But that’s all changed. An art director is now expected to know how to program flash and an a account man better know more than a little bit about testing and measurement. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at a job posting for an Art Director these days. It’s not uncommon to see 10 different programs that they are required to know.

Technical knowledge is a good thing. The more you know the better, right? Well, not if we’re now evaluating professionals based on technical knowledge when it’s not their primary job.

I’m not saying this as a technophobe. For a creative, I am actually pretty technically capable. But a great creative or AE, is someone who can think generally about a problem and come up with solutions across multiple disciplines, many which even aren’t considered marketing or advertising. And that’s just not how most technologists think. In the end, generalist thinking is way more valuable to a client than knowing how to manipulate a timeline in Adobe Flash Professional.

Fortunately Bill Bernbach and the creative revolution came along and showed us a better way in where the consumer was treated as an intelligent human being who appreciated entertaining and thoughtful communication.

Not only have we seen a rise of technology in the marketing industry, there’s been serious discussion whether technology is now more important than creative. In fact, I’ve have read columns and articles positing that ad agencies should be run more like software companies.

The idea probably comes from a belief is that technology is now king  in our industry like it already is in many others. That today the real ideas in advertising are technological.

Trouble is people don’t really interact with technology. They interact with each other and maybe sometimes the media in which the interact is considered tech.

Understanding technology is crucial to success these days.  And it’s unbelievable how many senior executives still don’t understand how many social technologies work. But the only thing that’s going to make the tech compelling to an individual is creativity employed in making it compelling. Example of this would be the Old Spice campaign that uses social technology including YouTube.

OK. You still don’t believe me. Let’s look at popular technology. One could argue that iPhone and iPad were technological breakthroughs. Wrong. They were creative breakthroughs. The difference between them and what was developed elsewhere is that at Apple the designers are in charge.

The designers took mostly existing technology, even bought parts from other manufacturers,  assembled them together, created a great user interface to made something beautiful, compelling, and even groundbreaking. That’s what creative people do – not technologists.

And that’s also exactly what your advertising should do.

These kinds of emotions are often felt in the client agency relationships too. The old story goes – people change, grow and become disconnected.  They  begin to take each other for granted. Sooner or later they just don’t understand each other any more.

What’s a marketer to do? You’re landscape is changing on you daily. Money is tighter. Stress has never been higher. Doesn’t my “partner” understand what I’m going through? Maybe. Maybe not. Have you explained it to them lately?

Marketer, believe me. This one is a two way street and I’m not blaming you. And frankly, you’re the one with hand in the relationship. Agencies need to do more to nurture the love and keep the spark alive. If that means more face time, a trip to a conference, a happy hour on you or a trip to a ball game do it, weekly.

Maintaining chemistry long term isn’t something that’s easy even when true love is involved. Sooner or later you’re going to have a spat about billable hours. And if you don’t have a rock solid foundation and open lines of communication it could get ugly.

That’s why you’ve got to take a few moments to remember why you guys got together in the first place. To recall what it was like when you went stag to party. And never forget what it was like in that old relationship where you had irreconcilable differences.

Maybe talk this through with your partner every now and then. Remind them how happy you were when she helped you with that amazing presentation and about the day you got to tell your boss about the awards and the amazing ROI numbers. Good luck and please don’t forget.

I’ve written here before about the need to post frequently and maintain a  constant presence. Consistently creating high-quality content is the best way to build influence in the social media sphere and to increase the chances that  posts be featured high in search results.

What if you’re not up to creating high-quality content? Jim Rome the popular sports DJ jokes that he has to go “down in the basement and recharge the batteries” every now and then to keep the quality of his program up to  his standards. This is a human and normal thing to do – yet professionals still feel the need to tweet their vacations away. Stop it.

If you’re in a corporate environment you need a plan for your personal time. For the agency blog, we keep a couple generic articles in reserve that can be posted when people are on vacation – we advise clients to do the same. If you’re a personal blogger you can do something similar, posting before your vacation but not have the posts go live  till you’re far away from responsibility – WordPress makes this really easy. Or you can just give yourself a break. I did and I don’t feel guilty.

Clients are demanding metrics that connect marketing to sales. Metrics for things like brand recognition are tough to tie to concrete things like sales and thus to ROI.

They’re also pushing for media plans to focus on Web and direct because they provide concrete tracking data. While television, where branding has thrived is receiving less interest of late.

What does this mean for the practice of branding in the future? Well, I think in the short term it means less money spent taking chances on things like this Web video that offer no measurable call to action, direct tie to a product or product message. Heck, all it does is get consumers excited about a brand? Heck, it’s not like Nike built an empire doing that or anything.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Many in the digital sphere are calling for an end to the discipline of branding. They say branding was developed for mass-markets and we can now reach individuals behaviorally and target them with more relevant messages tailored to their individual behavioral profiles — demographics are now old school.

Some people may see behavioural targeting as very Minority Report but it usually means more relevant comunication for the consumer. And causes less stereotyping of the target audiance. And that’s good, right?

Well, until we start factoring scale. It makes sense for people with very large marketing budgets and for retailers with specific products for specific people. Amazon does a good job of this on me. But what if you have a limited budget  and market and can’t create individual messages because your audience isn’t Amazon-sized. In some cases, it means turning the focus back on the brand and the benefit it offers consumers as a whole.

Now imagine this person is your brand. A lot of marketers are scared to death that someone may call, email, write a letter to the editor or, God forbid, tweet their dissatisfaction. They would rather stand for nothing then have someone rant about their product on their Facebook wall.

Now think of a person with strong opinions maybe even famous people with strong opinions. Those people probably have a lot of lovers and haters. Most politicians are that way and many business leaders are that way too  –like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Yet their brands represent the two largest market capitalization in the world (Exxon is the only US company with a larger market cap than Apple).

People find their personalities both attracting and appalling as well as the products these companies offer. Sure, they are unique individuals and companies but that’s the point. So is Tony Heish and Zappos. Or Mark Cuban and his Dallas Mavericks and HDNet. And of course, Martha Stewart and Omnimedia.

A company doesn’t have to have a strong CEO to stand for something either. You probably don’t know who the CEO of Disney is now that Michael Eisner (or Walt) is gone but you understand what the brand represents (yes there are people who hate the mouse). And what about Porsche? Or say Burberry?

A brand can stand for something just through the products it makes or the service it offers. But is often communicated effectively through it’s marketing and advertising. I’m not going to dissect ad campaigns and say which ones run the risk of offending and which make a stand. It’s pretty obvoius when they do and when they don’t.

Article continues here on agency blog.

Surely they need to get rid of dated thinking. Kick out folks who can’t code, tag, and develop an app. And there’s no one who understands how to make use of the new tools available than someone with a digital background. Right?

But what about all that brand stuff? Is a techno creative really better equipped to communicate the client’s brand story than someone who’s been focused on it their entire career? Aren’t the truly great communicators capable of doing their job in more than old-school traditional media?

Digital creatives are getting dinged for lack of branding and planning experience. While traditional creatives apparently can’t grasp the internet. But are either of these characterizations fair?

I think people are getting too caught up on resumes and not focused enough on real skills. For example, I work at a traditional agency yet the majority of the work I do lives online. Some of the work I do is even social media marketing — imagine that. Does this make me a traditional creative or a digital creative. I suspect in the eyes of many recruiters who can’t get past a resume it makes me a traditionalist. But I just see myself as being current.

Marketers need professionals that can tell their story and engage their customers in all media. Be it on Twitter or on a billboard. And that is best done by a media neutral creative, working off a media neutral brief, for a media neutral media buy.

I don’t think the best creative comes from a digital or a traditional background. What is important is their grasp of  today’s tool, the future, and the client’s business.

Sorry, navel gazers, your belly button can’t help you. Finding yourself might have been the mantra of 70s-self-help gurus but you’ll need to listen to your customers first if you want to make your marketing relevant to them.

Even worse, this feel good approach most often leads to corporate chest pounding. “Your number one source for widgets.” “The market leader in top-quality widgets.” Messaging no one gives a damn about outside the company and most customers will even find off putting. After all, who wants to listen to someone who only talks about themselves.

This approach totally ignores what the customer cares about. If you’re spending all your time discovering yourself, you’re not discovering the hopes and desires of your customers. Just your own.

The saddest part is there’s never been an easier time to really get to know what your customer wants and what they care about. Just fire up your internet browser and get to know them better. They’re putting everything on record for you through social media. Heck, you don’t even have to actually talk to them to get to know what makes them tick.

To be clear, this isn’t to say who you are as a company isn’t important – as long as it’s focused with the perspective of the customer. An easy to understand example of this is — UPS. What can brown do for you?

David Ogilvy said 40 years ago “the consumer is not a moron, she’s your wife.” It seems not everyone listened because the industry continues to insult her.

Ogilvy’s quip may be one of the most quoted phrases in marketing and advertising but marketers often don’t think it applies to them. Somehow it’s their customers that are of below average intelligence.

In my 15-year career, often working as a hired gun, I can say I’ve heard “you don’t understand, our customers just aren’t that smart” from clients in just about every possible category (luxury brands excluded).

However, I’ve never heard after an ad ran from a client or consumer that it was too complicated, too sophisticated, or too clever.

I believe this thinking stems from two causes:

A) A lack of respect and understanding of your audience.

B) Expecting your audience to understand your marketing strategy and not your emotional benefit.

I’m not going to address A because if you don’t respect your customers you’re beyond hope. Sorry.

But I believe B is actually more common and worthy of discussion.

For the record this kind of thinking isn’t just related to clients. It also come from inside agencies, outside consultants, or just about anywhere people sit around thinking about product benefits too much.

As a copywriter, my job is to translate the client’s core benefit into a compelling message for their customer. And compelling rarely means dumbed down.

What it does mean is finding the core emotional benefit wrapped in all the analyzing that’s happened before a project hits my desk. There are often great nuggets of information in all the buzzwords and matrices. But reaching the consumer is rarely done using them.

The deep thinking in these planning and strategy documents is tough to explain even to copywriters at times – so, of course, they’d be tough to explain to a consumer that doesn’t read them on a daily basis. That’s why great copy and art direction reaches an audience on a base emotional level.

Now, if you were expecting a consumer to follow the logic train developed in your PowerPoint document,  you would need to “dumb it down.” But if you can trust your consumer to appreciate your brand on a gut level, you won’t ever feel the need to call your customers stupid or want to idiot proof your messaging again.

Each component of your brand story doesn’t need to be explained to a customer in every piece of communication, nor does each benefit need to be spelled out. Just the ones that resonate emotionally. And emotional arguments are much simpler and easier to communicate than rational ones. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

Logically explaining product benefits straight out of a brand strategy. Our high-quality service, new fleet of aircraft, and on-time on time record makes  flying with our airline better than traveling with our competition.

The simpler example of re-framing the argument emotionally. We take the frustration out air travel.

Now it would be tough for your customer to follow the logic established in top example in each piece of communication or maybe even any — especially in a truly creative execution. Yet, many marketing executives believe that the customers need to understand things the same way they do and blunt their advertising to make it happen.

Good advertising usually requires simplifying your promise and using emotional triggers. Don’t believe me? When was the last time you saw a Nike spot where the benefit of the cushioning of the rubber was explained? Or when was the last time you saw an Apple ad that talked about how the silicon chips and software was engineered.

No, they stick with an emotional connection to sports and simplifying ones life. These are things that we, as human beings, resonate with on a deeper level and don’t need to have argued to us. We just get them. And so will your customers.