What’s next for college in the U.S.?

In my current role, I spend a lot of time thinking about the college and university space here in the US. And recently, I wrote up my thoughts on the gathering storm in the American higher-ed market.

In February of this past year, the older of my two kids turned eight years old.

And as I think ahead and begin to imagine what the summer before her senior year of high school will look like, I have a hard time seeing us touring the archetypal brick and ivy covered college campuses, thumbing through catalogs of majors, and plopping down $60,000 per year in tuition so she can select a major that may well decide the course of her life thereafter.

Which, by the way, statistically speaking, has a rather poor chance of going well anyways.

Because while Covid-19 has been (justifiably) blamed for accelerating the demise of college as we’ve known it, the truth is that there have been swirling waters and gathering storm clouds for some time now.

Now I’m not really in the bold predictions businesses, but I am very much in the business of surveying the wind patterns and helping the organizations that I’m part of decide whether they should tack or jibe.

And when I look up and read the sails in the higher-ed space, here’s what I see…

(continue reading here)

TV Advertising’s Next Act

I spend a lot of time thinking about the state of marketing and advertising. What’s changing (less than you probably think), what’s staying the same (more than you probably think), and where the past and the future are converging in interesting ways.

One specific area that’s fascinated me, both as a consumer and a marketer, is the world of television advertising. Which I believe is morphing and evolving in ways that put this space on the precipice of a new resurgence. Here are three reasons why.

TV inventory is - once again - becoming abundant.

For the last several years, everyone in the marketing industry has been lamenting (or celebrating, depending on your perspective) the absolute collapse of the linear TV space.

The broad generalization that "no one watches TV anymore" led quickly to the rather obvious "then, therefore" conclusion that TV advertising, as we've all known it, would finally be laid to rest.

The internet had won. As Facebook and Google had successfully hoovered up all of the ad dollars from traditional media, now so too, Netflix and the other big streaming platforms had slowly bled the big networks dry - leaving them with only live sports, local news, and 300 or so spin-offs of CSI and the Bachelor.

However, there was a rather obvious next step that seemingly few people seemed to see coming.

Which is really the most basic power law of modern media; wherever there are eyeballs, there will eventually be advertising.

I mean, did we really think that these streaming services would be satisfied with subscription revenue alone? Of course not!

This is why you're now seeing every major streaming platform (save for Netflix so far) double-dipping and dropping ads into their programming, whether it's a paid subscription service or not.

For Hulu, this is nothing new (Look at their ad revenue, by the way. Holy shit.).

That's a lot of ad cash

But, of course, it's not just Hulu. Recently, this "ads + subscription" approach has shown up on the most OG premium tv space there is, HBO.

Cool cool cool

That's right; good old-fashioned ads are creeping into HBO, and you're STILL going to be paying a subscription fee. What are you going to do? Cancel? You won't, and they know it.

Amazon, maybe less shockingly, has also begun upping the ad volume in their Prime Video service. I recently watched a movie on Amazon Prime Video, only to have it abruptly and clumsily interrupted by an ad about fifteen minutes in.

I was taken aback for about 6 seconds until I thought, "Well, of course." and just dealt with it. Again, where was I going to go?

And then there's Disney Plus, whose CEO very confidently said (regarding ads), "We've got no such plans now to do that. We're happy with the models that we've got right now", and then a few months later, seemed to soften that stance saying "all this is malleable. Again, it's soft clay right now. And we are very pleased with what we are seeing with addressable advertising on Hulu."

Let me just spoil this one for you. Disney+ will have ads.

In the end, while this may be a real bummer for those of us couch potatoes who have gotten used to relatively ad-free TV viewing experiences, it does create something the advertising industry has been lacking for some time now - which is fresh inventory, and lots of it.

Collectively, these platforms can (and will) deliver metric tons of eyeballs for advertisers in the coming years. So if you're in the TV ad business (or want to be), it would seem that ad inventory may only be getting more abundant and quickly.

Self-serve, addressable, targetable TV advertising is a reality.

Beyond the sheer increase in available inventory, it's the type of inventory springing forth from these platforms that present maybe the most exciting opportunity for advertisers.

Because what the Hulus and Disney Plusses - and even the Netflixes should they want to get in the game - all have, is the data and plumbing to finally deliver addressable, targetable tv advertising at a truly massive scale.

This sort of thing has been promised for years, and has existed in small pockets here and there, but now it's arrived and is ready to scale. Today, any marketer with a credit card and a 30-second spot can be up and running on living room tv sets, targeting a pretty precise audience and managing their campaign just like they would with a Facebook or Google ad in under ten minutes.

A peek at Hulu's self-service ad console.

The significance of this bit can't be overstated. I genuinely think that this seemingly small thing (self-serve, targeted TV ads at scale) will be looked at a few years from now, as one of those significant tectonic shifts in marketing that only comes along every so often.

Because these self-serve platforms just absolutely obliterate a massive barrier to entry that most brands outside of the Fortune 100 have had to overcome...forever?

Which is that buying TV has always been massively confusing and complicated for any marketer who isn't inside a giant brand or media agency.

For as long as I can remember, anything beyond hyper-local TV advertising, even for pretty experienced marketers, was a big scary black box. It involved fancy media agencies, upfronts, massive spend commitments, and all sorts of other red tape, expense, and risk that just felt daunting - even if some of this built-in complexity was actually good and necessary.

And that was just the first part! Once you navigated the media labyrinth, there was the cost and difficulty of production—more on that in a moment.

But now, click click click, and you're on TV for real.

Put simply; these platforms are just making it crazy easy for more advertisers to get started with TV and to buy more ads more efficiently. And that's a big deal.

So in the coming months and years, I'd expect to see an absolute flood of cash-rich DTC startups, many of whom have begun to see sharply diminishing returns on their Facebook ad spend, start plowing their marketing dollars into OTT TV advertising.

It's already begun of course, but it's only going to get bigger as more small and mid-sized brands realize that they can get the best of both worlds. The attention and brand-building juice that comes from running proper TV campaigns, along with the relative targeting and control that they're used to with their digital campaigns.

Production continues to get cheaper and easier.

Now assuming you've got your media plan all sorted, and to the above, are ready to slap down a credit card to buy some ads, there's the little issue of...ya know, having an ad to run.

Traditionally, this would mean engaging a proper creative agency, which would do what proper creative agencies do. They'd make you a proper ad, with all of the bells, whistles, production pomp, and circumstance that go along with making such a thing.

There'd be fancy hotels, craft services, many producers and creative directors, and other people whose roles or titles weren't all that clear. There would be location scouting, concept testing, animatics, preproduction meetings, focus groups, loads of equipment, lots of standing around, and many takes and re-shoots. And at the end of it all, you might spend anywhere between $50,000 and $1,000,000 or more to make an ad, depending on the complexity of what you've chosen to do.

But, like with so many creative or technological things these days, it all keeps getting cheaper and faster and evolving in ways that seemed wholly unimaginable just a few years ago.

For starters, the latest iPhones are comically good at doing things only the most expensive professional camera equipment could achieve just a short time ago. It's getting to be a cliche, but it's true - most of the world's population now has a device in their pocket capable of shooting cinema-quality footage with the tap-tap-tap of a few buttons.

Set up a DIY lighting kit, invest in some basic sound equipment, maybe some add-ons for the phone, and if you're doing a product-centric ad spot, you could probably cut a rough version of a minimum-viable-tv-ready commercial for very very little in the way of actual production cost.

Not to mention the dearth of cheap (and sometimes free) additional imagery, b-roll footage, and software that's now widely available and easy to use for almost any schmuck off the street - not just professional creatives.

And lastly, these platforms understand that creation is an obvious barrier to scaling up the advertiser pool. So thusly, more and more of them will start adding in creative services - software or partner driven - as a value ad thrown in with your media buy. Makes sense.

Now, are there scenarios in which big, fancy, "traditional" production approaches still make sense? Of course. Nothing in marketing is ever one-size-fits-all.

And this is also to say nothing of the Creative (with a capital "C") aspects of making a great TV ad. Pointing your iPhone at a product and grabbing some 4k footage is one thing. Making something creatively interesting, worthwhile, or effective is another entirely.

But the creativity bit aside, I'm merely pointing out that defaulting to a production-heavy approach is quickly becoming the exception, not the norm. And that for a great majority of the world that TV advertising is now being opened up to, it's very possible to make a totally passable and effective ad on the cheap.

See y'all on TV.

All in all, from a marketer's point of view, I feel like this is exciting stuff.

As long as it’s not overly hyper-targeted and doesn’t follow the path of digital direct response too closely, the introduction of TV advertising to a whole new world of marketers who’ve only known the likes of Facebook and Google Adwords, feels like a good thing.

This narrow-minded, hardcore growth-hacking, performance marketing orthodoxy that has dominated the last decade of marketing can’t die soon enough in my view. So if these shifts help deflate that fantasyland and open more of the world to more marketers, then I'm all for it.

And as I’ve always believed, you can’t really build a proper brand using digital direct response alone—something the inimitable Bob Hoffman has articulated here, better than I could ever do myself.

---

UPDATE: June 2023

As predicted, Disney+ launched an ad-supported version because of course they did.

And so did Netflix, because also, of course.

Hulu's ad revenue continued to climb, topping $3bb in 2022.

And since I wrote this originally in 2021, generative AI has burst onto the scene, and I can promise that in a few short years (maybe less?) this will supercharge all of the above in all manner of wild ways.

How to be good at stuff

As I’ve begun to explore the possibility of perhaps entertaining the idea of considering once again working for the man, it’s forced me to think a lot about who I am, what I believe in (and don’t believe in), and what my value is as a co-worker, a manager, a piece of talent, and just as a person.

Because regardless of what I do next, it is of critical importance that what I consider to be my value, is aligned the way whomever decides to lock me up thinks about my value.

The ultimate output of this thought (and something I am actively working on) is going to become my “platform”. Sort of like political parties have their stated platform (so you know where they stand, and can join them or fight against them) - I am going to have my own. And I am going to create a page on my site, and let it live there.

However, getting all of those thoughts organized is no small undertaking it turns out. And as an early step in the process, I’ve begun to just jot down disorganized thoughts and snippets of things I believe. Hoping that at some point, it will all come together somehow.

And I want to share those raw bits here. Partly as a way to see how they feel when I throw them out into the real world, partly as a test to see if I am able to live up to and stay true to them, and partly because I am really curious to have feedback/input/additions from other people…should you feel so inclined.

So, in no real order, and with zero polish (I am literally slapping this list together from scraps of paper and emails to myself with no editing), here is a working list of things and thoughts that I feel are central to me as a marketing professional, a creative thinker, an advertising guy, and as a person.

Again, it may be shit, but it's 

1. Be fearless

2. Be kind

3. Be convicted - but know/admit when you are wrong, owning it and changing course appropriately

4. Have heart

5. Use your brain

6. Be bold

7. Have an endlessly open mind

8. Embrace your ego

9. Be irrepressible and insatiable in your desire to know more

10. Know how to sell ideas

11. Know how to make ideas real

12. Look people in the eye when you speak to them

13. Be genuine - even if that means some people don’t like you

14. Read things that aren’t industry things, but look at them (and apply them) like they are industry things

15. Know what matters and what doesn’t matter - be relentless about ditching the latter

16. Question norms and don’t be afraid to ignore the prescribed path

17. Know the difference between data and insights

18. Keep in touch with everybody

19. Learn how to play politics, but do so nicely. It’s sucky but it will matter.

20. Don’t always focus just on the most important person in the room, but always know who that person is

21. Respect people’s time

22. Avoid meetings

23. Really avoid meetings with more than 4 people in them

24. If you have to have a meeting,  make it short make it productive and focused

25. If you’re in a meeting that you realize you don’t need to be in leave the meeting

26. Most requests via email fall into one of three buckets - do it, dismiss it, or delegate it. Learn when to do each.

27. Don’t use your inbox as a to-do list

28. Observation is not strategy

29. Get out from behind your desk. If you work in the strategy or creative business - or any business that sells to or markets to people - be out with those people as much as you can

30. Fuck best practices

31. Don’t care if it’s been done before

32. Be the case study

33. Big ideas win business, consistent execution and results keeps business

34. Every brand or product has a story, find it

35. Every brand or product also has a conversion event, some way to track your success, find that too

36. Know where you are trying to go before you start going

37. Don’t pre-kill ideas with data. Use predictive analytics only as a guide, and use trailing analytics to optimize and inform decisions

38. Don’t go down with the ship. If an idea is bad, or something is not working (and you know it), get out and move on.

39. If you work in an advertising agency, your job is to tell your client the truth, not just what they want to hear

40. Think about how to create media, not just how to buy media

41. Avoid buzzwords

42. Have an opinion

43. Make things that people want to spend time with

44. Think like your consumer (but just refer to them as people)

45. People are not neatly package-able into demographic composites 

46. Focus groups are usually a giant waste of time and are just risk mitigators. Avoid them unless absolutely necessary.

47. Listen well and read between the lines. What the client really wants isn’t always in the brief, but often comes out in the hallway conversations or a chat over beers.

48. If you can’t help someone, try and connect them to someone who can.

49. If you live the principles of the strategy, the things you can count will go up.

50. Don’t try to get fired, but don’t be afraid of it either.

The Summer of Andrew

After a lot of thought and internal conflict, I’ve decided to step away from Heart and take the rest of the summer off. With no plans to return to the agency.

As I’ve begun to tell people about this plan, the first thing they ask me (unsurprisingly) is “why?”. So here is an attempt at an answer.

And let me state up front, that it has nothing to do with the health or prospects of the business. Heart is going to continue its ascent, and remain strong without me. Thomas (my partner at Heart) has always been the creative force behind the business, and he, along with the rest of the awesome team, are going continue to kill it.

The reason I am stepping away, has everything to do with where my heart (lowercase “h”) lies today.

Thomas has a great little framework that he always draws, which provides a really simple and smart way to prioritize one’s focus, as a means to happiness. It looks like this:

The essential idea here, is to demonstrate that if you start mapping all of life’s annoyances and problems onto this little spectrum, you begin to realize that most of your energy is largely spent worrying about shit that you can’t control, and that simply doesn’t matter.

And if you work in advertising, you’ll likely reach the even sadder realization that MOST of your stress and worry triggers tend to sit quite firmly in that lower left quadrant.

Which is where I’ve found myself living these days, and it’s making me rather unhappy.

I’ve become buried under the stresses of building a business, slugging through work I’m not excited about, arguing over what’s a good idea and what’s a bad idea, and just generally trying to push a big rock up a steep hill as we try and change the advertising game from the inside.

It’s been bumming me out, it’s been exhausting me, and more importantly, I can’t control it (as much as I’d like to) and I’m not really sure any of it matters (to me, today).

Not compared with what’s on the other side - which is a new family that needs me to be a better husband and dad for a while, more than they need me to be a better ad guy.

Because for too long, work has been in competition with family, and for at least a little while, I need to let family win. 

I need to look at the things that matter, that I can control, and shift my energy there.

So starting this week, I'm going to take some time off. Like, completely off. I’m taking the back half of June, all of July, and perhaps some of August too. 

My central focus will be to spend some more time with my family, looking after my infant daughter and supporting my wife in her new job. And just generally doing things that make me (and hopefully my family) a lot happier.

At some point though, I’ll need to return to the working world (likely end of summer, beginning of fall). So I’ll be looking to stay sharp in my downtime.

I’m going to try and write/publish more, I’m going to read the stack of books I’ve been collecting, I’m going to seek out lots of beer/coffee conversations with interesting people (get in touch!), I’m going to tidy up some of my dusty tech skills, and I’m generally going to be really deliberate about getting setup for my next move, whatever that may be.

Because looking back, it’s clear that my entire career has been nothing if not some combination of luck, hustle, opportunism, timing, and a near frenetic changing-of-mind and continual re-shaping what I love and believe.

I’ve always led with my gut and my heart, and this time is no different.

It’s the right thing for me to do now.

See y'all out there.

I’m quitting advertising

In case you missed it, That Damn Oreo Tweet™ recently won a Cannes Lion. Which puts me in an awkward spot personally I suppose.

Now it’s not so much the work itself that makes me angry. I think Oreo does really nice stuff creatively. It’s simple, it’s clever, it’s timely, it’s on-brand, and it almost always fits the medium in which it appears. 

I have no axe to grind with Oreo.

My anger and disappointment is actually with the ad industry, that’s holding this up as something revolutionary. Something that deserves the grandest of advertising awards.

But the joke’s on us. 

Because in bestowing this award on this piece of work, we’re actually exposing a really sad truth. That the advertising industry has become so top-heavy with cost and process and approvals and meetings and waste, that the idea of just making a simple image, and deploying it to a simple platform at an opportune moment, is considered at this point to be ground-breaking.

We’re so screwed, that we’re giving out awards based less on the work itself, and based mainly on the fact that someone (by all appearances) was able to dodge the bullshit and actually do something.

And it’s not going to get better.

So….what then?

The existing system is breaking. And though I am certainly not the first to say it, and definitely won’t be the last, I’m going to try like hell to do something about it. 

I promised I'd quit advertising if the Oreo tweet won a Cannes Lion. And now I’m going to do that. Kind of.

I’m leaving my day job, and heading off to create my own agency (with my friend and now partner Thomas), and it’s going to be called Heart.

For now, we’ll just be two misfit planner/strategist/creative guys with a simple philosophy - In that we want to bring brand thinking to startups, and startup thinking to brands, by stripping away all of the superfluous things in the traditional agency model, that don’t matter to us and don’t work hard for you.

We want to work faster, smarter, and lighter. We want to work at pace with other passionate people. We want to make smart things that make our partners richer and famous-er. We want to work in the name of work that works.

In simple terms, we’ll be offering our deep expertise in brand planning, creative development and growth strategy, without the cumbersome ad agency model and way of working.

So here goes nothing. Maybe we’ll fail. Maybe the machine is the machine and the current current will be too strong for us to swim against. Might happen.

But we’re still going to fucking try and do this. Because we believe it and believe in it. Because we have heart.