Joseph Schumpeter, the 1940’s Austrian-American Economist, borrowed
The opening up of new markets and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as US Steel illustrate the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one … The process must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction; it cannot be understood on the hypothesis that there is a perennial lull.
and retooled the idea of creative destruction from Karl Marx in which he states…
And so it is with advertising. For those who have cut their teeth in big company marketing or agency work starting as little as 5 years ago, today must seem a troubled and chaotic time. Andy Nibley, the former CEO of ad agency Marsteller, Reuters News and Universal Music sums it up nicely when he says “Here we go again. First the news business, then the music business, then advertising. Is there any industry I get involved in that doesn’t get destroyed by digital technology?” Fifty years ago advertising was comprised of copywriters trying on various words and phrases to pitch a product. Then words then went to an artist who drew what the words meant. Starting in the 1960’s however things got more complicated. Account executives, brand planners, media buyers, art directors, producers, directors, and editors turned advertising into more workman-like assembly. It also raised the price to advertisers. Now with digital advertising you can argue we have come full circle. Only the circle runs backwards. Artists generate a display ad and todays equivalent of a copywriter (e.g. tech guy) plugs keywords into the ad server as he or she loads the artwork. So there has been plenty of destruction and a great deal of creation as well. Ad Networks, Ad Exchanges, Supply Side Platforms, Demand Side Platforms, Real-Time Bidding to name just a few. Efficiency, cost cutting, throughput, and massive impressions count as the benefits of this new digital ad world creation. All to the good. But what has been creatively destroyed is creativity. By running the circle backwards and letting the last step in the digital ad process be the limiting and dumbing down of the words that describe the display we have robbed the creative spark out of the process. No more word-smithing. No more deep thinking about ways to describe a product or a feature that can capture the imagination of the consumer. Only bland keywords – the fewer in number the better; the wider the appeal the better. Google’s AdSense will even tell you via bidding and pricing tools which keywords are most popular and thus the most expensive for you to use. Turns out those keywords put you in the largest pool at the most expensive price. Pretty tough to distinguish yourself in the mind of the customer.
At ADmantX we have reinstated creativity to its rightful place while using technology. We believe semantic technology that aids the modern artist/copywriter team can do this. So when the display ad is loaded onto the server and keywords are generated we get in the middle. ADmantX reinterprets, corrects, and expands the kinds of descriptors that ensures brand safety, accuracy, but most importantly creativity and an emotional connection with the consumer. Just like the magic you see in MadMen when Don Draper transforms the cold flat description of the slide projector into a carousel (here).
All the math and high speed exchange of ads, content and their match is good creative destruction. So long as creativity also goes back into the creative destruction too.
