Proof: Zero Media, Maximum Impact

Russel Davies writes that one day, media budgets will be zero.

Well, it's not that far off into the future. It's already beginning. Nowadays, you don't need media -- or at least traditional media -- to get your message out there.

As Jason in Fruits of Imagination writes, this great spot from Dove has been viewed 2 MILLION times. The buzz has made it the subject of segments / shows on major networks like CNN and has made it the subject of discussions on talk shows like "Ellen", not to mention blogs. Imagine how much money you'd need to make that happen in the traditional way.

These are exciting (as well as damn scary) times for ad agencies.

The challenges, in no particular order, are:

1 How to continue to make money for the time when media commissions do indeed reach zero -- we all need to put food on our respective tables, after all.

2 Mastery of the new media alternatives out in the wild -- and not just existing alternatives like Youtube, Friendster and what-have-you. We've got to open up and see what else we can use that's out there. Or will be there. Or is getting there.

3 Thinking in a media-neutral kind of way -- and this may be the biggest challenge. Most of us, having grown up in the 80's and 90's tend to see advertising in terms of TV, perhaps because the great agencies of those years were TV-driven. Everything CAN be advertising. Let the agency heads figure out how to make non-media executions translate to income. Let's just focus on making messages that stick, and which indeed do stick, wherever we can make them stick.


Rey