There is an interesting post getting a few feathers ruffled online which is entitled “below the line agencies should stay there” from one frustrated digital designer. This actually plays right into a thought I have been mulling around recently.
In the real world, we have design agencies and ad agencies. In the closed shop virtual world of digital, everyone who has ever designed a website gets the role of building ads at some point, and then gets disappointed when no-one clicks on them (if they care at all).
Let’s be honest, there are probably half a dozen true digital ad agencies in the UK (as in most countries), I am talking specialty shops who understand how to motivate users online, and the rest really should stick to making websites, because that is what they are good at – and there should be nothing wrong with that.
Most web designers are great at laying out digital content and developing e-commerce sites, some are fantastic at creating amazing brand indulgent experiences, but the fact few websites are search engine friendly proves to me that marketing is a serious oversight in the average designers mind. How therefore can you really expect these same people to develop online advertising concepts that truly work? Digital designers and digital marketers – choose your colour, nail it to the mast and stand your ground. I had to make that decision a long time ago, and encourage you to do the same and for the record one is not better than the other, they are just different, with different outlooks and motivations.
We are crippling the industry with poor click-through rates and lying to advertisers that these rates mean something they do not, and then trying to get people whose money we are spending to care about something that has no bearing on a true digital experience – mine or yours, let alone anyone else’s.
How many times have YOU ever bought something as a result of clicking on an ad? Be honest, how many times have you ever clicked on an ad? How many micro sites have you ever really visited – and enjoyed? Surely a truer representation is that you saw something offline, talked about it with mates, went and looked it up on Google, read a review somewhere, then found yourself buying it on Amazon. Half the time I never actually visit the advertiser’s website, let alone their product micro site. Well we need to penetrate that user methodology with an advertising message that complements the content and consumer life-cycle and find new ways of justifying it, then we can all sit around and discuss above and below-the-line afterwards – once we have proved the ‘line’ on the graph showing increased sales moving steadily upwards in a chart in the client’s CFO’s excel sheet.
And for the record where does this “line” exist in on-line anyway when agencies are intent on measuring brand with a response-based metric…?
Cost-per-engagement, brand-response…it’s like a ‘uniform of independence’ of kids preaching individuality and then gravitating towards a group of like-minded individuals wearing the same clobber. Oh that digital advertising would just grow up and stop acting like a spoilt teenager!
In a strange twist of fate, I found myself at my old agency today in a meeting. My old boss, Steve Sponder, starts to tell me how he has seperated the agency between ‘digital campaign’ and ‘website build’, employing specialists to look after both sides of the digital devide and each covering all disciplines from Account Management through production. Good on him! May this be an encouraging start for many others to follow suit…