You know something’s gonna be intriguing when there’s an article in Fast Company magazine called “The Future of Advertising” but the embedded title in the URL reads “Mayhem on Madison Avenue.”
Fast Company Senior Writer Danielle Sacks, who writes fairly regularly about the ad industry and the people in it, takes a big-picture look at all the changes currently going on in ad land. She begins with a look at the Hyper Island Master Class:
Depending on how you look at it, the next 72 hours are either a communal hazing or a primer on today’s rules of marketing. Creative teams, the participants are told, now need to behave more like improv actors — “story building” instead of storytelling — so they can respond in real time to an unpredictable audience. Marketing actually needs to be useful — “use-vertising” instead of advertising — which means that you must think more like a product developer than an entertainer. While campaigns once promised glossy anthemic concepts, perfected before being shipped off to the waiting client, digital is incremental, experimental, continually optimized — “perpetual beta” — and never, ever finished. “Digital will fuck you up and the way your agencies are built to make money, staff things, price things,” says the instructor. “You guys have to change your DNA, and you’re going to have tough decisions.” Later, there’s an entire lesson on letting go of egos. Throughout the session, instructors remind the novitiates that these new rules are certain to change completely, and soon.
It’s a lengthy, but worthwhile read.
Thanks Dan, it is a good article.
I like how Sacks paints Co: as an answer to the 21st century agency riddle (especially since Bonehook operates on the exact same model).