Minute by minute by minute by minute

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Marcus's piece is thought-provoking.

Why?

Because he advocates a joint-venture between company and client over either an agency or doing it in house.

Why?

Because in house has too many political hurdles and an agency doesn't get deep enough in the business.

Why?

Because there are too many other distractions.

Why?

Because there has to be; it isn't their job to focus on it, and that is what they require.

I was with a client on Friday who told me, in no uncertain terms, that they didn't do technology. "We're just marketers" she said. "We don't understand that stuff."

Jesus. H. Christ.

"We're just marketers" was quote of the week for me, strong contender for quote of the year. Another boffin from an agency I work with had asked aloud what Flickr was, which in itself is maddening. What really frustrated me though was the lines these people were willing to draw around what they did and didn't do. Apparently being "just a marketer" means you can float through on ignorance and leave "teh interwebs" up to the geeks in the corner.

Can you imagine 50 years ago talking about TV to have someone turn around and say "Oh, I'm just a marketer, I don't understand that TV stuff"?

The mind boggles. Let's get it straight: nothing is off the table. Not digital, not analogue, not experiential, not bespoke, not DM, not TVCs, not PR, not ambient, not out of home, not print, not word of mouth, nothing. Marketers who opt for a career with blinkers on will find themselves swept aside in the eternal race for consumer's hearts and minds. You don't have to be an expert in everything, but you should at least be aware of where everything fits.

And you should also be aware that every waking minute of your day, you are marketing something.

We all are.

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Image courtesy of M J M, with thanks to compfight.

Let's drown deep in us

There's something about a Sunday that allows for clarity of thought - that might be due solely to having a day's buffer between the events of the working week, Saturday playing the part of a sink hole that allows Monday to Friday to slowly but surely gurgle down the drain (hopefully not along with your career), Sunday existing to just enjoy the quiet of the room before the plug goes back in and the sink starts filling up at 6am the following morning.

This week I'm going to be thinking all about Marcus Brown's excellent piece entitled If I Were A Client Today..., so please check that out and then get into the discussion that takes place, I think we're going to dig up some interesting stuff.

For now though, enjoy your Sunday.

If you don't know me by now

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I'm working my way through a great article by Marcus Brown, a guy who has clearly been doing this for a while, though I've only just found him. The article, If I Were A Client Today is actually on a blog he was previously writing and now has left behind called The Kaiser Edition where he would write from the point of view of a handful of personas (as far as I can tell, I'm still figuring it out as I'm not actually all that bright).

The piece is part analysis of where we're at in agency-land, part retrospective of his time client-side at either Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft (if he reveals which one I'm not there yet, but I have a hunch based on the litany of characters sporting mushrooms on their heads). One of the more curious revelations thus far is the Internet Department he was hired to be a part of didn't get placed with the Marketing department or the IT guys but in their R&D labs.

This is curious but also brilliant, an early realisation that the Internet and technology in general is good for more than just spitting out new kinds of ads. For me it naturally harks back to Iain Tait's 10 Reasons Digital is Better Than Advertising, in particular his first point in that series, that you don't have to do advertising.

When Iain says advertising there though, what I think he means is you don't have to do something that lacks substance, you can do something with balls, that means something and actually impacts people's businesses long after a campaign has finished. I'm not saying this is unique to digital, Droga 5's Tap Project is evidence it can happen anywhere. But I think there's a greater propensity for it to happen online, it moves things from distinctly separate operations closer to functioning as a single organism - and that's where things are going to get really interesting.