I tell you what. Give me a couple of hundred million to advertise a single product. I’ll give you a campaign twice as innovative.

I think what’s being lost here is the “art” of media planning. Of creative messaging. Of freaking advertising. One of my favorite definitions of creativity is bending the walls of the box but not breaking them.

Some of you may remember me saying about creativity that an artist has a harder time with a blank canvas and no direction than a pencil and paper and a creative brief. It’s the boundaries of the assignment that breed creativity, not the possibilities. The possibilities are limitless…how the hell are you supposed to pick when something is limitless?

I’m always reminded of my childhood, of how I sum up creativity. One evening, my dad told me that I couldn’t go hang out with my friends. Why? Who knows, and it’s not relevant. However, at that moment, I was given a task. I was going to hang out with my friends, I just had to figure out “how” that was going to happen. So naturally, I constructed a rope with bed sheets and snuck out the window.

That is 10 times as creative as walking out the front door.

My point is, it seems like Obama’s marketing people had too much money to spend. It seems like they just started to get bored at the end. “Meh, let’s throw some money on some video games…because most gamers are able to vote, right?” (The answer is yes, btw). “You know what would be cool? Let’s buy out 30 minutes of air time on the major stations to play an ad!” “How about we buy a channel on Dish…?” It looks like the creativity in their strategy started to dry up.

When you’ve got that much money, the possibilities are limitless. I mean LITERALLY LIMITLESS. The creativity starts to get sucked out of it, replaced with vendors peddling their wares. And the content of the message wasn’t that compelling. It was really just rehashing what had been said before. But it looks like it worked.

And don’t get me wrong. I think they did a great job massaging the digerati. But seriously, it seems like they could’ve done a whole lot more than 51% with the amount of money they were given.

Your “branding” budgets are going to be cut, if they haven’t been hacked off already. The downturn of the economy means people will be buttoning up their coats in time to weather a shit-storm.

My solution? Something Joseph brought to my attention in one episode of the AdBastards, actually. Something I’ve been dwelling on since he said it.

Metrics.

The problem with “branding” is that you can’t track sales. This is what your client will tell you, and it’s a real concern. Clients are wary about how online affects sales from a branding standpoint. This cracks me up every time. Do you know why it cracks me up? Because on average, clients spend about 5% - 20% of their budgets on-line. How the hell are you supposed to see the needle move when you’re dropping feathers on the ground?

So we’ll see the branding go away, and DR will become something that all clients are looking for. They’ll want to see conversion metrics, ROAS and actual sales data tracked directly from paid-search or cheap ad network banner campaigns. However, you can battle this.

Joseph said on the show that what they do at his agency is look at metrics that were created by the agency to show value. They’re not looking at CTR or CPC or CPA or CPM or CP-whatever. They’re looking at the aggregate of all those metrics combined, and using years of data, placing a weight on all those - spitting out a final metric that says “You win!” or “You suck.”

Well, I don’t think you need that much data in order to start building your metrics. You can do that with the data you’ve got.

First, do a survey of your customers. See what they like, don’t like, do, don’t do, etc. on your site. If you don’t have anything to sell on the site, that doesn’t mean your site isn’t selling. Check your server logs to see what people are using your site for; where they’re spending most of their time. You can start creating a generic profile of what’s valuable and what’s not.

Then, take all that information and start applying weights to it. The easiest way is to rank the metrics from 1 to 20. So a banner impression would rank about a 2, a banner click 5, a video view 10, a view-through 17, and so on.

You can start building this profile and then gauge how your campaigns are doing. If your rich media is deemed more valuable than flash banners, then does the mix even out? Are you doing any video? Are you even thinking about interaction rates vs. time spent with the ad?

Some of you may, some of you may not. However, to be successful in this environment, shops are going to need to start figuring a way to prove online above and beyond DR.

This post, written by marketing guru Seth Godin, is probably the most appropriate article I’ve read in the last month. With the economy going in to the shits, everyone is focused on the wrong things. You read about Wall Street, Main Street’s reaction to Wall Street, the stock market, big companies failing, Google stock declining a few dozen percent…

How does this effect you?

I know that some of you have large investments, either in 401(k)s or other. You are probably hurting now. But what we can never forget is that people who spend the time to learn and grow and put some effort in to what they do will be just fine throughout this whole downturn.

I don’t want to toot my own horn here, but I’ve been through 3 major layoffs at 3 different companies where I’ve only had 3 jobs (for the lay-person, every comapny that I’ve ever worked for has had a major layoff). I have never been laid off. I like to think the reason for that is because of the amount of effort I put in to my work.

So at a time like this, where things are going to shit faster than you can say “The Dow fell how many points?”, reevaluate on whether you’re putting effort into your job. If you aren’t you may want to get off your ass and start.

Now another move that I think may prove to be a study in futility.  A MediaPost article reports that Dos Equis will team up with Jim Rose of the aptly named “The Jim Rose Circus.”  Check out the full article here:  http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.san&s=91406&Nid=47708&p=224900.

Now I confess I have no idea who Jim Rose is, but a circus…really?  How about revamping the web content, a series of webisodes delving more in The Most Interesting Man?  Even a guest appearance on a sitcom would seem to be more beneficial than a traveling circus.  On top of the expense of putting this together the brand is also going to have to pay to promote this thing.  The media campaign will apparently include print, radio, and online.  Perhaps the biggest tragedy here, The Most Interesting Man will be nowhere near this thing.  Now I understand the danger of aligning your brand so strongly with one spokesperson, but it seems like Dos Equis has already adopted that strategy for better or for worse.  Pardon me as the country boy in me comes out for a second, but they may as well ride it till it bucks.

Case in point, I offer up a recent scenario that played out on one of my favorite videogame sites Cheap Ass Gamer (www.cheapassgamer.com).  Recently on the site’s podcast CheapyD and Wombat complained that “major gaming blogs seem to post any and all gaming rumors with little consideration given to the credibility of the source or the plausibility of the story.”

As a test they offered up a contest to their users.  If someone posted a completely unfounded rumor in their forums and it was picked up by another videogame site that user would receive a free game.  Out of this contest two rumors surfaced.  The first was Rock Band receiving Beatles content via download, the other was Xbox changing its name to Xbox Pure.  What happened?  In Cheapy D’s words:

“Somehow, the silly one about the Xbox name change spread through the internets like crazy. Even though; the story makes very little sense and this particular user blog has no other legitimate entries, the photo of this “leaked memo” bears no resemblance to any corporate memo that I’ve ever seen, and the memo is devoid of any corporate letterhead, this source was deemed reliable enough to be posted on many big gaming news sites.”

What ensues is a unique exchange between Cheap Ass Gamer and one of the sites that picked up the story Kotaku.  I encourage you to read all of Cheapy D’s post here http://www.cheapassgamer.com/?f=408, but I will summarize.  Kotaku is told the story is part of a contest and rather than admit it was a little quick on the trigger, it says that Cheap Ass Gamer blew their credibility by having the contest.

What does all of this mean for advertisers.  Well how many brands do you know that are dying to get into the Tabloids?  Exactly, other than an ancient Myan remedy allowing me to pole vault with my manhood not many.  So is user created content and blogs actually slowing the internet from becoming the dominant ad medium for many brands?  While that is a bit of an overstatement, my opinion is that it is having an effect and probably a larger one than we are really aware of.  I will also say I don’t belive Sean shares this belief as much as I, so look forward to healthy debate on upcoming shows.

For those of you out there yelling hypocrisy since I am making this point on a blog.  I refrence Val Kilmer in the immortal role of Doc Holiday, “My hypocrisy only goes so far.”  Ad bastards is an opinion based show…we are sports talk radio if you will.  Now if we ever get to the point of trying to break big news such as Dolly Parton’s death we will make sure Sean is at the funeral to verify she will never be pouring a “cup of ambition” again.

The other night, I was playing RockBand with some folks from work, and I realized that one opinion above the others may be right. I think the nerds/gamers/slackers are going to save music. Here’s why:

One strong opinion is that record companies are going to have to move past the MP3 and the CD as their tangible asset. I couldn’t agree more, but when it comes to music, the only thing next was video, and that’s been done on DVDs (quite successfully) for years now. So that wasn’t anything new. I think RockBand/Guitar Hero solve that problem.

I remember just how much fun I was having, rocking out with my friends to tunes that I may or may not have been interested in had I been in a different environment. Why was I having fun? Because these music games are interactive, immersive, and addicting.

Songs are being sold for $1.99 over the PSN and Xbox Live Platforms. It’s basically the track plus some code that sits on top of the framework. Probably an additional $50,000 in development per track. Selling these tracks at double the price of iTunes, the lables are able to make more money, the artist get’s more money, and the consumer ultimately wins.

Interactivity is the future of the record industry, whether it’s in games like these, or other technological advances that make it easier and more satisfying to enjoy music.

“A good social media marketer isn’t really a ‘marketer’. He/She is a connector (and is good at social networking), a maven (and is a thought leader and ‘information specialist’ or information resource), and a salesperson that can persuade an eskimo to buy ice. He has to not only be an information resource but be an active participant in the various social web communities that he claims proficiency in.

A good social media marketer is one who can start a conversation that people want to participate in.”

I like this definition because it transcends the traditional role of “social media” in to something more than someone who sits behind their computer. He’s saying that a successful social media marker will be a person that actually is social, and not just from behind an avatar.

I think that’s something that gets left out of the headlines these days (and rightly so), but is absolutely critical when doing any kind of advertising campaign. “Does it sell?” Why would you give a sales job to an introverted free-thinker?

That is all…

Sean

I finally got some pictures of the bathroom.

Pretty nice, huh?

Sean