It’s nearly impossible to do something creative with stock footage. But it looks like Zimmerman found a way.
From the NYT:
ZimmermanZimmerman Advertising, an advertising agency that is part of the Omnicom Group, is selling stock advertising and online buying for TV, the Internet, print publications, radio, direct mail and in-store ads.
The automated system it is offering to advertisers, called Pick-n-Click, is currently available only for automotive advertisers and has 150,000 components —like voice-overs, video footage and text options.
AutoNation, a franchise group of 331 car dealers, has signed on as a customer. Zimmerman plans to expand the site’s ad offerings to other retail areas like home furnishings within the next few months.
“You find out at 10 p.m., your competitor is running an intense sale on something,” said Michael Goldberg, chief marketing officer for Zimmerman. “You can go into your arsenal of work and select something to combat that and program it to run the next day. All in five minutes.”
One of the truly interesting things here is that a big, creative ad agency is behind this development. I can see it coming from a tech startup or what have you, but this agency is consciously cutting into its own services to be a first mover in this new area. Talk about living the Who Moved My Cheese? ideal…
