I confess: grudges, jealousy & salesmanship in adland. Part 3

By Gonzalo López Martí / LMMIAMI.COM

• See (confession alert) despite the fact that I am a creative by trade, I’ve always felt it is media people who deserve the title of true movers & shakers of our industry.
• They handle the big bucks, ‘nuff said.
• Unfortunately, media folks seem to be either too low key or too flat-footed at glamourizing their job description and sheepishly allow creatives to be the rock stars of our racket.
• Maybe media folks just want to keep a low profile.
• Last time a media exec opened his mouth a big storm ensued.
• When we creatives open our big mouths, well, nothing happens.
• Still, how come award shows like Cannes get more coverage than the upfronts?
• Y’know what I’m sayin’?
• The upfronts, lemme tell you, are the biggest, most lavish extravanganza of the marketing industry.
• Courtesy of our on & off friends & nemeses: TV people.
• Speaking of which -TV & showmanship- here comes the big confession.
• We creatives hold a grudge too.
• A big one.
• We secretly seethe with jealousy.
• Creatives, a pathologically insecure breed if there ever was one, are chronically envious of TV people.
• You’ll rarely hear a creative openly admit it but deep down inside it hurts that our work is relegated to the margins, the sidelines, the interstices of the actual content, the wasteland of commercial breaks.
• The wrong side of the velvet rope.
• We feel like pop culture pariahs, also-rans, second-class citizens with zero artistic integrity.
• Every creative worth his or her salt would looooove to be a TV showrunner.
• The proverbial hyphenate: a writer-producer.
• An auteur.
• Like Nick Pizzolato: creator, writer & director of the True detective saga (possibly the ultimate display of creative narcissism in recent memory).
• To add insult to injury, the advent of so-called “branded content” has only sprinkled more salt on the wound.
• Now let’s put our differences aside for a moment and listen to me.
• It don’t matter whether you are a creative, an account exec, a media planner or buyer, traditional or digital.
• I have good & bad news for y’all.
• Good news first: there’s a second wind coming our way.
• Weather permitting, it should be a big tail wind for the ad business: branded content and product integration
• If you’ve been watching Stephen Colbert &/or Jimmy Falllon as of late you witnessed it already.
• Front & center.
• It is where the money will be at in the future.
• However, marketing dollars will be spent inside the show.
• Campaigns will be built into the programming.
• As opposed to the sidelines of the commercial break.
• And now for the bad news: if we ad folks don’t react pronto, if we don’t circle the wagons, like, right now, TV people are gonna ride the “branded content & product integration” horse into the horizon without us.
• We will be Sancho Panza to their Don Quijote.