A few weeks back I saw an old movie called “He’s Just Not That Into You”.  Not a great movie but a really cold reminder that if your lover doesn’t call you/call you back, he or she probably doesn’t love you that much. You are just not relevant enough.

The economic downturn has turned the heat up on business relevance. In good economic times, “interesting” can suffice as relevant. Companies and consumers will buy your products or services because they can afford to, because what you offer is interesting, mildly helpful, feels good, whatever. A great example of that are research expenditures.  Big brands spend gobs of money on interesting research.  They don’t actually do anything with the research, it doesn’t guide decision making, there’s no “return” expected, it’s just interesting.

But when the economy softens, the definition of relevance hardens.  It shifts from “interesting” to “influencing”, i.e. the investment has got to connect in some, even if indirect, way to an action or benefit.  Management starts asking the question, what are we getting for this?  The consumer begins contemplating what life will be life without that pair of shoes.  But even then, there’s some latitude on how consumers and businesses assess the return, on how relevant the relevance is.

Now, serve up an economic setback like the one we’re still mired in, and the definition of relevance becomes rock hard. Relevance = Essential. Essential = our business cannot operate without the benefit of this product, service (or employee). Essential = my personal life will suffer in tangible forms if I don’t buy this thing (or call my girlfriend back).

The definition of relevance as essential puts intense pressure on all of us but I think it’s a healthy pressure.  Good economies delude us.  They make us think that the value equation (and relationship) is solid and secure when in fact it is not.  Our capacity to grow as individuals and companies, through good times and bad, is purely predicated on our ability to be essential to whomever we serve (or love).  So I encourage you to ask yourself the tough question: Are they returning your phone call?

And if not, you know what to do.

The Last Advertising Agency On Earth from FITC on Vimeo.

We’re getting close to the finish line on a handful of client projects right now, and I’ve observed that one of the biggest challenges “real marketers” have in embracing social systems is, for lack of a better term, cultural.

It’s almost a cliche now to say that embracing social media means giving up the sense of control marketing communications types are used to in other media. Like most cliches, there’s a kernel of truth in that observation, but it’s only part of the leap we ask our clients to take.

The less obvious but in some respects equally daunting leap has to do with embracing the ethos of successful software development, which differs quite dramatically from the ethos of successful print and broadcast development.

Marketers are shaped by the awareness that a typo in a print ad is pretty much grounds for termination. A brand manager will spend hundreds of thousands on a TV spot to get it exactly perfect before spending millions to distribute it over the air.

But that’s not the way you build software. It used to be, when software lived on mainframes, or whatever. The “waterfall” methodology was a lot like the ad creation methodology, a system oriented to deep and thorough planning before a launch where perfection was always aspired to, and sometimes required.

The problem with this approach as applied to business software was that it took too damn long, to the point that by the time the system launched, the business issues it was intended to address had evolved. To be more responsive, software development methodology evolved toward the sprint or “scrum” methodology, which is all about iteration, and the perpetual beta was born.

Entrepreneurs and social folk have an almost religious conviction about the design-ship-evolve model of creating software. But it’s an unnatural act for marketing folk, with the effect that building social software in marketing applications puts stress on the relationship between provider and client.

Have you seen this? Do you agree with the diagnosis? And either way… what strategies have worked for you in mitigating it?

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So what can you expect from us in 2010?

Well, while we’re still going to call ourselves an “agency,” it’s just so folks have a box to put us in. The truth is we’re becoming something very different than that.

Now… I know you hear that from every advertising agency these days. Next time you do, ask whether they’ve actually turned down opportunities to create advertising for paying clients. We have, and I must say it’s been pretty liberating.

We’ve done this not because we think advertising is dead, although that makes better copy than the truth. We’ve done it because we think advertising is the wrong place to start.

The Imperative Economy

We start with an observation. It is that people — in both their business and personal lives — are only spending money on what they consider imperative. Think about how your own behavior has changed over the course of The Gateway Recession. When was the last time you plunked down the Platinum card on something that was just interesting, or even something with just the potential to influence your life? I bet it’s been a while. We buy what we need now, and it’s the same for the spending decisions we make on the job in the “B2B” marketplace.

Becoming imperative has become imperative. And doing so isn’t about “small-m” marketing, meaning, primarily, outbound marketing communications. Good advertising can make a product more interesting, no doubt. But it cannot make it imperative. “Consumers” — as we used to call them — decide what is imperative, and they communicate with each other at a volume and frequency that drowns out all but a very few deep-pocketed commercial entities.

Reality Is Perception

The implication of this is significant: Where once you could focus on driving the product reality by shaping market perception, now you must also gather market perception to shape the product reality.

What I’m saying is what we all know… that Marketing needs to step up, put the crayons down for a bit, and take a seat at the grown-up table. Getting the topline moving in the Imperative Economy will take more than advertising. It will take “big-M” Marketing, meaning a willingness to tackle the substantive issues related to:

1. the relevance of your offering,
2. the clarity of your message,
3. the consistency of your communication, and
4. your ability to drive engagement among a group of brand advocates large enough to support your business.

Holland-Mark’s Role

We think our job is to help clients establish that cycle… to “corrupt” their vision with the external reality. In a nutshell, Holland-Mark helps businesses connect with, respond to, and benefit from the truth about their customers, products, and brand relationships.

If you come across someone who needs that — and who recognizes the need to change more than just their tagline to achieve it — please drop us a line. In the meantime, we’d love to hear what you think about our conclusions, our approach, and our prospects.

Look for more details soon right here. Be sure and subscribe to our blog if you’re interested.

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We think they’re right. What do you think?

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Here’s a 5-minute talk to that effect I gave at the recent O’Reilly’s Ignite event in Boston, and I welcome your thoughts on it:

You can download the higher res quicktime here, but it takes a while.

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Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value — and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life.

Anyway, take a look:

So what do you think? Does great advertising add “intangible value,” or sell with lies?

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There are nuances about target demos, and sample bias, and effective reach, and blah blah blah. But if I was the guy responsible for the advertising that achieved this, I’d be more than a tad anxious:

Maybe it’s just me.

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Here’s a really short video explaining Google Wave, Google’s new document collaboration app. In the ad world, I could see this being really helpful for tracking feedback and changes on creative as it goes through rounds of revisions and approvals and finally into production. Email does suck for trying to piece together a ton of different user feedback and iterations of changes. I love how Wave lets anyone who is just joining a project to playback the whole conversation and scrub through like a video timeline to see who said what and when. So awesome. Hey Google, give Holland-Mark an invite! Anyone know any advertising agencies who are trying the Beta?