A Media Story: The Magician and the Wand

The post generated a number of responses some of which together with my replies are on my site below the post Others came in via email or on my various social media feedsTwo in particular caught my eye and made me think that regardless of the two companies involved the issue of balance between machines and skilled practitioners is worth another lookMy exUniversal McCann colleague Greg Smith now COO at TEAMS wrote quotIt39s not the wandamp160it39s the magician is what we used to say but perhaps now it39s bothquotNobody is suggesting that we don39t need tools to analyze media options We need even better and faster tools to allow us to assess multiple options which is what Wavemaker has recognizedPlus we need smart visionary people to spec the tools in the first place and people familiar with advertising best practice and theory built up over years to get the most from themThere are always questions to be asked of any tool By the way I39ve never seen Wavemaker39s Maximizer and have only read what39s been released into the public domainFirst where39s the data coming from to fuel the tool How good is it how robust If taking media exposure data as a simple example the agency is relying on data from the tech platforms then you have to at least to question its objectivity accuracy If it39s JICstyle data then that is of course differentLooking at the screengrabs from the Wavemaker tool it seems they are using proprietary panel data and attitudinal responses as well as media data which increases its potential usefulnessRegardless it doesn39t matter how fast the tool or how clever the algorithms If you put garbage in you39ll get garbage out as my dear old mother used to sayStephan Bruneau from Wavemaker who modestly describes himself as quotthe person who created the Wavemaker platformquot accuses me of using a dated argument in discussing creativity versus mathsIt was of course his exboss who coined the phrase that the ad industry of today is led by Math Men as opposed to Mad MenIt39s in no way an outdated debate Any follower of the ad business will be aware of the argument around artificially created ads versus the output from human creative teams And then there39s those quotAdvertising Is it Art or Sciencequotamp160polemicsThe point is that today it39s creativity plus maths not quotorquotamp160maths Which is something Stephan and I can agree onThe bigger discussion is around integration ensuring creative and media sing from the same hymn sheet and a focus on relating media and market research results to business effectMaybe the Wavemaker tool does this It39s not clear but it is clear that39s where the pressure points in the business areThe second comment that intrigued me came from Vic Davies who is these days a course leader at Bucks New University Vic was a media agency visionary way back whenamp160Vic wondered aloud if media agencies were in danger of falling for the McNamara Fallacy a concept that dates back to the Vietnam WarRobert McNamara was the US Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 To precis from WikipediaquotThe McNamara Fallacy originates from the Vietnam War in which enemy body counts were taken to be a precise and objective measure of success War was reduced to a mathematical modelquotUS Air Force BrigadierGeneral Edward Lansdale reportedly told McNamara who was trying to develop a list of metrics to allow him to scientifically follow the progress of the war that he was not considering the feelings of the common rural Vietnamese people McNamara wrote it down on his list in pencil then erased it and told Lansdale that he could not measure it so it must not be importantquotOr as Oscar Wilde put it a cynic is quota man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothingquotThere are lots of cynics in media the Cog in Cog Blog does after all stand for Cynical Old GitClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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A Media Story: The Magician and the Wand

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Brian Jacobs

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