Now That It’s Here, What To Do About Change

So much lip service has been paid to the subject of change these past several years, much of it to advance one cockamamie notion or another as to how marketers should get ready for it, that we seem scarcely prepared for the genuine article now that it has arrived.

That’s one observer’s takeaway from the April gathering in Sydney, Australia of the 70-or-so partners, principals, and presidents who make up the Association of Promotion Marketing Agencies (APMA) Worldwide: the rather creepy feeling that changes have not just arrived, but have moved on and left the movers and shakers of this industry shaking their heads as to what to do next.

A reluctant conclusion is that the top dogs just don’t move and shake like they used to – as if anyone does, of course. Another is that those who still move and shake simply had too much of that to do back home to turn out for a conference and spring meeting half a world away. That would explain why attendance, membership, and dues, as reported, were down, down, and down.

Thus it was that during a sunny, mid-April week, we found ourselves in an upside-down world. One where spring had become fall, up (as in Dow and NASDAQ) was suddenly down, the millennium was not ahead but behind, and a group of individuals we’d learned to count on to point the way out of the wilderness had come, not as guides or participants, but as spectators to events beyond their control.

It began with the oddly backward-looking conference theme of, “An Event to Remember,” and concluded with two how-to lectures on sports marketing and a walking tour, 156 days before the games would begin, of host-country Australia’s remarkable new Olympic Village on the Paramatta plateau.

As meetings go, APMA meetings go extremely well. But as APMA meetings go, we’re compelled to report that this one fell a bit short – neither on amenities nor activities to be sure, but on an issue of vital importance to marketers everywhere: fostering a leadership role for the agency professional.

Lest we appear unduly negative, let it be said upfront that because of who and what it is, we have, and always have, held this organization to a higher standard than your average self-serving trade organization.

That’s because APMA Worldwide is truly the only global body where promotion do-ers regularly get together to identify and compare notes on emerging trends. It’s a place of extraordinary collegiality where strategies are debated, ideas are shared and stolen, the latest tools and technology are examined, and excellence in creativity and performance are not only encouraged (as in the upcoming APMA Globe Awards) but sought out and rewarded. Bold and worthy promises all, which is why, due to limitations of the lecture/audience format, such interactivity was in remarkably short supply in 2000 in contrast to previous years.

HINDSIGHTING

Having said that, here’s what we saw as off-key and on, and how, in a more perfect world, we would have liked to see the Sydney meeting play out:

OFF-KEY: No-holds-barred creative how-to and show-and-tell used to be the hallmark of this crowd: bare-fisted flip-chart smackdowns, for the constructive benefit of those assembled, by agency operators who still had hands-on relationships with the businesses they ran.

But lame, not tame, was the label for this year’s topic: How To Grow Your Agency. (If you didn’t know that, we humbly submit, you certainly shouldn’t have had to go to Australia to find out.) Our suggestion: Pick some better workshop topics and have the audience-at-large rate them on the spot for relevance, creativity, and workability.

ON-KEY: Does APMA Worldwide – the group so far ahead of the curve that it spotlighted marketing gurus Don “One-to-One” Peppers and Seth “Permission” Godin long before they became household names – really need to be told about The New Consumer… to be reminded that power has shifted from the manufacturers and employers to customers and employees; that given today’s risk-averse corporate mentality, creative originality is at once the most valuable, and the most elusive, quality of a truly killer campaign? If yes, then what futurist Rosemary Herceg (ceo, Pophouse planning agency) had to say was timely and on point.

DEAD HORSES: Yes, agency mergers and acquisitions are systematically eliminating craft and originality (Colin Lloyd, executive director, Direct Marketing Association, U.K.). Yes, recruiting, training, and retention are crucial to agency viability (Keith McCracken, consultant, The GEM Group, U.S.). And yes, agencies need to be able to present media-neutral answers to client needs (Peter Horovitz, managing director, Impiric, Australia).

LIVE HORSES: Yes, the continuing issue of consumer privacy and the industry’s reluctance (especially in the U.S.) to do much about it, the inability of direct marketers to manage relationships with their customers, and expectations of massive worldwide postal and TV deregulation over the next two to three years (Lloyd) are issues of growing concern. Yes, brand relevance and differentiability (of creative) will fuel future agency growth (Horovitz). And yes, promotions and direct marketing are converging, technically astute agencies will grow faster, clients continue to want one-stop shopping, and event and sponsorship activities are going to grow exponentially (McCracken).

DARK HORSE: Pinch-hitting for a no-show panelist was Steve Krein, chairman and ceo of Promotions.com, an APMA member-to-be who turned out to be the only dot-com chief on board for the three-day affair. At 30-years-old the youngest man on the premises, Krein managed to startle the assemblage, first by defining Internet promotions as only those that collect data, build relationships, and systematically obtain permission from consumers “every step of the way,” then by asserting that (1) spending on such promotions will go from $1.8 billion this year to more than $14 billion in 2005, and (2) before long, “all promotions will start on the Internet,” with tie-ins after the fact to such real-world activities as advertising, merchandising, and sales.

We take issue with none of these pronouncements, of course, but with the lack of any built-in mechanism – workshop, devil’s advocacy, simulated scenario – apart from routine follow-up Q-and-As, for attendees to hammer out realistic approaches to such vital issues of the day. The point being not just to become familiar with the issues – more often than not, you can not do that with a book. (Recommended reading: The Cluetrain Manifesto, by Locke, et al). But for developing realistic solutions, there’s nothing quite like hammering them out under the eagle eyes of your peers.

But activists, take heart. Chosen from a number of alternatives presented by incoming president Ian Ferguson (managing director, Euro RSCG, U.K.) on Day Three was a proposal to make future spring meetings less formal, more issue-oriented, and more participatory than they’ve been to date – “More of a retreat than a conference,” in Ferguson’s words. Hopefully, that’s the signal for a return to the workshop format. Most likely venue: a drafty castle in Ireland, perhaps just outside Dublin.

Just the place to roll up one’s sleeves and get down to some real imaginary business.