How Not to Add Value During a Recession - The Brothers Einstein - MediaBizBloggers

Anyone who wants to know how not to add value in a recession would be well advised to consult Zephrin Lasker’s 10/27 Online Media Daily article – Here’s How to Add Value During A Recession. Anyone who still believes that marketing and advertising value can be achieved through increased efficiency just hasn’t been paying attention for the past dozen years as online media performance has declined tenfold despite across-the-board efficiency mandates. If anything, our obsession with digital efficiency erodes value because it destroys the relationships that create and sustain value. In short, our fealty to professed efficiency is a microwave recipe for sheer entropy – and anything but efficient.

The fact that decision leaders at the recent IAB MIXX conference validated Mr. Lasker’s love affair with efficiency is reason enough to redefine what we mean by leadership and call for the IAB to disband immediately, because any advertising advocacy group that confuses the illusion of efficiency with the corporeal substance of value will forever put expediency ahead of quality – at every opportunity. Unfortunately, however, they almost all do.

According to Mr. Lasker, David Kenny – Managing Partner of VivaKi (the entity created to unite key Publicis Groupe digital and media assets) – estimates that up to 40% of all the work done at Publicis is consumed by “humdrum” tasks (talk about entropy). Mr. Lasker goes on to wonder out loud how much more value Publicis could bring to clients simply by increasing efficiencies through the automation of those same tasks. Probably nowhere near as much as Mr. Kenny’s clients would save simply by refusing to pay the markup for all of the humdrum work performed by Publicis.

Mr. Lasker’s primary reason for automating mundane tasks and increasing efficiency is so we can shift our focus to the campaign backend and “…do a better job of tying marketing metrics to actual business results.” But why bother? Why bother when the results are so anemic to begin with? Why bother when it’s already impossible to use the average clickthrough rate of .35% to describe performance with a straight face? Why bother to introduce new metrics when the same appalling and shameful .35% clickthrough rate actually translates into a 99.65% failure rate? Who the hell are we trying to kid, and why the hell would anyone in their right mind pay for this crap?

Simply stated, Mr. Lasker, the IAB, Publicis and the clients who pay them are destroying the advertising and marketing industries (albeit in the fastest and most efficient manner), and wrecking the virtual joint. They are the same MBA-driven, twenty-something technocrats of the dot com era – now with families and mortgages – and they still know less than nothing about advertising. They seek every opportunity to champion expediency over quality, every opportunity not to negotiate, and every opportunity to automate and sterilize every relationship – all on the client’s dime. Shame on them for perpetrating and perpetuating such massive fraud. Shame on their clients for funding it.

About Jeff Einstein and The New EPA

Jeff Einstein is a partner in The New EPA, a creative strategy and branding boutique from the Brothers Einstein. The New EPA helps select rapid-growth clients protect their media investments with superior creative and brand strategies.