In the ballroom of the Sheraton, over 300 members of the Toronto Ad Club and guests were gathered to hear Canadian Business’ It Girl tell us about her vision of the Future. Everything was branded from the flowers by The Weather Network and “Colleen Decourcy brought to you by Yahoo! Canada”.
It soon became quite clear that Decourcy was not here to promote the people who made this event possible. From references to Google instead of Yahoo! and pointing out the obvious pitfalls of display advertising and microsites, Decourcy gave us all a reality check. I resisted the temptation to chuckle out of respect for the AOL media sales guys who made it possible for me to attend.
Beyond “Shoot the Monkey”
Despite the fact that DA weight allowances continues to slowly increase and there are ever so many ways to get in front of consumers online (page take-overs, top layer, expandable, dynamic text, etc.), Decourcy points out that we haven’t really evolved much since the “Shoot the Monkey” animated gifs of yesteryear.
She challenged us to think about all the other touchpoints at which to reach our audiences. Each consumer has a “deck”, she tells us. Like a desktop. This is a challenge I face everyday when clients and overzealous account execs want to throw in a widget here and a facebook app there. Their objective is to give the client as much bang for their buck, but there’s a tendency to look only in the obvious places, but not the relevant ones.
Yet Another New Era in Advertising
My favourite part of the presentation was when Decourcy put the digital age into context of the media timeline. When films were first being made, they were produced like a live performance. Except the same excitement an audience gets from seeing live theatre where anything can and does happen doesn’t exist in a dark, isolated theatre. The rules changed.
So in the last 10 years or so, when we’ve evolved from websites and e-mail to websites, e-mail, social networks, blogs, wiki, mobile, etc. why are we still developing “Shoot the Monkey” creative?
Things I Learned
Here are a few of the notes I took during the presentation... clearly not verbatim and barely legible in reality:
- Medium = conversation + cooperation + empowerment
- Satiating the desire to spend time
- “It’s not about what we do, but how we use the technology”
- If you want to be relevant, we start at the consumer’s reflexes
- We were early in jumping onto the advertising media bandwagon – should have focused more on digital product development first
- Long-tail = deeper engagement
- Brand Belief vs. Brand Behaviour
- Time for the next creative revolution
- It all has to lead to digital
- Technology is an enabler not a destination
Decourcy only had time to present two case studies: Pedigree and Method, and I was sad that she couldn’t get to the iPhone campaign. What’s exciting about her work is that she brings all media together into something that really taps into consumers contextually relevant situations.
This is an individual who is not afraid to get inside her audience and find out what really makes them tick. Decourcy is renowned for a unique consumer profiling technique which I’m very curious about. Of course it’s her trade secret, and the Future of the Internet presentation was more about her philosophy and POV than giving away her methods.
The presentation ended with Q&A where Decourcy hesitatingly admitted that she thought Spot Runner’s “stuff looks like shit”. I was happy to discover at that point that it pays to be brutally honest.
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