The Perils of Knowing Too Much

One such piece appeared last week from Jelena Veselinovic an integrated marketing professional of many years standing now based in Atlanta GA You can read Jelena39s piece hereNow having been taken to task by Tom Goodwin for a Cog Blog post of a couple of weeks ago on the basis that I wasn39t qualified to comment on either his posts nor his situation with Publicis as I had never met him a principle that were it to be applied across social media would decimate if improve the content I should point out that Jelena was a client of mine for ages when she was at The CocaCola CompanyThe essence of Jelena39s piece is that her experience helping build CocaCola39s business in various parts of the world apparently counts for not very much at all when it comes to evaluating her appropriateness for work in today39s buzzy online worldIt would be funny if she wasn39t exactly right Experience today seems to count for little and certainly a great deal less than knowing what the latest acronym stands for or being able to discuss the technical merits of this algorithm over that formulaNote 39discuss39 as opposed to 39understand39The great Bob Hoffman in his AdContrarian role is fond of pointing out how very bad we are at learning from our mistakes or indeed from our triumphsA few years ago I was one of the firststage judges of the IPA Ad Effectiveness awardsThe eventual winner that year I believe it was 2014 was Fosters amp8211 their excellent 39Beachhut39 campaign delivered outstanding results for the business with every pound spent generating amp16332 in sales39Beachhut39 was duly dropped a few months later to be replaced by I don39t remember what before making a reappearance last yearI don39t recall too many articles on what that decision cost FostersBrands to refresh their ad campaigns all the time but only the most successful learn and apply that learning through a consistency of thought and approachIt may seem obvious but if you consider some of the most iconic campaigns of all time they are put to sleep before their time Ads wearout with brand managers way before they wearout with consumers Show anyone of a certain age an ad featuring a boy pushing a delivery bike up a hill and they become all nostalgic Oh all right here it is 1973 since you askedAs with creative so with media where the smartest operators are great at absorbing lessons and applying them in whatever circumstances they find themselves inThose lessons may involve the importance of reach the concept of effective frequency the notion that ads work differently within different contexts the idea that brand building ads need to wearin and the importance of ensuring a consistency of messaging across all channels and not confining that consistency simply to advertisingThese are universal principles That39s not to say they should just be applied unthinkingly everywhere every time but the wisdom within them can be distilled and reappliedUnderstanding these things comes with experience It39s needlessly expensive to start again every time from scratch and yet time and time again I see articles and posts claiming to discover something that those of us around even 10 years ago took for granted Mind you we probably thought we had invented them tooamp8230It39s no excuse to say that the world has changed We all know that39s true but there39s a skill in translating lessons learned in one era to anotherJelena39s LinkedIn post is titled 6 Good Reasons Why You Should Never Hire Me My favourite is 39I don39t have performance marketing experience39 To which she responds 39Right I don39t I only have experience with marketing that performs39Experience counts Ignoring it costsClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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The Perils of Knowing Too Much

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Brian Jacobs

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The Perils of Knowing Too Much

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