become a burden to our state -- namely the elderly, the undereducated, those of lower income, those with pre-existing conditions, immigrants, the underemployed, the unemployed and recent college graduates.

In order to solve two burgeoning crises to our body politic, why shouldn't we use these burdens on the state and put them to good use? No, I am not talking about public works, nor some sort of universal system of support, dear Reader. Why should we not string them together into a sort of "chain" over which electronic communications could be sent, therefore supplying the internet providers with the additional bandwidth required without loss of profit and thereby also alleviating our burdens on the state treasury?

I'm not one to self congratulations, dear Reader, but this seems brilliant idea in the least, do you not agree?

I have tried, humbly, to offer this proposal to our overseers, but alas their website is down, probably because of these bandwidth hogs of which we speak. Some have said this is a result of our overseers having antiquated technology and is the reason for dis-function of their website. But, dear Reader, how can this be anything but lies and rumors spread by the aforementioned internet gourmands and "start-ups"?

And even if true, all the more reason to implement my modest proposal, I say, as this scheme can not only help our beleaguered internet providers but also help our rulers overcome their deficiencies in communication as well.

Rest assured, dear Reader, I shall keep up my efforts to submit my proposal and make the internet safe for a very few to continue to make profits.

As always, dear Reader, I am most sincerely yours.

Big Data is Bullshit....Well Kinda

Last Friday in Cannes, David Droga made a number of well-pointed comments about the industry, one of which has been all over the Twittersphere for the past several days. He called Big Data "bullshit" during comments wherein he was making the point that successful advertising is driven by understanding the target.

In spirit, I think Droga is right. Understanding the consumer is the only way to create and carry campaigns to market. But is Big Data is Bullshit? Well kind of. Yes, the industry is doing what we always do and fetishsizing the latest tool that is supposed to make advertising fool-proof. Which always sets off some peoples'...well their... Bullshit Meters. However, is Big Data Bullshit?

I don't think so. I think is going to add to knowledge of consumers that we haven't had to date. It is and will continue to make much of the quantitative data that has driven the industry obsolete -- and it's about time. Most of the Quant tools we use were developed in the 60's and 70's. The fact that we still use these tools in a world that looks nothing like it did 50 years ago is really embarrassing. 

I mean why do we still talk about "ratings" or "GRP's", and use tools that were meant to give us measures we were never real sure were accurate anyway? It's like we are still driving around in Model T's in a world that has the technology to build a Ferrari FF. Why shouldn't we be driving the FF... or at least a Camry?

Big Data is going to help us learn more about actual behavior as to opposed to reported or "proscribed" behavior. Our segmentations will become more robust and actionable and CRM is going to be exponentially more informed and as such will be even more crucial for companies to better understand and execute on moving into the future.

So Big Data isn't Bullshit, it's the non-skeptical proponents who are. It's a tool to help us understand consumer behavior, one that we haven't seen to this point. But those that talk about Big Data in the breathless tones reserved for some totem from the gods delivered to give us THE Way forward for advertising are going to be just as wrong as those who thought and spoke the same way about Optimizers and Econometric Models.

The problem with Big Data is the same as all data. It doesn't tell us "why". Why did anyone do make the purchase they did? Why did brand X become iconic and brand Q can't get shelf space? 

Data will never be able to tell us that. It is why strategy and people who can provide those strategies and can intuit a consumers' needs, desires, concerns, passions will continue to be the people who are of ultimately the most value, and who will be building the icons of the future.