Mining Big Challenges to Drive Purposeful Innovation

Performing this job was a daunting task with many logistical challenges Some of these included melding the unique cultures of six agencies into one team with a new cultureamp160that had one set of processes aligned with the needs of our client Onboarding to a new client business is always challenging doing this from the starting place of six agencies made it all the more complicatedMeanwhile the economy was slipping into a recessionamp160and the automotive industry in Detroit was at the center of the crisis The pressure on our client and their entire industry was enormous and in turn their agencies shared in this pressure We had extreme scrutiny on our budgets which of course included the digital budgets We reworked the budget tens if not hundreds of timesI was faced with even more challenges as the media landscape shifted before our eyesFacebook opened to the public in 2006 and by 2007amp160the social media platform was already a major point of discussion in our media teams and with our clients YouTube was also increasing its relevance adding significant inventory in concert with rapidly rising consumer usage of their platform We had no formal social strategy nor capabilities No one didThe iPhone and Android phones launched exploding with new content types ad formats and experiences for us to sponsor amp160We had some mobile strategy and capabilities but as we now know it was too early for mobile Recognizing the importance of mobile social and digital video then and knowing it would only escalate from there we knew we needed to drive up digital media spending allocations to take advantage of theamp160important audiences But howamp160Despite these very complex and challenging factors we were able to find and harness new opportunities into gamechanging ideas for Ford which ultimately would be foundational moments in the development of digital advertising strategyDue to the pressure on digital budgets relative to what was needed for TV amp160factors completely at odds amp160we created the first metric for web video which was a gross rating point calculation This was well before any industry body had solved for this in any product they offeredamp160This move along with many many conversations held the digital budgets and supported their growthWe launched the Fiesta Movement as a firstofitskind social medialed vehicle launch This demonstrated the power of social and viral marketing to help launch new vehicles Through social media Ford achieved significant prelaunch brand awareness lifts and sales leads from people who did not own a Ford modelamp160This is now a formal case study at Harvard Business SchoolWhy is this so relevant to challenges we face today 2016 has been a challenging year and 2017 looks to be no differentamp160A major theme of this year is perceived lack of trust On Wall Street major institutions from banks to pharmaceutical companies have had unfortunate and trustdamaging issues continue to playoutamp160 We39ve seen trust concerns playing out in ways we39d never conceived in the US political electionamp160 And of course we see it playing out as a concern in our own industry advertising Coupled with conflicting reports on the future health of the economy this has increased uncertainty and pressure on client and agency businesses alikeamp160In the advertising world technology and new platforms continue to quickly evolve in the evermutable media marketplace Advertisers and their agencies are facing big questions about how to use media to meaningfully reach and engage audiences in this increasingly fragmented world where old tactics don39t work as well as they once didProgrammatic capabilities have grown to a significant tipping point but there is still a lack of scalable usage of automation around the creative side of the business Measurement in emerging platforms evolves but pressure on the notion of measurement methodologies overall continues to persist Data symmetry is a known goal but it39s a journey riddled with complexityamp160and tall quotwallsquot to scaleThe challenges we face are significant and complicated but far from insurmountable Yet as the great Albert Einstein said quotWe cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created themquotYou are currently working in a system that will continue to enable the challenges you face today The only way to turn your challenges into opportunities is to address the system itself by changing the way you workIf you boil down all of today39s challenges our biggest obstacle is doing more with the same or fewer resourcesamp160and not having a purposeful system to handle that specific challenge This was the same problem we faced in 20072010 years You must do more but differentlyIn order to do this we mustSubscribe to a higher purpose Extreme times requires a rallying cry Commit to the fact that your team must be aligned to fundamentally address that doing more differently requires having a specific and purposeful system to handle thisReassess and repurpose existing resources Rethink or reuse them for new purposesamp160Determine if you can acquire incremental resourcesOrganize yourself for success with a framework that involves people processesamp160and toolsamp160 Implement this by assigning specific tasks and giving real responsibility to lead Again all in the goal of doing more differentlyBe consistently purposedriven and aligned This is normally a pain point In a chaotic system inspection of consistent outputs against goals usually fails first Consistent inspection succeedsDon39t waiverWe39ve experienced the worst economic times coupled with an explosion of emerging technology yet we were able to do more with less by iterating the specific framework of people processes and tools against our challenges The resulting new schemas were market leading for Ford only because we absolutely did not waiverFind your biggest opportunities by creating a purposeful system to do more differentlyClick the social buttons above or below to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this article are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated bloggers

Click to Make Your 2025 Contribution to Support the MediaVillage Education Foundation

Mining Big Challenges to Drive Purposeful Innovation

Author

Publish date

Channel

Archived in

Cary Tilds

Empowering Women in Media: Insights from Industry Leaders (Video) - By E.B. Moss

More Videos:

Click to Make Your 2025 Contribution to Support the MediaVillage Education Foundation

Mining Big Challenges to Drive Purposeful Innovation

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Cary Tilds

Empowering Women in Media: Insights from Industry Leaders (Video) - By E.B. Moss

The payment was successful

Cookies