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Drexler's
back, and
he has a few things to say
Importance of melding old media with the new
By Jeremy Schlosberg
Michael Drexler is a quintessential media guy, with 40 years of experience in media departments at some of the industryís most renowned full-service agencies, including Ogilvy & Mather, DDB and Bozell. He has been at the media director level and above since 1970 and most recently served as executive vice president and media director of FCB Worldwide. Today he officially joins Mediasmith, opening its New York office as executive vice president. Mediasmith is a media planning and buying agency that launched in 1989; since the introduction of the web as a viable ad channel, the agency has come to specialize in the integration of old and new media. For a 40-year industry veteran, Drexler shows a lot of enthusiasm for the ad revolution in progress known as the internet. He sat down to answer a few questions for Media Life earlier this week.
Your background is in traditional media and working for full-service agencies. Why did you decide to switch to a media planning and buying agency, and one that specializes in the internet in particular?
During the ë90s it became clear that advertisers were perfectly willing to separate their media requirements from their other marketing and creative requirement. So many of the large agencies themselves unbundled their media functions. The world has changed, itís become a media specialistís world, thatís what advertisers began looking foróthey want the best services, wherever they happen to come from.
That explains the media partówhat about the internet part?
Over the last several
years I have clearly seen that the internet was going to play
a bigger and bigger role in the allocation of marketing investments
for advertisers, whether they were a bricks and mortar company
or whether they were an online company. So I found myself naturally
interested in getting much more involved in new media. Because
I fully believe that itís going to have a significantly
greater impact on advertising in the years to come.
I believe weíre in a different world
today than we were in only a few years ago. We exist today in
a world that requires advertisers to have a real understanding
of the integration between online and offline media. Itís
not simply a case of one substituting for the other. Itís
a situation of understanding how both can work together. I think
thatís the key to it.
Mediasmith right now is a 50-person agency. How much of an adjustment is this for you after a career spent with large, full-scale agencies?
I think in the entrepreneurial environment you have a lot more freedom to innovate. And thatís clearly what these folks are doing. Theyíve gone way beyond the simple cost per thousand or cost per click. They look at cost per application and cost per page view and cost per saleóthings that focus on ROI. Thatís where marketers are today. Theyíre not gauging efficiency on the conventional idea of cost per thousand. Or they shouldnít be.
How well do you think advertisers have used new media to their advantage at this point?
Initially the
dot.com companies and the technology companies and a lot of the
convergence companies were the ones that most fully utilized
the online media. The unfortunate thing is that unless youíre
specifically in the transactional business, just diving into
online advertising doesnít answer the larger question.
If you are really looking for branding, if branding becomes important,
you have to understand how to integrate online and offline media
to create the real values of a brand.
Many people think that branding
is simply awareness or recognition of a name or a company. But
itís not. Branding is a relationship with the consumer.
Itís about one-to-one marketing. Itís about targeting.
Itís about relevance.
To feed people information thatís
not relevant to them is not going to help you establish a brand.
Itís done by finding the right combination of online and
offline media.
Itís not done simply by shoveling
money onto television. I mean, we all know how many dot.com companies
spent $2 or 3 million on the Super Bowl. And boy there was a
lot of money wasted when they did that.
What about the traditional media companies themselvesóhow effectively are they dealing with the opportunities opened up online?
What I see now
are all the major media companies creating infrastructures that
allow them to combine and customize their online and offline
assets and offer them as multimedia packages to advertisers.
Itís not just AOL-Time Warner, itís
everybody, and itís becoming increasingly important. Previously
either they didnít give the online aspect of their business
enough attention or they simply gave it away.
Now I think theyíre recognizing that
itís the customized solution that is the answer to having
a multimedia business base. Advertisers are showing a lot of
interest in this.
I feel that the new world is really a world
of convergenceóand by convergence I donít mean
just the TV and the PC . I mean all media converging together.
Magazines, newspapers, radioóall the various media are
finding ways to use the web to enhance their core products.
That makes it a very exciting time to
be in the media business. I think offline and online companies
alike are all involved today in what Iíll call a strategic-driven
environment. Everyone has to be a little smarter, everyone has
to have more innovation, and everyone has to find new ways to
bring their media platforms and asset bases together to maximize
the potential for revenue and growth.
You talk about the importance of integrating online and offline media strategies. How well in general do you think advertisers are doing this?
Well, by now
I think they all understand the need for it. But I donít
think theyíre doing enough of it. I believe without a
doubt that advertisers will soon be allocating significantly
more of their marketing investments to online media. Many of
the packaged goods companies have already publicly announced
their intention to reduce their investment in the mass media
and increase their online spending.
It really is about integration and itís
about optimizing all of the media alternatives that are available
today. Itís not simply saying we need an online component.
This really is about reconceiving the entire advertising process,
not just about adding some fixed idea of "interactivity"
to existing strategies.
What are the biggest challenges facing advertisers right now when it comes to using the web?
The No. 1 challenge
is standardization. Weíve got to find some comparable
methods of evaluation. Youíve got to have some standardization
in how things are measured.
The second challenge is the research. Thereís
got to be a lot more research, and for this to happen I think
the metrics have to change. Thereís a lot of work still
to be done here.
But itís worth it because the web is
a new medium offering previously unavailable capabilities to
advertisers.
Youíre talking point to point here.
No oneís ever been able to do that before the web came
along. Clearly thatís a major advantage. And the interactivity
is something you canít do anywhere else. Other media will
eventually have it, but right now interactivity is for the most
part about the web.
It seems that interactivity took a very narrow definition on the web at firstóbasically, it came down to clicks on banner ads. Did the ad industry get a bit too distracted by clicks for its own good?
Well, everybody was
trying to figure it outódo we make money from advertising?
From e-commerce? Nobody knew exactly what to do. People counted
clicks because thatís what you could do. But not every
advertiser wants to or has to be a direct response company.
Even now there are still a lot of companies out
there today who are still trying to figure the web out. The early
adoptersóthe technology companies, the convergence companiesóthey
tend to get it. But there are a lot of companies that are still
trying to figure out how the web fits into their marketing plan.
Most predominantly packaged goods manufacturers.
In a way, too much focus on clicks has kept
companies from understanding how incredibly important a branding
tool the internet can be. As I said before, branding is not just
a matter of putting money into mass media to gain awareness,
itís about a one to one relationship with the consumer.
When you remember that, you can begin to see
that the internet is ideally suited to branding. Companies are
going to find that they must add online to the media mix to create
the essence of branding, which drills down into trust and knowledge
and understanding of the brand. That can be done online in ways
that were never possible all these years with traditional media.
-Jeremy Schlosberg is the senior editor for new media.
