The Good and Bad of Technology | Industry Insights | All MKC Content | ANA

The Good and Bad of Technology

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By Ken Beaulieu, senior director of marketing and communications, ANA

As technology profoundly changes the way we connect with one another and conduct business, Publicis Group Chief Strategist Rishad Tobaccowala fears it may come at a steep cost, in the steady loss of human interaction. In fact, he believes our minds are being colonized by connectivity, a point that hit home at the recent International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“Today, because of mobile phones, social media, and streamed media, we are so connected that we may not know our minds are being taken over by a constant feed of content or stimuli-like alerts, likes, and more,” Tobaccowala says. “We look at our devices hundreds of times a day. It’s almost as if these phones are our slave masters. We forget who we are, where we are, and what we set out to do in the first place. The way forward is to not use technology for at least an hour or two every day while you’re awake and to pay attention to how you use technology.”

Tobaccowala, who will speak at the ANA Media Leadership Conference, March 4-6, in Hollywood, Fla., shares his concerns about the state of media, why media professionals need to reinvent their skills, how the Publicis Groupe is responding to issues in the digital media supply chain, and more.

Q. When you look at the current state of the media landscape, what concerns you most?

A. Marketers seem to have a flavor-of-the-season club, and their agencies veer from one technology, issue, or hot trend to another. From native to social to mobile to paid/owned/earned to DSP/SSP/DMP to programmatic — it’s like we’re playing buzzword bingo. We have lost ourselves in a sea of complexity. Marketing should be about understanding consumers, unearthing insights that allow for more relevant interactions, and realizing that automation is not a threat but a tool to become more important to clients. Everyone will one day have the same automated capabilities. Technology is often an enabler of big ideas, not a creator or differentiator of ideas, unless you are a technology company.

Q. You are calling for media professionals to rethink and reinvent their roles. In what ways?

A. Any job requires a mix of skills, from thinking to communicating to doing. More and more of the doing will be done by machines rather than by people. Therefore, the media professional will have to learn how to live alongside the machines and add value. The media professional will need to be both left- and right-brained because content and contact bleed into each other and not all insights and decisions can be quantitative. Media professionals will have to be communication professionals. Also, increasingly, collaboration will matter more between many of the clients’ partners who are also competitors. Collaborative skills will be key.

Q. The growth of digital has led to many issues, including viewability, bot fraud, and piracy. How is the Publicis Groupe responding?

A. We take viewability, the quality of a website, and measuring correctly very seriously. Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi makes sure that we verify every website our clients’ ads run on, as well as the quality, sources, and uses of data to ensure we are compliant with our clients’ requirements and industry standards. We are selective about our partners and remind clients that sometimes they get what they pay for. If ultra-efficiency is key, you may end up with lots of inventory that is not viewable or on low-quality sites that hurt the brand.

Q. How is technology helping marketers build stronger relationships with agencies?

A. Technology helps marketers build stronger relationships in many ways. First, many new technologies make marketing more effective, efficient, and measurable, allowing both sides to focus on things that matter. Technology enables the end customer. One thing agencies tend to be good at is having a full consumer lens, while brands tend to view things from the lens of the brand. As consumers get empowered — technology is a slingshot that allows the consumer to become a Goliath versus a David — agencies can help clients look more broadly at the landscape, not at just consumers but at potential competitors.

Source

"The Good and Bad of Technology." Ken Beaulieu. 2/9/2015

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