The Future is Calling

As an industry, we’ve talked about what the future will look like, and who will populate it. We’ve talked about becoming flatter, more nimble organizations where we all experience different forms of communication – from mass media to niche blogs, from the personal to the pervasive, from disruptive to the sublime. We’ve talked about changing our terms from Return on Investment to cost-per-acquisition. And we’ve talked about leading change. And 2009 is certainly a year that has both inspired and inundated our industry--and the world--with change.

I won’t belabor the negative year-end forecasts, the spiraling share prices, the woes of the auto industry and vulnerable consumer confidence levels. You, me, we---feel the stings of the economic recession daily and hear and talk about it from the dining room table to the boardroom. Instead, I’d like to focus on the future and the evolution of the media service brands, as defined by one of the toughest and stormiest economic environments our generation has faced.

Simply said, the future is calling. And SMG’s response is to be the Agency of the Future. And this calls for an evolution towards being a Human Experience Company.

The Human Experience Company involves three core principles:

First, seek to simplify human behavior. We need to understand human motivations, inspirations and actions and hunt, gather and apply them as both engineers and artists. Just as importantly, we need to harness and harvest them with speed, precision and empathy. At SMG, we are establishing global Human Experience Centers (HEC) designed to be the beating heart of our company, pulling in and pumping out valuable insights about consumer groups in key markets globally. Our first HEC is focused on Youth and it lives and breathes today. Here we house tools that put people and their experiences at the heart of our business. It also includes a 24/7 on-line global network of consumers (youth) and a dynamics database of consumer intent to use brands and media, and the correlation between the two.

The second is to be ‘open source’. The Future is calling for agencies to partner externally, without compromise or hesitation, with best-of-breed partners, publishers and technology companies. Open source also applies to our talent management and internal operations. We need to effectively deploy the right talent in our global network across clients, disciplines and geographies. And last, open source applies to how we view media landscape. Myopic views and interpretations of business problems is an individual detriment and a corporate liability. Standing still means you always have the same view. The future calls for testing, learning, making mistakes, getting up and trying again.

The last and third principle calls for big imaginations. It calls for a future where our role as communications experts is, to no longer distribute ads efficiently, but to segment and sequence content to create meaningful experiences for discrete and distinct audiences.

In the very near future, we will have the ability and the technology to segment and refine audiences in very specific terms and sequence content to them, at the household level. Now to be clear, I am not claiming that tomorrow we turn on a switch and suddenly the whole world is “addressable”. Technology, infrastructure, policies and regulations vary country by country—all important and colossal considerations when determining speed of adoption. I am stating however, we are seeing evidence in some markets like the United States, where active testing of addressable advertising using set-top data to guide what messages to be sent---where, when how—suggests exciting value. Based on results from trials that SMG has authored and co-created, we have found that homes receiving addressable advertising watched 60% more than homes that received non-addressable advertising, making the ads more effective. On a cost or efficiency with less wastage perspective, the trial also demonstrated a 56% greater efficiency from sending ads only to relevant groupings, based on the per-spot costs of addressable and non-addressable ads.

So why are these principles important? Because media has fundamentally changed. And technology—while fleeting in its iterations and annual product cycles—is permanent, irreversible. In India, the pervasiveness of email and texting has had a direct and permanent impact on the national postal service. In 2008, The India Post handled 6 billion pieces of ordinary mail, down from 15 billion in 2000 according to The Economist. From India, to the UK to America, email, websites, text messaging and social networking services have accelerated the evolution and perhaps in some cases the demise of long-held institutions.

Now is not the time to look back. Not in an age where consumers are self-selecting and identifying themselves as dog-owners, parents of twin toddlers or new technology adopters. Not in an era where newsgroups, social media, e-tailor recommendations, and search empower people to build personalized media feeds that cater only to them. Not in an age where DVRs, Web video and mobile content decide when, where and how content is consumed.

Not in an era where evolution equates to survival in a future that calls for simplicity, innovation and imagination. I am excited about our future for what it holds and what it beckons our industry to become.

(Laura Desmond is the Global CEO, Starcom MediaVest Group)