Beyond Advertising. Hays Catharine Findiesen

and a desire for a better future. So, if you think advertising could and should be far better, if you are in a leadership position and want to know how to leverage what is possible and understand what is needed, or if you are determined to change and need inspiration and some language and frameworks to help engage your broader organization, read on. We hope you are inspired by the rest of the book and look to the Advertising 2020 website for the complete set of entries from our insightful and aspirational contributors.

      Our greater hope is that our findings enable you to take action toward co-creating a far more desirable future that aligns the interests of brands, their stewards, and people, creating a net-positive impact on society at every touchpoint.

      Part I

      The Motivation for Change

      If you want to predict the future of advertising, imagine throwing a bottle into the ocean… Many pundits point out singular ‘futures’ in marketing and advertising by watching waves and musing about where the bottle is headed. This is useful in the short run. If you have a long-term objective it's more useful to focus on recognizing forces beyond the waves that will intersect in unexpected ways to shape, if not predictably determine, the future. Many forces shaping the future of advertising are well known, just as it's well known that tides move the ocean. The question is whether we understand their effect in shaping the future.

– Christopher Kenton, CEO and Founder, SocialRep (2012)

      Yes, the changes that you are feeling are real. There is something bearing down on traditional approaches to advertising and marketing with unprecedented headwinds – the first visible indicator of the size and scope and speed of change that is to come. As the saying goes, we ain't seen nothing yet. Understand these changes, heed their import, and there is still time to make a course correction and thrive. Others are already doing so by harnessing these new forces, finding the new North Star that we present in Part II, and creating the more nimble craft and crew that we outline in Part III.

      Why do we need to bother changing? What is the motivation for change? How are the five forces of change speeding up our world, disrupting traditional approaches and mindsets, and yet providing unprecedented horsepower to enable needed new approaches?

In Chapter 1 we delve into the five dramatic worldwide transformations that are impacting everything we thought we knew about how businesses and organizations communicate and connect with their customers (see Figure I.1). In brief, they are:

      1. Rapid, Breakthrough Advances in Science and Technology

      What are these breakthroughs and how to harness their power?

      2. Exploding, Redefined, and Enhanced Media Landscape

      How to allocate resources for the greatest return?

      3. Skeptical and Empowered People

      How to attract and retain both connected and unconnected “talent” and “consumers”?

      4. Fundamental Cultural, Social, Environmental, and Geopolitical Challenges

      What are the roles and responsibilities of brands as global challenges grow louder and more insistent, and what does this have to do with advertising?

      5. Disruptive and Compelling Business and Revenue Models

      What are the means of survival when disruption is almost inevitable?

Figure I.1 The Five Forces of Change and Opportunity

      Equally important for a Beyond Advertising future, these forces of change represent not only the source of actionable insights to be monitored and tapped, but also the opportunity set for contributing a net positive impact from innovative and purposeful brand touchpoint initiatives… And the Most Important Tool for Harnessing the Future

      The industry clings steadfastly to conceptual frameworks that in many cases date back 50 years or more. And the fact is that many of these frameworks are not just wrong but seriously misleading, so much so that they often lead to suboptimal outcomes, outcomes that are the very opposite of what the marketing team both wants and needs.

– Mark Tomblin, Chief Strategy Officer, TAXI (2013)

      If you think you already know what you need to do, or as may be the case, what everyone else needs to do, then you will either read the book searching for confirmation of that point of view and/or reject anything we offer that doesn't reinforce your point of view. Based on our conversations with even the most forward-thinking people, we realize that entrenched thinking, or expecting affirmation, is a danger. So, before we explain the model that will address these challenges, we have a favor to ask. Actually this will be a requirement, since the new model that we outline in Part II won't mean much if you are still holding on to some old ways of thinking. Before you read the next part of this book, take a moment to suspend your current thinking, your mindsets, and those mental models that in all likelihood have worked so well for you for so many years.

In Chapter 2, we walk you through this process of tackling what we have found to be the single greatest impediment to change and transformation: mental models that worked in the past but must be challenged, given new realities to meet the future (see Figure I.2).

Figure I.2 Challenge Entrenched Mental Models

      For example: we should probably stop referring to “consumers,” which implies a myopic mindset that defines “them” based on what and how much they consume. How would it change your mindset to think about “them” as “us” and about them as people whose lives we might enrich?

      And that's just for starters.

Chapter 1

      The Five Forces Driving the Need for Change

      To prepare for [the] future, it is vital to understand that the greatest threat to progress is the inability to see around corners, the inability to respect our past and the unwillingness to realize that the way we succeeded is not the way we will succeed.

– Thomas Harrison, Chairman Emeritus, DAS at Omnicom Group (2012)This Chapter Is about Inspiring You to Go Beyond Advertising. Why?

      When we asked our Advertising 2020 contributors about what the future could and should hold – what was both necessary and possible – they scanned the horizon from their respective vantage points across disciplines and around the world and brought into focus an unprecedented convergence and interaction of extremely fast-moving trends, highly disruptive insights, and rapidly emerging capabilities that we will experience just a few years hence. A world that is becoming a reality in our daily lives, now.

      As John M. Baker, CMO of Mirum Agency, notes, “The challenge with predicting the future is something science fiction writers talk about all of the time. Aside from the difficulty of getting it right, the hard part is balancing the consistency of human experience with the pace of change in technology” (2012). By asking what could and should advertising look like, we privileged aspiration over accuracy. By asking experts immersed in many different industries, we gathered together the viewpoints best suited to balance experience and change. The result: points of view that brought to life dramatic worldwide transformations that have occurred in recent years, impacting everything we once thought we knew about how enterprises communicate and connect with the customers they desire. Initially identified as game-changers for the world of marketing and advertising, these forces are rapidly and irrevocably reverberating across all roles in the executive ranks –