Looking Back as We Look Forward
By E.B. Moss
As any year draws to a close you can count on myriad recap issues by publications with projection posts from prognosticators. This overview from The Continuum may be part of that truism, but with exactly one year of content under our belt we want to look back as a way to project forward—and share how we will be applying some lessons learned from our esteemed contributors since our start in October 2020 .
We kicked off our first issue with six thought leaders, including Joe Jaffe, who cautioned, per his book title, that big companies are “built to suck.”
“If you want to survive and thrive, you've got to have a longer-term vision and plan. And do I think marketing plays a role. ... How ironic is it, then, that marketing is looked at as a necessary evil, as a cost center, as an expense. We're being judged, oftentimes unfairly, especially the newer forms of media or mediums or technology. But ultimately, that’s all with a short-term focus. When we think about running a business with a short-term obsessive focus, when ultimately the real stake is long-term survival...when we make that connection, that leap between short-term survivors and long-term drive, that's when the brand versus [instead of and] demand challenge will finally be solved.”
Fast forward to our first anniversary in October 2021, with another Joe offering the plain truth: Joe Jackman explained why reinvention has been an “adapt or die” necessity for many brands. He advised companies to “get 100% committed and excited about pushing the edge of what's possible.”
“Retail just sat and was lacking innovation, witnessing the coming e-comm revolution and choosing to slow walk it. A lot of disruption was enabled by that sense of ‘Oh, maybe one day we’ll evolve, but stores are the thing now.’ If retail leadership was prescient, Amazon wouldn't exist. Casper wouldn't exist. Netflix wouldn't exist and there’d be a streaming service called Blockbuster. But success is a very seductive force, sponsored by the status quo.”
And as recently as our last issue which focused on out-of-home advertising, we shared how essential reinvention—and pushing past the status quo—was for a company like Captivate, which had been thriving when office workers were exposed to their in-elevator content screens. As with so many companies this past year, they did the proverbial pivot and embraced new vistas and tactics to capture consumers in their new safer havens.
Given that framework, we also learned about applying practice to theory.
But where would we be without doing things “on purpose?” We launched with Rishad Tobaccowala in that first issue reminding us that to succeed in business one needs “soul” and to “marry the math with the magic” (basically “brand and demand!”). We were reminded by Sustainable Brands founder KoAnn Skrzyniarz of “the notion of ‘good growth’ – which is today’s reality.”
“The market conditions are such that more and more stakeholders are starting to really understand the problems we face and to both expect brands to do something different, but also reward them for that.”
We have been buoyed by brand marketers like Melissa Grady Dias of Cadillac who explained clearly how DEI works to boost a brand like GM, and Republica Havas CEO Jorge Plasencia on the agency side who explained why “diversity means progress” in any language.
The health of a brand may rely on its authentic mission-driven purpose, but many brands have helped the actual health of consumers as we read from contributors like Arra Yerganian. He explained the issues around “SDOH” – the social determinants of health, which many companies have committed thanks to their brand purpose, to improve. That includes campaigns overseen by RPA’s Joe Baratelli, or Sarah Sanders for Nemours (and recently joined UCSF Health), which espoused education and clear communication.
“We launched a campaign called “Contagious” that was pretty bold but was geared toward highlighting the silver linings of COVID—the things that brought out the best in humanity during that period of time. It had a very reassuring message about us being there and encouraging people to seek care. That mass media campaign got a lot of attention and we combined that with our access campaigns about urgent care, telehealth, how you get to us, and how we make that easy for you. And so that combination of brand and actionable steps for people to take, were really successful.”
We have been applying our own reinvention tactics at The Continuum, shifting our editorial calendar and our very layout. Basically, what’s new is new again...but we embrace change as Joe advises. Part of our pivoting was to “bucket” some of those contributors by general topics and verticals. You can sort for discussions on brand purpose, wellness, and even the industry in general.
And we increased our publishing frequency while decreasing the number of contributors per edition to offer you a two-perspective focus. (See, for example, our pairing around the audio industry with Steve Pratt of Pacific Content describing the best practices for brand-driven podcasts and Veritone One’s Bart Roselli explaining innovations in podcast advertising and tracking, and previously CMO Michael Smith on pivoting an audio brand as venerated as NPR.)
There are many more contributors from this past year or so and we encourage you to look back as we look forward.
“But wait, that’s not all!” as they say in TV ad land: I personally am doing a reinvention. I am passing the publisher baton to the talented Kristin MacDonald as I take a new role in building content and community at Brand Innovators. My year as Editor in Chief has been one of the most rewarding of all my Moss Appeal projects, and I know I’ll be “seeing you” across the industry as we all aim to build and enhance our relationships in our disrupted normal.
Here’s to a bright and “evolved” 2022.
December 21, 2021
