“We are moving from outputs to outcomes,” Marla Kaplowitz, president and CEO of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), said in this interview with Beet.TV. “There is an increased focus to understand what is being delivered, and if you look at the last year and a half, we’ve had such an acceleration particularly on the performance side and with e-commerce.”
Advertisers face additional hurdles in improving their measurement methods as more regions enact privacy laws that give consumers greater control over how their personal data are gathered, shared and used for ad targeting. Technology companies have responded by gradually limiting the use of tracking cookies that help to measure online ad performance.
“It’s going to require everyone to come together to really think about what does attribution look like moving forward,” Kaplowtiz said. “We need tools, and we need access to be able to look across the ecosystem, not just have this group of walled gardens where we look at this in isolation, but how do we understand holistically what’s going on with a campaign.”
Advertisers are seeking ways to get a more comprehensive view of consumers as they spend time among different media platforms. They’re also looking for data that help to compare ad performance throughout those channels.
“There are so many business use cases out there, and one tool or one piece of technology may only apply to one piece of that,” Kaplowitz said “You may need to leverage different approaches, and that’s going to be a little bit more complex and challenging.”
The 4A’s collaborated with Google and Forrester Research to study how outcomes-based measurement affects the way agencies are compensated. Kaplowitz said performance-based pricing is better than full-time equivalent (FTE) models, but requires additional metrics.
“It’s a positive move, but it also relies on having good data in order to connect it back and ensure that you can accurately define what the performance was based on the activity that was put in place,” she said.
The 4A’s has undertaken several initiatives to transform the media ecosystem, such as urging marketers to support diversity and inclusion in their ad spending. The organization also is working to drive adoption of Ad-ID, an identity solution for creative assets on any platform or in any format. NBCUniversal last month became the first major media company to adopt Ad-ID as a standard across its One Platform portfolio.
“We are now investing in new technology and capabilities for these, but we need everyone to adopt this,” Kaplowitz said. “It’s primarily been used for linear television, and we want that to be the ubiquitous code on every single … creative asset moving forward.”
You are watching “Outcomes-Based Advertising: Connecting Ad Exposure to Business Results,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by LoopMe. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>But, increasingly, the demands of recognizing diversity – and the profits that can come from doing so – are compelling them to understand distinct groups of people.
It is a practice called human-centered design. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jason Gaikowski, VMLY&R’s global lead for human-centered design and executive director for CX transformation, talks about it with 4As CEO Marla Kaplowitz.
“One of the real powers of human-centred design is it is fundamentally grounded in empathy, and it is fundamentally grounded in curiosity,” says Gaikowski, whose VMLY&R is a marketing agency owned by WPP.
“It lets you see the world differently. It lets you understand that your experience is biased. Just because it’s true for you, it doesn’t make it true.
“When you’re able to view the world with that fuller and more open perspective, it gets really easy and obvious to see that there are people who, they’re in unfortunate circumstance and systematic disadvantage.”
Although human-centered design is all about understanding, well, humans, increasingly it is technology that is enabling that understanding.
Understanding consumers at this level is going to require a lot of data capture and the right kind of algorithmic detection.
“What’s next is companies understanding that empathy and humanity is actually a competitive differentiator and a competitive advantage,” Gaikowski adds.
He thinks companies will need to evolve from just considering product effectiveness to also considering the net benefit in a consumer’s life from her choice to add a brand to it.
“I think that we’re at the dawn of a complete redesign of how we think about what it means to be in a relationship with a customer,” Gaikowski says. “I don’t think that it’s so much customer relationship management, I think that we’re moving into a world of a partnership relationship with customers.”
Gaikowski’s team has used the practice, for example, to build a Ranger Support Team for Ford after realizing some of its international vehicles were prone to breakdown.
And he says it has allowed another VMLY&R client, Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, to see how Miami’s majority Cuban and Latinx population has “an uncomfortable bias sometimes around trans, LGTBQ people”.
Gaikowski thinks artificial intelligence will be key to unlocking empathy and understanding.
“The kind of reconstructions that we can do with artificial intelligence, the insights that we can find via machine learning that then inspire something that was completely unimaginable even five years ago,” he says. “It’s perhaps the most creative time of my career.”
This video is part of the Global Forum on Responsible Media produced by Beet.TV, GroupM with the 4A’s. This track on creativity, advanced technology and advertising is sponsored by IBM Watson Advertising. For more videos on this topic, visit this page. For more information on IBM Watson Advertising, please visit this page.
]]>Companies are compelled to take a positive stance on a range of outward issues – but often find that benefits nevertheless flow back in.
As part of the Global Forum on Responsible Media produced by Beet.TV, advertising agency executives discussed what they are doing on that front:
“When we used to think about things like responsible media, we used to go straight to brand safety,” said Mindshare global CEO Adam Gerhart.
“But, more and more, the definition and the view of responsible media and the obligation that we have to consumers in the world is becoming much more progressive and much more encompassing.”
He said he is most excited about the “depth” represented by a responsible stance. Gerhart cites data ethics and privacy, media plan practices, carbon neutrality, journalism and minority communities.
“(We can make) carbon-neutral media plans that encourage media partners and owners to offset their own activities,” Gerhart said. “We are now creating things like a series of inclusion PMPs (private marketplaces) which is directly aimed at putting money back into the hands of underrepresented voices. It started with LGBTQ community, has moved into black communities, and now we’re doing the same from a responsible journalism perspective.”
For 4As president and CEO Marla Kaplowitz, responsible media is “not something anyone should take lightly”.
“We actually launched media responsibility principles last September, building on the work of our advertiser protection bureau focused on brand safety and brand suitability,” she said. “It was about taking action to really put a point of view out there and say what does this mean in terms of promoting respect, making sure that we’re addressing hate speech?” The principles cover 10 areas.
“Words only go so far. Actions go the distance,” Kaplowitz adds. “We’ve seen some brands, some agencies, do that, but now I’m really seeing a collective focus on this. We still have a lot of work to do with misinformation and disinformation.”
GroupM North America CEO Kirk McDonald says brands and agencies should respond to what consumers are saying. His responsibility commitment covers five areas.
The first is authenticity, something McDonald says the pandemic has shown the importance of. “Your brand had better be authentic and it better be able to live in the moment and react and move in the moment,” he said.
Other commitments for GroupM include a “data ethics complex“, sustainability, brand safety and diversity and inclusion.
“In dynamic, profound, changing times, the partners that truly are living evolve or die realise that if you don’t dynamically change, you won’t keep up,” McDonald added. “The bold are going to actually have this proportionate outsized wins as a result of actually living their promises to their clients, their guests, their consumers.”
She speaks about the 4A’s four pillars of media responsibility. And reflects on how the pandemic and the racial justice movement of the past year have accelerated change.
Please Join Marla, Kirk McDonal and others on June 23
Please join me and Marla, GroupM NA CEO Kirk McDonald, and other industry leaders, on June 23 at 1 p.m. on for our #ResponsibleMedia Global Forum, live on LinkedIn Live, Twitter and YouTube. The project is being co-produced by Beet.TV, GroupM and the 4A’s. For more information, please visit this page.
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Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy the episode.
]]>But they should never have declared news fell outside of “brand safety” descriptions.
That is what a growing number of industry executives, even those who represent the advertisers and agencies, are now coming out to say.
Marla Kaplowitz understands the concern.
“The content that people are experiencing in some ways is really challenging and concerning for some, especially when you’re hearing about deaths related to COVID-19,” says the CEO of 4As, the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
“(But) news is brand-safe. Premium news environments are positive places for brands to be. We know that millennials are going there in higher rates.”
Audience research is piling up that shows advertisers perhaps don’t need to dodge coronavirus news at all. An April study conducted by Integral Ad Science (IAS) found:
Thankfully, advertisers’ view may be softening. In the last few weeks, IAS found a 88% decrease in keyword-blocking of COVID-19-related specific keywords.
Kaplowitz thinks ad agencies have an important role to play in ensuring brands take the right steps.
“It has to be the right channel and the right way to verify that it is appropriate content that is not fake,” she says.
“The most important thing is to make sure that you are hyper focused on ensuring that you’re eliminating fraud, malware, that you’re being brand safe within whatever environments that you are advertising.”
This video is part of a series titled Brand Suitability at the Forefront, presented by Integral Ad Science. For more segments from the series, please visit this page.
]]>She points one bright spot, the fast turnaround of creative executions, where agency creative teams are working fast, using DIY video tools, skipping lengthy testing and reaching decision makers quickly.
]]>“It’s not just data for data’s sake,” says Kaplowitz. “It’s about understanding how you can use that data to glean those insights to create work that will really connect with consumers, but also understanding its impact and being able to target in the right ways. Everyone is looking for relevancy – data helps you deliver that relevancy.”
Part of this understanding is being able to navigate the current landscape of data privacy. Given the upcoming launch of the California Consumer Privacy Act in January, many are wary of the strict regulations and the domino effect it could have on other states. In an effort to look for a universal solution, Kaplowitz says that the 4A’s is partnering with the ANA, the IEB, and the NAI to form a coalition called Privacy for America.
“Our goal is to also bring about the creation of a data protection bureau within the FTC and to recognize that right now the onus has primarily been on the consumer and that needs to shift to be more on the companies,” says Kaplowitz.
Making the consumer feel more safe will lead to better data, and better data can lead to a more targeted relationship with the consumer. According to Kaplowitz, this can lead to considerable connections.
“This is a great opportunity for agencies to partner with their clients to help them understand the landscape, what is going on, how to be mining their first party data, how to be leveraging third party data in the appropriate way, and how to take advantage to really build a robust understanding of connecting and engaging with those consumers.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference in Orlando, 2019. The series is sponsored by iSpot.tv. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>“It’s been around for a long time. There have always been teams inside of clients within the marketing teams or supporting the marketing teams to address the needs that exist,” Kaplowitz says in this Beet.TV interview at the recent Association of National Advertisers’ In-House Agency Conference.
At the event, Kaplowitz moderated a panel discussion titled Agencies and the Velocity of Change. It brought together executives from VMLY&R and GlaxoSmithKline, plus Publicis Media and New Balance. Turns out “balance” is a key word in the modern-day world of marketers and how they mix internal and external resources.
“There’s just so much more that is needed today and there’s a lot of work that needs to get accomplished,” says Kaplowitz. “I do think it’s important to recognize that here is no one size fits all. There’s no right way of doing it.”
It’s more about “finding what is the right model for you, but you have to really think about what are your objectives, what are you trying to accomplish. And that they’re not set in stone. They change over time.”
One theme from Kalowitz’s panel is that client-agency partnerships have to be right for both parties. For VMLY&R and GSK, a key element was “how to work together to support the tech stack that they work with, to collaborate with the team that’s in-house that’s actually managing strategy and comms planning.” In the case of Publicis and New Balance, while the agency sets the “base” brand strategy, the global creative services team at New Balance does “more of the executional work and work closely within the local territories and how they manage it.”
Asked about negative and positive implications for agencies, Kaplowitz says that’s largely in the eye of the beholder. The recent growth of in-house teams is undeniable, but 90% of marketers still require outside resources.
“Agencies have also shifted to being less reluctant to needing to do everything end to end. There’s more openness to recognizing what their specific role can be within the journey and how to bring that to life. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It doesn’t have to be negative.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the ANA In-House Agency Conference. This series is sponsored by Extreme Reach. For more videos please visit this page.
]]>“I took the time to read through it and understand what they were seeing, and I think that sometimes there are facts that are buried in that tell a broader story, Marla Kaplowitz says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference. “We speak to agencies every single day who are either working with some in house teams or they’re working directly with marketers. And there is no right way and you have to really consider what is right for you.”
The ANA surveyed 412 of its members in August 2018, 52% of whom were at the director level or above. For 44% of respondents, their in-house agency was established within the past five years, contributing to the recent rise in overall penetration of in-house agencies, according to the survey.
Among other survey findings, services performed in-house that have grown significantly over the past five years are content marketing, creative strategy, data/marketing analytics, media strategy, programmatic media and social media (both creative and media).
The survey reveals that top perceived benefits of in-house agencies are:
*Cost efficiencies
*Better knowledge of brands
*Institutional knowledge
*Dedicated staff
*Speed, nimbleness
Asked to identify a single primary benefit of having an in-house agency, cost efficiencies was top ranked by a wide margin, according to the survey.
“The most telling stat in the report is that 90 percent of ANA members still continue to work with an outside agency,” Kaplowitz says. “I think that when you look at the kind of work that is going on right now in the marketplace, from media and the complexity that is happening in the digital supply chain, if you’re looking at programmatic and all the technology, you need outside perspective.”
She adds that producing “brilliant” creative requires “outside provocation and thinking. When you’re working with an agency on content, you want a strategic planner who is looking at what is going on in culture and not just looking at one particular brand but looking across all the different categories and working with different people in the agencies.”
Kaplowitz says the most important thing to understand about agencies is their ability to help drive business growth and “helping to be an extension of that client and that client team. You need that outside perspective, you need that outside thinking to push and provoke. You don’t get that when you’re with your own team.”
This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find additional coverage here.
]]>“There’s a lot of negative narrative out there about what’s going wrong for agencies,” says Marla Kaplowitz, President and CEO of the 4A’s, long known as the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
But, Kaplowitz adds in this interview with Beet.TV at the organization’s annual Accelerate conference, “What about the client of the future? What does that look like?”
She cites comments made at the conference by Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun, who shared a stage with Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard and Grey New York CEO Debby Reiner to discuss client-agency relations.
“One of the things I was happy to hear Arthur Sadoun talk about today is there’s so much focus on the agency of the future, which we think of more as the agency of today and tomorrow because agencies are constantly evolving and have that entrepreneurial spirit,” Kaplowitz says.
As Campaign reports, Sadoun questioned the role marketers need to play when he noted, “Every client is talking about growth, but there’s no growth unless you have strong partners.”
Says Kaplowitz, “What is the responsibility of marketers to really understand the intersection of data and creativity and technology and connecting with consumers and how you deliver that in those brand experiences?”
On the personnel front, the 4A’s has for nearly 50 years offered a multicultural intern program for its agency members. “But what’s clear is that we haven’t focused enough on the inclusion side. And that’s where you’re going to start to see some change. It’s really about action and no more talk. There’s enough talk at this point.”
To this end, the 4A’s recently launched the Enlightened Workplace Certification Program aimed at creating safe and productive work environments that create cultures of inclusion, equity, creative dialogue and social transformation. “The intent is to support agencies in eliminating discrimination, harassment, bullying, intimidation and retaliation,” according to a release announcing the program.
The 4A’s is working with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), a nonprofit that facilitates the development of standards by accrediting the procedures of standards-developing organizations.
In addition, the 4A’s is a supporter of the TIME’S UP movement, “which we believe is a fantastic way to really have the dialogue but also really push forward in a very positive way and in a very inclusive way,” says Kaplowitz.
This video is part of a series titled The Road to the Digital Content NewFronts. It is a preview of topics to be explored at IAB’s NewFronts, which begin on April 30. This series is presented by Meredith Corporation. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>“People are paying for that content. Advertisers have, all along, been supplementing the cost of that for the consumer,” agency MEC‘s North America CEO Marla Kaplowitz tells Beet.TV. “There are more and more ways for consumers to avoid those types of messages.
“We need to find new ways to deliver that – it could be a more integrated offering, something more subtle in the way it’s brought to the consumer.”
One way may be branded video. MEC connected its client AT&T with the edgy youth publisher Vice, who together created Mobile Movement, a video documentary series examining mobile youth culture for sponsor AT&T.
We interviewed her at the 4A’s annual leadership meeting. See the rest of our coverage here.
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