experience matters

For all that digital marketing is – efficient, interactive, impactful, measurable – there is one thing that it seems to consistently be lacking. Theatre.

When are you building a website or putting together a digital media plan, the requirements are usually pretty cut and dry. As an industry, I think we forget that some times ideas are more important than requirements. They aren’t more important, however. Don’t be Crispin. Everyone wanted to be Crispin and get paid for ideas. Turns out that most of their ideas don’t sell a whole helluva lot of product. The shop for distressed brands, we like to say. But I digress…

You don’t often think of technology and theatre walking down the aisle hand-in-hand. Jobs is the exception. Each time they announce something, it is shrouded in more secrecy than Tom and Katie’s marriage, eh, “contract,” or Bill Belicheik’s injury report.

Steve Jobs, technological maestro.

See, because we have so much technology at our finger tips, we forget that clients not only appreciate a theatrical presentation (and that doesn’t mean taking them to the opera; save your T&E budgets on that one) but, in large part, they demand it. Before we had Keynote and PowerPoint, before we had videoconference or Flash, ad agencies had to create theatre. There is no better example of this than the television show Mad Men about a Madison Avenue agency in the early ’60′s.

If you aren’t watching this show and you are in any way, shape or form in the advertising business, shame on you. Stop reading this post, go downstairs, set your Tivo and then resume your reading.

I’m not kidding. Go. Now.

Okay, now that you are back I could write post after post about the genius of this show, the depth of its characters and how much the writers accomplish without the actors saying anything. Instead, allow me simply to talk about the creativity with which ideas are presented.

Quick sidebar – If you have seen the show you know how chauvinistic it is. I’d like to see you get away with calling your assistants or one of your copywriters “sweetheart.” You’d have HR in your office faster than Microsoft killed the Bill and Jerry spots. Sure, those spots did exactly what they were intended to. Confusion is often a key brand metric.

Quick sidebar #2 – Every time I watch this show I want to have a cigarette and a scotch. No matter what time of the day it is. They make it look very glamorous. Ah, the power of television. It isn’t dead after all!

In each client engagement, the characters on the show do things that should still be done today:

1. They constantly speak their minds and share their opinions. There are no yes men at this agency. In one episode, the Creative Director (yes, the Creative Director, not the Account Director) says to a client, “You hired me to do this job and you have ignored me. That is why you are #4 in your category.”

2. They rely on emotion, not just research.

3. They think about more than just advertising, they think about the client’s overall business.

4. They drink and smoke during meetings and often arrange “companionship” for their male clients.

5. They use theatre as a sales tool. Constantly.

Um, okay, maybe #4 is not something we should be doing today. You can get in a lot of trouble for some of that (you can have a lot of fun, too…wait, did I think that or write that?).

The other four points are fundamental to successful client management. We are hired for our opinions, our ability to utilize emotion to drive brand affinity and the way we can understand a client’s overall business. And many of us are very good at all three of those things. However, if not presented in the right way, the ideas suffer.

Rather than write another paragraph about how to create theatre, just watch this clip from the show. It epitomizes what I am talking about. It is theatre built on emotion and supported by technology. It is an agency selling, selling their opinions about a client’s business and how that business should be messaged.

So as you prepare for your next client meeting, work hard to make it a theatrical presentation. Worry less about wire frames and click through rates and more about how the impact of what you are saying will make people feel.

While you’re at it, light up a Chesterfield, slam a scotch and tell the female copywriter she should wear a tighter skirt. And then run. Run like the wind!