Saturday, July 16, 2011

in the ghetto


A genuine question for ad agency types.

When is a producer not a producer?
When is a planner not a planner?
When is an art director not an art director?

When they are a digital producer/planner/art director, of course.

Look at the credits on any campaign/project on one of the industry blogs.
There will be a Producer listed and an interactive Producer.
A Planner and a digital Planner, perhaps.

While of course the skill sets are different.
A TV producer and a web producer do different things.
An insight planner is different from a crm planner or a social connections planner.

By that rationale of labelling should we then have interruption planners and interactive planners?
If we have one we must have the other.
Instead we just seem to have the other.

My irk is that the digital is invariably other.
By labelling it digital it's somehow SEPARATE from 'proper' planning.
It becomes secondary by it's otherness.
It's down the totem pole.
It's the little brother or sister.
The add-on after the real planning.
The nice-to-have.
'Lets get the basics right first then do some social'.

This is not a pop at the traditionalists per se.
It's the digitalists that are as much the problem, by revelling in their otherness.

My fellow digerati, honestly, until we figure this out we'll always be in the ghetto.

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