004: The metaphor

[During - Session 1] How should we prepare for a long journey to a land none of us have ever visited?

And we’re off!

Tonight the students and I began the fifth iteration of the Future of Advertising course at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

As one does, we started class with a Ryan Reynolds commercial that (lucky us!) incorporated ChatGPT (and honestly, not very well?). What else is there to say or do now? We’ve pretty much summed up the future of advertising in :30 seconds.

No reason to read any further, folks.

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If you’re new here, this is a newsletter about creativity. Our focus from now until May is a course I’m teaching at MCAD. We’ll have a Before (Sunday evening), During (Monday post-class recap like this one) and After (a reflection, likely Wednesdays) post for each of the 15 sessions.

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Advertising!

The Future of!

Buckle up. I almost talked for 2.5 hours straight.

Tonight’s class was split in two parts, each focused on helping illuminate this metaphor: What we’re doing over 15 sessions is similar to packing for a long journey to a foreign land.

None of us have been there. We don’t know the language, we don’t know what to expect. The questions I’m hoping we can answer together include: “Whatʼs absolutely critical to know in order to not just survive but thrive in the future? What do we need to be fluent and advantageous in the future? Where and who should we visit?”

1️⃣ The first half of class was pretty typical: Who’s here? Why are we here? Why are you at MCAD? Why are you an Entrepreneurial Studies major? What do you aspire to achieve in the world?

We also covered operational elements like grades. I adhere to Rosamund and Ben Zander’s philosophy—”everyone starts the course with an A.” Then the question becomes, how engaged will each student remain in order to retain the A? (50% of the grade in this course is “engagement.”) Then we walked through the three sections of the course and the 14 remaining dates.

Oh, and I set a goal: I want this to be the most useful class they ever take.

It really boils down to curiosity and courage (the name of this newsletter). A “most useful” class would, IMHO, help students strengthen their curiosity muscles in numerous ways, and provide frameworks and practice to embolden their courage to create (quoting Rollo May). I believe we’re on the cusp of dramatic change in the world, and we need more creative leaders to help navigate and take advantage amidst the change.

And really, is there a better business sector in which to culture curiosity and engender courage than advertising, and its future?

And off we go!

2️⃣ Venturing to unknown lands works better if you can set some ground rules for yourself; establish a collective understanding before you go. Part Two of tonight’s class focused on clarifying a foundation.

Before we can dive in to the future of AI-generative ideas, the Metaverse, et al—we need to agree on a few things.

Specifically, what is Advertising circa 2023?

How will we know it when we see it? (Honestly, I’m not sure Ryan Reynolds and ChatGPT are it.)

Even more broadly, how do we define the overarching umbrella of Marketing? How does Advertising emerge as a solution to business issues? After 25 years in the business I’ve come to realize how a company defines its Marketing’s purpose sums up everything. Also, doing so is incredibly difficult.

All of you MBA recipients will be pleased to know we spent time walking through Mark Ritson’s structure, acknowledging Market Research and Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning, Distribution, Pricing, etc. The beleaguered CMO has a lot to think about well before she steps into the realm of Advertising. And wait, what about the realms of Design, Public Relations, Social Media, Branding, and Digital? Never mind Paid, Earned and Owned?

Truth is, Marketing contains multitudes. It can be molded in the focus of Advertising, if that’s how your organization rolls. Or perhaps your brand renders Marketing through the lens of Design; or defines the landscape in the cloth of Public Relations. You may be a house of brands. You may be a DTC “social-first” organization. Or your firm may contain all of the above. The key to survival is some kind of focus.

Can you cement a singular purpose for your marketing?

For this class, I chose Seth Godin’s:

The Purpose of Marketing is to Create Change

Let’s be clear, I’m teaching a class of undergrads, not running a Fortune 100 global conglomerate. My selection is easier. The point here is to establish solid footing. If you’re a CMO, and the purpose of your entire marketing effort is to “create change,” then you will have a decidedly specific point of view when it comes to Advertising. And that’s entirely the point.

With our purpose conveniently articulated, I proposed a structure for thinking about the practice of Advertising. I like to summarize it as distillation:

Beginning with the broad context (i.e. “Are we talking about business issues Advertising can solve?”)… refined to a marketable audience…further clarified to an actionable insight (which is where a creative brief is likely authored)… we hope and pray to arrive at the crux with a brilliant idea which will forever change the world…

I discovered this framework during my time at BBDO; I believe it might have been created by Julian Cole. Anyone know?

…Then, with a potent idea in hand, we begin to expand again… first with a communications/media plan… which further suggests and identifies specific tactics to be produced… and then we’re off to the races distributing (and possibly optimizing) a world of effort.

Clearly this is a way of thinking about Advertising. If our CMO’s focus was PR, or Design, she would utilize a very different framework. Point being: there are many frameworks to choose from, and we’ve chosen one meant to deliver Advertising.

So we’ve got our operational framework. Now we can move confidently into the future of advertising from a collective understanding.

Tonight was busy.

We also dissected some recent non-Ryan Reynolds advertising.

Why would TikTok be running TV ads?

What might Greenpeace be trying to achieve with its Davos campaign?

How do we feel about this McDonald’s advert? Ashley has #AdTok opinions.

And we spent some time with Gartner’s Hype Cycle just because.

YES, THERE’S HOMEWORK.

Under the subject of inspiration and building curiosity muscles, I asked the students to research and subscribe to at least three different newsletters within 24 hours and report back with their picks. Here’s the list I gave them to start with. They might identify others. We’ll be talking about what they discover at the start of each class moving forward.

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I’m going to wrap each class with a quote.

Tonight's comes from Ben Thompson’s Stratechery post this morning. Since 2007 (when this very curriculum began), Netflix has been laser focused on data, operations and execution. And it’s served them very well. But maybe not forever? Thompson believes:

“Netflix’s future is about creativity and humanity.”

Maybe he’s talking about the students in this class and the metaphor we’ve embarked upon?

Or you, dear reader?

Thanks for riding along.

I’ll have a quick “After” reflection on today’s class in the next 48 hours.