New Media World Means Big Changes for Ad Agency

New Tools, Mediums and Culture

A TV screen shows a tight shot of an ice climber desperately swinging an ax into frozen water and trying to pull himself up.

"I'm done," he gasps to his partner. "Go on, leave me."

"I'm not leaving you, man," his partner replies.

"If you guys don't quit it," says a woman's voice, "I'm going to miss my massage."

The camera pulls back to reveal that the two climbers are leaning over an ice bulge a few feet off the ground. Cut to a long shot of a cruise ship, followed by scenes of dog sledding, kayaking and a climbing wall -- all to the tune of Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life." "This is way more than a cruise," a narrator says. "Get out there." The ad is part of Arnold's campaign for Royal Caribbean International.

IT suffuses the entire ad lifecycle, from workflow and digital asset management software that lets people in different offices collaborate to analytics that measure the spot's effectiveness. In 2001, Arnold became one of the first big agencies to deploy Xinet Inc.'s WebNative asset management system, which, Folsom says, has since become the industry standard. Arnold uses the software to catalog its library of digital content and track usage issues.

But Evan Shore, creative manager who handles technology that enables ad design, says it took Arnold years to fully utilize the technology. "We're working across mediums," he says. "The challenge has been to get tools that allow us to break down walls. We had all this talent we had not been utilizing. Asset management was used by studio artists only. The key thing has been to get more people on board."

Now account execs use the software to get client approvals and deliver the images to print vendors, while the Web portal allows different offices to work together. "We can view each other's work," Shore says. "Previously, that was done by email. It's hard to collaborate if everyone isn't using the same tools."

Another new tool this year is Spinnaker's workflow software, which will eventually replace a heavily customized version of FileMaker Pro. Arnold expects the software to streamline production and approvals, although the agency's creative types will have to get used to more formalized processes. "This makes everyone work in one uniform fashion," Shore says, "but it's much more efficient."

Efficiency has become something of a grail at Arnold, whose Analytics Department has grown from two people to 12 in the two years. The department uses technology to measure the effectiveness of the agency's campaigns. "The old saying is, 'I know half my advertising works, I just don't know which,'" says Brian Kastelein, director of integrated analytics. "That's not acceptable anymore. My group tries to draw the line from marketing activity to results. We attempt to measure our work for marketing effectiveness."

Consider the Royal Caribbean campaign, which was designed to dispel the idea that cruises were for retirees. Since the spots started airing during 2000, Royal Caribbean's brand awareness has jumped 33% and online bookings have more than tripled.

With social networking sites such as YouTube and MySpace, advertising platforms have exploded. Not long ago, Arnold's anti-smoking campaign reported a big spike in traffic on its thetruth.com Web site -- but there was no new advertising. It turned out that old ads had been posted on some well-read blogs, and people were clicking.

"New media channels are forcing us to evolve our analytics tools," Kastelein says. "Eighteen months ago, we didn't have to talk about measuring blogs or social networking. All of a sudden, those new media channels are part of a client's go-to-market strategy."

It's a period of dizzying change in the advertising industry, often pitting free-wheeling creative types against rigid technology processes.

Arnold has a tradition of attracting artistic types and giving them reign to explore their creativity. The CEO, for instance, recently encouraged employees to express themselves by writing books or making movies; and Shore took up the challenge by spending his three-week holiday vacation touring Europe with his band Muck and the Mires. At the same time, Folsom is introducing a new generation of business tools that requires the agency's creative types to work in a formalized manner.

Folsom, though, seems confident that Arnold can continue to balance innovation and maturation. "Nobody likes change," he says. "But once people work in the new systems, they see the improvements. The key is making that learning curve as small as possible and being super-responsive so any negative experiences can be resolved quickly."

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