Do you know exactly what you do in advertising?

I have now taken to answering “I deliver audiences”. It has the twin benefits of flummoxing the other party (so I can get back to my drink) and being my company's motto (making it a good career move). The question does, however, continue to preoccupy me.

The job used to be simple: there were clients who had agencies who developed ads. We would make sure the ads reached the right people. A bit of radio, a touch of television and some print or outdoor would suffice.

Discovered choice

Of course, the “right people” (the ones with the money, who buy the product or service and finance my lifestyle) discovered choice somewhere along the way. They sometimes ignore billboards, page past those expensive full-page ads and make coffee the moment the movie ends. They might be listening to the radio, but in the same way you listen to your mother-in-law: background noise.

Merely ensuring that your message and your target audience are in close proximity works, but only when the target is moving slowly or doesn't have anywhere else to go. Speed things up a bit, or include more options (blogs, special interest magazines, chain emails, video on demand) and hunting for the “target” begins to feel like shooting at a swarm of bees with a cannon that doesn't turn. You might hit something, but your aiming skill wouldn't have much to do with it.

Media agencies should be the fastest moving in our industry, just to keep up with consumers. The problem, unfortunately, is that we still tend to think of ourselves as “media” agencies. We walk in with a set of tools, fully intending to use them to solve whatever problem the client may have. The premise is still “How do you we use radio/television/newspapers etc. to solve this problem?” as opposed to “How do we get the consumer to interact with the product or service?”

Increasing number of platforms

Answering the second question requires accepting that “media”, by which I mean a platform through which information may be communicated, is becoming increasingly prevalent. “Media consumption” used to occur in distinct periods during a consumer's day, using a fairly limited number of platforms. Now, consumers are increasingly able to access entertainment, information, assistance and transactions on a continuous basis, using an almost exponentially increasing number of platforms.

It's less a case of “information overload” (which assumes that consumers become overwhelmed) and more a case of “option redundancy” (which recognises that consumers and hence “advertisers” have an almost infinite number of options for transacting).

Back to the question

Which brings me back to the question of what it is that I do.

It used to be that “delivering audiences” meant understanding who is reached by various static media platforms. You could look at the radio diaries for example, and figure out how and when best to reach a specific demographic profile. Now, “delivering audiences” has more to do with understanding all of the ways in which one can get information to (and extract information from) the people who are most likely to buy what you're selling. That begins to sound more like an ongoing conversation than a broadcast, and the means by which the conversation is held becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Another implication is that we cannot attempt to deliver audiences or manage conversations as people who specialise in particular media platforms, but rather we must approach marketing challenges in the way that clients have always had to: as specialists on particular audiences.

There should be audience specialists, audience departments and audience agencies rather than media specialists, media departments or media agencies. The consumers we're trying to talk to lead integrated lives, where all of the options they choose contribute to a single experience. Our knowledge of and approach to them must therefore be similarly integrated.

Perhaps, when asked next about my job, I should tell people that I specialise in conversations. The only problem, of course, is that I might then feel obliged to engage in one.