A month ago, I abandoned the “traditional” advertising world for an account management position here at Spunlogic. Years of being in the advertising box had narrowed my thinking. I began to realize that the manner in which I consumed information was online, and typically not in the form of what is considered advertising. I’m not going to throw dirt on the grave of mass media advertising; it’s still a great way to reach the most people in a short amount of time. However, as most of this blog’s readers certainly believe, the shift to consolidating things online is underway. Unfortunately for a lot of marketers, their advertising agency refuses to recognize this.

Ad agencies have been preaching media agnosticism for years, yet integrated marketing still emphasizes the same methods that have driven the industry for decades. Speaking from my personal experience, it’s not hard to notice that TV is still considered the Holy Grail of marketing. The idea of shooting a $2M TV spot gets people fighting to work on your project – detailed, tactical work – not so much.

So, that brings me to the point of this post. I’m three weeks or so into this thing, and I get the feeling that every problem at Spunlogic starts with a blank page and then gets solved from square one. There’s no call to immediately divvy up a budget into existing disciplines. Instead, we contextualize the problem by understanding how the user interacts with our client’s product and then figure out the best approach - not try to shoehorn the solution into something that fits within a comfort zone (either the agency’s or the client’s). This isn’t a novel idea. But saying you approach problems with an open mind and having the ability to actually do it are two different things.

In the past three weeks, I’ve learned more new technologies than I have in the past five years. That’s the biggest difference between what I’ve done for the last 8 years and what I hope to do for the next 8. Instead of finding new ways to use seemingly antiquated methods, I’m learning new ways to use an ever expanding set of methods. There’s a lot to learn - I’ve been starting with the basics and then asking a lot of questions and abusing the “define:” feature on Google – but people are passionate and patient.

Strategically, my role is similar to what it’s been throughout my career. My job is to bring our clients ideas that add value to their customers (internal, external, shareholders). What’s new is that there’s seemingly no limitation on what can be done. If an idea exists that fits strategically with what our client is looking to accomplish, we’ll try and find a way to make it happen. Now, if we can just convince one our clients to partake in the first Wii Advergame.

So, I’m excited to be in the interactive space. I believe that the power has shifted from the marketer to the consumer, and that companies need to have a well thought out plan for engaging their customers. Increasingly, the only place to accomplish this is on the web.