Banners: the Media-Creative Schism
Great article from The Barbarian Group‘s Rick Webb describing what I believe to be the single biggest problem in digital advertising right now: the gap between wholistic creative strategies and an understanding of what works in the digital space. So many of the agencies I’ve worked with over the past few years still treat digital as a tacked-on supplement to an overarching campaign (“Take this TV commercial, upload it to YouTube, and make it go ‘viral’”). Obviously this approach has limited effectiveness which is being even further reduced over time. I have yet to see an agency attack this problem successfully, but I believe that, as traditional media is further marginalized, successful companies will have no choice but to rely more heavily on digital creatives, and ultimately integrate them fully into creative/ branding team.
