Ever since the crisis has been upon us I have sensed a change in the speech of the online community. If one year ago it was all about getting smart, showing the world what we can, making great things happen, today it's about one thing: MONEY.
There is more than one explanation for this: investment money is running out and people who used to live on that money, thus having plenty of time on their hands to generate ideas and projects, now need to make a living, advertisers are less inclined to spend money on long term commitments since they need short term results. The term branded utility, which I fell in love with at that time, has almost disappeared. Nobody thinks about making meaning anymore because we are down to the bottom of Maslow's pyramid - we need to fulfill basic needs.
However, this is depressing.
Online was the brave new world and now it's turned into the world-which-hates-itself (banners :)-and-makes-little-money and is frustrated. That's why I need to put on the table three things:
1. Optimism 2009 - made by Manafu, this conference is very much like Russell's Interesting (read this instead) only focusing on how to keep up spirits and remain creative in a time when all energies are focused on raw production. While I think that some of the initial thinking behind Optimism has been lost, with a bunch of speakers being the "inspirational" type, which I don't particularly like, I think it's a good thing to be in a conference where we don't speak about how to make money but how to make optimism.
2. A challenge: I run a digital agency and we do not spend a lot of time making anything that makes a difference but a lot of time making money. That's because we have shareholders who have expectations. I know a lot of people who are in the same position. I promise I will talk to each and every one of them and invite them to a challenge: each agency needs to make a project that is not for money but makes a case for innovation, good thinking, meaningful additions to the Internet. My deadline is end 2009 when all projects should be written up and completed.
3. Knowledge: the digital community here does not share too much and obviously with internet not monitored it's hard to keep up and learn and understand more in point of advertising online. There are no publications involved in analysing the online advertising evolution in Romania very much because, as said, it's hard to monitor. So, the thing that needs to happen is an online collectuion point for all the good projects from all players online (Much like bannerblog). This I plan to start and would like to enlist the support of as many people doing online advertising as possible. This will only be possible if everyone shares what they do and is great.
... so there, maybe this will help get over the money-making blues.
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2 comments:
actually there is such a website monitoring what happens in the dot ro online advertising. Except it tries to track not only the good, as you say, but also the bad and the ugly.
Which bad and ugly, unfortunately, prevails for the moment - of course this bad reflection also may be a result of the poor communication of the actual projects in the works or already delivered by the online ad players. Which is just as well directly related to the quality of communicating online.
@Dragos, thanks for the tip. I have had a look at the website and wrote to them offering support for more helpful articles. It seems though to be written by someone with little marketing background and just recently involved in the business. the analysis is a bit sketchy and I am having a hard time trying to get the really useful content or input (apart from the actual ennumeration of websites which is now referring to very old projects and very few and does not include display or special projects). I understand it's a newish site so that may be why. I was referring more to a compendium of works and case studies than to this kind of commentary site. this one is a bit too subjective to be really helpful
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