The Magic Box

Am I too stubborn?

Recently I had lunch with a client and another consultant who’s there to help him choose a new Internet agency. Most probably, that agency will be the digital arm (or sub-contractor) of a traditional advertising one. The conversation focused for a while on my role, and what type of guidelines would I propose, so that early on in the RFP agencies would know where Web Analytics stood in the general picture.

The client in question is an agro-business lobby, the kind advertising agencies love, you know, those clients who spend millions on “branding”. I give them credit, however, for having developed in the past year a strong measurement culture when it comes to their Web investments. Not that it has percolated throughout the whole organization yet, but the Internet people have been asking very hard questions to their agencies about the benefits of all those online stunts. In one occasion, I was asked to analyze several months worth of data from a Web site that had been through two phases. You know, your typical full Flash concepts. The news was generally bad. Was not really worth all that money. The meeting with the ad agency was quite tensed; nobody shook my hand when I left.

Back to that conversation: we were wondering to what extent an agency should be subject to precise success measures. It was important to give them all the leeway they needed, (“Isn’t brand recall increase a good thing?”), etc. Wouldn’t being too strict with analytics neuter agencies creativity?

Would it? What is wrong with asking measurable results? Are we analysts killers of great concepts? Can’t a good idea be accountable to the business?

We did bring up the risk of the agency becoming too passive, too “go-fer”, forcing my client to basically play project manager all the time. I said at one point that I obviously respected the creative geniuses at ad agencies, that they were the best at what they did. However, I could not equate creativity with freedom to do anything.

Can’t creativity bloom with constraints? Isn’t architecture art + budget + gravity?

I believe Web analytics can, and should, establish the framework within which agencies can demonstrate their great creativity. It would actually be an even bigger demonstration of their abilities. A box, full of their magic.

I think many agencies still need to learn the analytics language, to evolve amidst new gravitational fields.

And there’s a right to be wrong we should not forget. An analytical culture is not a punishing culture, but a learning one. This means rewarding mistakes when they spawn great insights.

Ad agencies will need to understand the new grammar, and still write great poetry.