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“Our objective is to reduce uncertainty so we can take more creative risks.”

This is a quote from an agency chairman given at yesterday's AAAAs conference and it sums up the challenge that faces every marketer today.

The problem with the statement is that it’s a little nebulous; it looks like a couple of starter questions for a 20,000 word mid-term paper.

Q: Define the reduction of uncertainty in a complex world

Q: What is creative and what is risk?

The debate about the demise of traditional marketing has been raging for at least a decade, but the threats that eat at its core, seem stronger these days.

While many boil the debate down to the simplicity of two camps, “new school” vs. “old school”, it’s just not like that.

Here’s the problem; the old world doesn’t work and the new one provides us with even fewer guarantees, no certainty and even more risk.

Instead of becoming a “black box”, marketing has become a “black hole”

Stephen Hawking recently described his new theory of Black Holes.

"Information is not lost, but it is not returned in a useful way. It is like burning an encyclopedia. Information is not lost, but it is very hard to read."

One can happily seduce ourselves into thinking that we have great ROI toolsets and sophisticated tracking mechanisms, at best, they are guides.

The problem is that many clients don’t even know what success looks like. They don’t even have any real goals or objectives for their communication.

So, what are we supposed to measuring?

Then there’s the issue of taking a creative risk- are we talking about copying the user-generated program someone else did a week ago, or something revolutionary?

Marketing has now become like the record industry trying anything to get a radio hit and falsely thinking it could predict one.

This new world requires and demands failure and unfortunately because many companies still live in the industrial age where failure can’t be tolerated, CMOs and agencies will be fired with increasing regularity. 

The marketing world today isn’t binary it’s schizoid.

Dealing with a schizoid, needs passion, guts, a level head and the willingness to accept failure.

Sure communication needs more creativity and accountability (whatever that is?), but that’s not all, it needs brave clients, clients ready to accept failure and learn from it, clients give their CMO the freedom to experiment, clients willing to understand that there’s nothing advertising can do to help sell their crappy product and clients with the guts and imagination to create something new.

Here are some pointers, from a client.

"I guess that when it started to spread on the web, it became 'viral'. 'Viral' is my least favourite term in the pantheon of adspeak, but it did make me take five minutes to have a think about how stuff 'becomes' viral? How does it spread?

The answer is, of course, that nobody really knows. Nobody can guarantee viralness. In this case, the fact that it's a bit weird and that it's also at odds (tonally) with what people have seen from us before means that it's interesting/unusual. Sometimes weird is good. Unexpected is good.

So I'm guessing that some people are more likely to want to watch it than an Innocent ad that features a pile of fruit and a packshot. People like new and unusual, especially on the web.

Of course, I'm still extremely wary of those who talk about 'viral'. I believe that the people who email me every day, telling me that they can make us excellent viral clips at the drop of a hat, are missing the point. You can't make things viral to order.

But you can do something else if you want to make stuff that people will send to their friends and post on their blogs. I think it's fairly simple. The more stuff you make, the more chance there is of something turning out to be good. And then people will watch it.

So in 2007 we will be making more stuff, writing more stuff, posting more stuff and filming more stuff. Some of it will be rubbish and some of it might work. And seeing as we don't know which bits will work until we've done them, I guess we'd better get cracking."

Dan Germain-Innocent Drinks