No, it’s not Bing.

Yahoo? Nah.

It’s YouTube. Yeah, really.

Did you know that almost half of search results yeild video thumbnails? And as you might guess, those thumbnails tend to get clicked on.

Is it time to get serious about video? You bet.

I’ve written a lot here about the rapid change in technology our industry is experiencing right now. I’ve also written a lot about how smaller to midsized advertising agencies are finding it hard to staff with enough talented people. And how marketing departments struggle just to keep up with their workload in their downsized departments. Everyone is stressed these days just to keep up with the work while business leaders are looking for strategies to stay profitable in the new economy.

Fortunately social technology has enabled new ways of working, connecting, and collaborating that, when leveraged correctly, can have real benefits to the cost and effectiveness of providing services to clients. How so?

One example is Basecamp that enables project management and collaboration with no regard for proximity or even brick and mortar. The cloud has freed us from the need for large and narrowly structured organizations to complete complex projects.

This means my business and even a group of freelancers can function within your project just as if we’re an integrated part or your organization. Suddenly, collaboration isn’t pain in the butt for a project manager but a chance to bring in expertise and fresh thinking from anywhere on the globe.

It also allows business to add expertise and services without having to take on the significant costs of moving to a bigger space and hiring more people. Because collaboration is so much easier these days, my business can integrate with your business in the cloud on a project by project basis. Imagine the flexibility and the cost advantages you suddenly have.

Collaboration make you competitive. It can turn men into giants. And give small businesses the reach of mega corporations. Now each project you touch can be so much more effective and drive more ROI. Truly, collaboration is the new competition. How will you use collaboration to become more effective?

I also believed in what I was doing. It was the right thing for the clients.

This passion birthed a business plan. One that I feel very strongly about and that I had hoped to execute with my former employer. But that didn’t happen.

When others don’t act you can sit around and complain or you can harness your passion, work with others that feel the same way, and do something creative. The world today is a tough place but it’s up to creative people to make the most of it and create opportunity for us and others.

So today, my business partner, Jason Gorbett and I are officially announcing the founding of Fluid Films. Over the next several days, I’ll be sharing our vision for a transmedia company and how what we’re doing is the right thing for companies and institutions. Please stay tuned.

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.

If content could be delivered at high-speed, (this was back when everyone had dial-up at home) via the internet, people would no longer be content to watch Baywatch in their living room.  Heck, they could watch it on their desktop. This was mainly perceived as a technical problem at the time. Everyone thought people really wanted TV on the world wide web delivered to the personal computer. And also that TV viewing would be better if it were more interactive.

We now  have Hulu, YouTube, and even smart phones that can stream content. Yet the vast majority of video is still consumed in the living room passively. Especially entertainment media.

Conversely, the internet has been making inroads into our family room. Google TV, officially launched today, Apple TV, Boxee, set-top boxes, and even some televisions now deliver the web to our TV.

Only most people don’t want to actually look at the Web on their TV or really want to “lean in” to their PC to watch their favorite sit-com. The computer is work. The TV is passive relaxation.

However there is software that’s started to change this work/play separation. You guessed it, iOS (and Android). The iPhone brings our work email and our entertainment together. The iPad has our reading material and our spreadsheets on the same device and also provides a wonderful screen for watching that sit-com. But they don’t do it at the same time.

iOS and Android don’t require you to watch TV on a computer. They morph  a Droid, iPhone or iPad into a video playback device and then later morph it into a book and then into a calender to schedule a business meeting.

There are no windows, mice, keyboards reminding you to you’re on a computer — it’s a seamless transformation from one device to another. The operating system truly changes the entire function of the device from one app to the next. Apple and Google have put their amazing software  into Apple TV and now Google TV.

In the end, the Web hasn’t converged with TV, rather the TV now has the power to be transformed into countless devices that leverages the internet.

While at first Steve’s “hobby” and Google’s low-profile launch don’t look all that earth shattering, consider the tiny computing power of a Droid, an iPhone or iPad and consider how profoundly they’ve changed the way we look at what a phone or a tablet computer can and should be.

While the pundits are arguing that Steve Jobs is just trying to sell more from his iTunes store and Google is just trying to sell more ad space, Apple TV and Google TV, through the power of their app driven software, will transform your TV, in the near future, into whatever open-source community thinks it should be. That might mean a giant cook book, a weather monitoring station, a spreadsheet, a giant drawing tablet, a virtual conference room, or musical instrument. And get ready for touch-screen TVs.

This presents some amazing opportunities for advertisers and some scary times for media outlets. Yes, TV man, Google wants more of your advertising dollars.

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.

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.

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.

You probably agree that most advertising isn’t creatively great or even good. From the outside, one might think it’s a business filled with dumb, untalented people serving marketing departments filled with bean counters who couldn’t care less if their dollars are producing a fetid mess.

Truth is, too many advertising agencies are filled with brilliant people producing well-designed, absolute crap day in and day out. And marketing departments are run by smart and talented MBAs wondering why they’re always disappointed with what gets made. Why is it this way?

Unfortunately, there are a multitude of reasons. When in business for myself, I wrote a white paper describing to potential clients why their marketing wasn’t any good. Besides being kind of insulting, the paper got to be so long that it got shelved. So I’m going to rehash the content in a series of blog posts. The first topic is trust.

It’s a cliche but like many other cliches, it’s true. Good agency/client relationships are like marriages. And a marriage without trust is just a series of arguments.

There are a lot of reasons people (I say people because it’s a people business) enter into agency/client relationships but I’m going to highlight what I think are the top ones.

1. Attraction — The client thinks agency is a hip and sexy shop that will imbue her business with this hipness and make them more popular.
2. Financial — Client selects shop for monetary reasons.
3. Friendship — Client chooses agency based on relationships. So and so knows so and so. People often select lawyers this way too rather than reviewing credentials, experience, and track record.
4. Agency search — A bunch of stakeholders get in a room and decide what criteria are most important to them in an ad agency (ROI measurement, LEED certification, diversity, what school the president went to and what experience the account executive has with chartering fishing boats). They then hire a firm to help them find the perfect agency to meet their diverse criteria.  Then the only agency that all parties agree doesn’t suck at their metric, which may or may not have anything to do with actual advertising, is hired.
5. Bureaucratic vendor selection — An agency wanting to work with a really big corporation or government agency fills out a bunch of forms to get on an approved vendor list. Client randomly selects agency from this list. This is actually more common than you might think for lower profile assignments.

Notice not a single one of these criteria have anything to do with respect. And without respect there’s never trust, especially on decisions that matter.

Clients usually choose the agency partner but agencies are equally to blame for lack of trust in relationships. After all, it does take two to tango. Here are a few ways agencies blow it.

1. No more charm — The principals or senior management are on the charm offensive with the client for the first six months and then hire a junior to service the account. They then wonder why the relationship sucks a year later.
2. Give up — After a few setbacks, the agency gives up on producing quality work and treats an account like ATM.
3. Cash cow — The agency pursues certain clients purely for the monetary reasons. Sooner or later, even the dumbest sugar daddy catches on.
4. No investment — Some agencies aren’t willing to invest the time required for building trust.

For many industries, advertising and marketing are the key driver for their business. So you’d think the most important factor for a business relationship would be trust. But I guess that’s easier said then done.

The best work I created in my career has always been with clients who I trust and they trust me back. They trust me with information and respect my opinion and creativity. And when they critique my work, I listen and take their criticisms seriously because I trust and respect them. For most agency and clients, this kind of relationship is possible if you’re willing to work at it. And yes, it’s worth the effort for both parties.

But for all this high-minded talk, some people are just not trust worthy. That’s why we have this thing called divorce – I mean that’s why people fire their ad agency and ad agencies fire clients.