Once the \u201cgorgeous creative asset\u201d also known as a television commercial has been birthed, it still needs to be scheduled and delivered. With more delivery points than ever, technology that\u2019s a half-century old is clogging up the process, says ECN President and CEO Angela Tietze.<\/p>\n
Representing more than 90% of the country\u2019s top advertisers, ECN has been the behind-the-scenes connector of people process and technology for 27 years, Tietze explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent WideOrbit<\/a> Connect conference.<\/p>\n The biggest challenge is to take data from disparate sources and \u201cget it all flowing in one uniform way so that it can be ingested into receiving systems,\u201d Tietze<\/a> says.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat seems automated even in the digital environment is ultimately still going in Excel spreadsheets to publishers around the country. Our goal is to try to not just have the digital asset be distributed or the broadcast asset delivered but to automate the scheduling behind that.\u201d<\/p>\n One of ECN\u2019s efforts was to create a standard that piggybacks on the BXF<\/a> standard from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. \u201cBut that was just the beginning of it. Ultimately, it comes down to the people who have built the systems to adopt those standards in order to make it easy for people to do business. It\u2019s still about people getting it done.\u201d<\/p>\n With so many touch points between advertisers, agencies and tech providers, Tietze says a common mistake is that companies \u201cwill go build something before truly understanding the workflow and what someone just has to do in order to get their job done.\u201d<\/p>\n The better course is to \u201cgo back to the source and find out what systems are being used, how they\u2019re being used by people and what\u2019s missing. And then be able to develop solutions that bridge that gap by enrolling the people who actually have to use them every day.\u201d<\/p>\n