Memo

To:                  Julie Morris

From:             Logan Kriete

Date:              12 April 2013

Subject:         “Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here” Book Review

After reading this book, co-written by David Verklin and Bernice Kanner, I felt compelled to research some more information about its authorship. It turns out that when it was released, Verklin went on a publicity tour advertising the book, even including a GQ-sponsored release party. It is expected that one would wonder if this book deserves all that hype, and the answer is that it absolutely does.

Written by two very well established people in the advertising industry (Verklin, the executive president of Carat, the largest independent media buying company in the world, and the late Kanner, marketing expert and author of weekly columns in both New York Magazine and Ad Age for over fourteen years), the text is absolutely a credible source of unique advertising perspective. It is an intensely research-driven book, citing multiple statistics and figures to back up its impressive claims, and delivers insights on all sorts of advertising platforms from TV, the Internet, billboards, radio, newspapers, and more.

The book is divided into three main sections: “The Lay of Medialand”, “A Whole New Ball Game”, and “Tomorrow”. The first gives a fairly complete overview of the state of traditional media as well as recent upsets that threaten its current relevancy. Next, Verklin discusses how companies are adapting and innovating in this new ad landscape, including some surprising twists (yes, the porn industry actually affects advertising mindsets!). Finally, he goes on to a short discussion[1] about the direction he sees the industry heading, and how that may continue to change in the very near future.

Starting out, Verklin talks about several placement models that help identify the current shifting media world consumers encounter daily. As mentioned in Ad Age’s review of the text, “Within the opening pages alone the reader is bombarded with charts comparing average costs of a 30-second TV spot, a color magazine page, a black-and-white newspaper page and billboards on several high-profile landmarks nationwide”[2]. He connects this constantly evolving lay of “medialand” with the notion that the idea of an ad concept, copy writer, art director, and production team is now way outdated: instead, “We’re about to see new ways to reach people, and to only advertise to the interested.”[3]

This is his central theme: he keeps coming back to the idea that the saturation of current advertising is forcing advertisers to custom-tailor messages to individual consumers, and “narrowcasting” is more than ever not only unequivocally relevant but also absolutely necessary. One of the key points he uses as a basis for this is the idea that traditional media (and their ensuing business models) have been disrupted by other devices and consumption habits (DVR, anyone?) that give greater control to the consumer. This forces the landscape to change through more creative and innovative marketing messages, including the likes of product placement, Oprah’s Pontiac giveaways, and the US Army’s video game recruitment tool. Finally, it is the advancement of technology—new and greater specificity, tracking tools, metrics, and more—that has allowed this change to take place.

Describing the “old world” advertising as a sort-of “shotgun approach”, Verklin emphasizes how the traditional model was to simply push ads out everywhere since they were bound to impact someone and generate some revenue. But this approach is flawed from its premise, he argues, and moreover fiscally irresponsible. Today, we have snipers instead of shotguns: wireless, constantly-connected consumers can be exposed to customized information anywhere, anytime.

Reinforcing Verklin’s marketing gospel are his statistics on the digital take-over: the “hooked up” generation in particular is very tired of the shotgun approach. The only appropriate move by advertisers is to market only what people want to buy: what they’re interested in goes. Really, it could be said that advertisers have consumers’ best interests (and, of course, wallets) at heart. Tracking Internet traffic and other companies like Nielsen help to determine audience engagement and thus influence advertisers’ models.

It follows, then, that some of these changes are coming about not from traditional media companies but instead those dedicated to the digital space: Verklin talks a lot about Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Craigslist, and how their decisions impact “brick-and-mortar” ad agencies and also why they, too, are getting into the advertising business. Google in particular, such a behemoth that it is, has been buying up everything it can, from calendar services to flight tracking data, and coalescing it all into the “big data” cloud that can instantly analyze its users interests. Its advertising schemes stem completely from the information it collects on millions of consumers: one can only imagine the types of marketing it will continue to pursue in the future (deep-space missions? Underseas explorations?).

Indeed, the future is very intriguing (as described Verklin). Advertisers will know where, who, and when we are all the time, be aware of how that impacts what we want, and then constantly deliver customized ads directly to our already connected electronic devices. The world of “commercials on demand” could mean integrated product placement everywhere you look, not just in the virtual space as it is now with Second Life and other online RPGs and gaming communities. Of course, it’s all powered by the Orwellian implication that everything we do is being tracked, measured, analyzed, compiled, and monitored: in short, it’s possible marketers will know what we want even before we do[4].

Overall, “Watch This” gives an in-depth look at how the media buying industry works, the current advertising landscape, threats to its incumbent status, and insightful predictions as to its future. It demonstrates how traditional marketing is becoming obsolete and shows the new ways advertisers are connecting with and influence consumers, using specific examples, facts, and figures to reinforce Verkin’s observations and back up their claims. There’s not much of a drawback to the entire book.

Realistically, the only weakness the book has is its relative outdatedness, which is somewhat ironic given what it professes. Published in 2007, the text fails to include any of the more recent (and quite drastic) changes in the media landscape during the past five years, including the rise of Google’s own social network, crowd-sourced funding & development, second screen engagement and tablet ownership, and more. It’s really very easy to read this book in 2013 and recognize the dots Verklin is connecting without him actually spelling it out, since we now know where they lead (remember the old adage “hindsight is 20/20”). In that sense, it’s not a very current text, but the ideas it posits—the central theme—is timeless.

Aside from that, it’s easy to say there is something in this book that will appeal to everyone. There’s a discussion about why TV ratings are overrated, why Legoland is visited by grown men, and why the Army’s best new recruitment tool is a video game. All of the companies and trade names mentioned are familiar and readers learn some of the secrets behind their marketing campaigns. This penetrating book is not just for the marketing and advertising professional; it is a book that can be processed by all because everyone out there is a consumer of goods and services and all of them are part of the globalized digital cloud that surrounds our world today. With that, it’s clear that the insights it provides are immediately recognizable and useful in future advertising efforts from media companies.