Posted 10.30.08

Sometimes, when you're down in the trenches, focusing on the next RFB, you can forget how all of us here at GeniusRocket -- those of us here in the office and all of our creators across the globe -- are part of a much larger movement that is transforming the media and advertising landscape.

But two articles this week caught our eye, and reminded us of how far the advertising industry has traveled in the sixteen months since we first launched GeniusRocket.

The first article comes from the New York Times, and takes a look at how one independent creator has raked it in in the user-generated advertising space:

Joel Moss Levinson always knew he had a calling in life. But it took cheap video cameras, YouTube and some desperate corporations to show him what it was....

So far, Mr. Levinson, a college dropout with dozens of failed jobs on his résumé, has won 11 contests — earning more than $200,000 in money and prizes. His success has made him into the digital age version of Evelyn Ryan, the woman from Defiance, Ohio, who supported her family by winning commercial jingle contests in the 1950s and ’60s....

He has won trips to Budapest, Buenos Aires and Copenhagen from Delta Air Lines; an iPod from the American National CattleWomen; and $6,000 from the Israel Project, an advocacy group, after honors in three separate categories — English, German and Russian — and he barely speaks German or Russian.

Take a look at Levinson's YouTube channel. We're particularly fond of the watermelon spot he did for Sundia.

The second article that caught our eye notes how digital agencies are increasingly becoming the agency of record for major advertisers:

In the grand scheme of the ad agency business, there are the creative shops at the top, with media and planning agencies playing the support role. Somewhere in between—or in third place—is the digital agency.

But that dynamic is changing. An AdAge piece shows how digital agencies are now starting to compete with traditional agencies for the title, “agency of record.” Over the years, the term has lost the meaning it might have held in the Mad Men days, when clients got all their marketing needs from a single agency, as opposed to parceling bits of the ad budget to a variety of specialist shops. Still, being an AOR carries a good deal of cache. The company that holds the title sets the tone for an advertiser’s communications strategy and gives them control over the bulk of a client’s ad spend.

-- Going where the insights are: Digital shops are seen as offering a number of advantages over their traditional older brothers. The trend of “media neutrality,” which tends to de-emphasize the typical hierarchy of big campaigns starting with TV at the top, followed by print, radio, out-of-home and then digital somewhere towards to the bottom. Aside from digital becoming more mainstream, the data and consumer insights online ad agencies possess is considered valuable when allocating a marketing budget.

It's definitely a brave new world.

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