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Ernie Mosteller, who describes himself as a “Southern farm boy with an education,” embraces and embodies advertising’s transition from traditional to new media. His award-winning work as a creative director jump-started a successful 15-year run as a nationally-known commercial director. Energized by the endless possibilities of a changing media landscape, he combined his strategic, creative, narrative and digital skills to found a hybrid digital/traditional boutique, release an early eBook on the changes agencies face today, and cultivate a loyal following of weekly blog readers. His current position as VP, Interactive Creative Director at Brunner Digital, and VP, Creative Director for the DC office of Brunner, complete the circle – finding him back on the agency side, helping clients, creatives, and agency management understand the possibilities of digital, and create compelling messages across all media. His personal blog is erniemosteller.com.

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How To Get Used, Really Used … Online

Written on
April 16th 2008
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by Ernie Mosteller  |
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nobody_knows_nothing_small.jpgADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — Creating things for the Web is interesting because so many different things are possible. Creating things for the Web is hard because so many different things are possible. Creating things for the Web, especially in today’s advertising environment, pretty much always involves explaining to someone (clients, agency management, curious strangers) just how many things are possible, and how that makes the Web a very different place to put the things you create.

Advertising is in transition from something that was pretty well-defined for about 50 years into something that gets redefined about every 50 days — sometimes, it seems more like every 50 seconds. To readers of this publication, that’s painfully obvious. But to some agencies and advertisers, it’s just plain old painful.

To help make the transition, with the very real goal of staying in business, most traditional agencies now have something called a digital department. Some call it an interactive group, others may call it various things muttered under their breath. Many are robust, good, and successful. Some … less so.

In certain cases, the groups are like that one guy not many people want to hang out with, because he talks about stuff nobody understands. It also could be a full department of 20-somethings who, many, many weeks (or months) ago, saw the video you just forwarded to everyone two minutes ago. (And yes, they do think you’re lame for just finding it.) In either case (and any and all in between) the digital department in most traditional agencies is viewed, never explicitly, almost always implicitly, as “those people who know about stuff on the Web.”

I find that in my position as Creative Director of “those people who know about stuff on the Web,” I get to do a lot of the explaining about all the things that are possible online. And the thing I have to explain the most, is that the Web isn’t a single thing, or a single place, or a single channel, or a single anything. And as such, there isn’t a single way to do things on the Web.

If you follow the logic, it’ll lead you to the truth that there are lots and lots of ways to define “good” on the Web, as well. Follow it some more, and it’ll lead to the further truth that interactive isn’t even a single discipline, really. Instead, it’s a whole landscape of different disciplines that sometimes connect, but, truth be told, are only held together by the fact that the communications tactics they create are all accessible with a mouse.

This is a difficult concept for many people who have built careers buying, selling and making traditional forms of advertising. The Web is another place people are. So it should be another place you can tell them what you want to tell them. Right? Except, as those of us who know about stuff on the Web know, it just doesn’t work that way.

It’s not just that people are there. More importantly, it’s about why they’re there. “There,” not meaning the Web, but the particular place on the Web that’s “there” for any given user. But only at the precise moment that they’re, well … there.

Because what they want to know at that moment trumps what you have to say. Unless what you have to say has everything to do with what they want to know. That affects your buy, your concept, your design, your destination, what there is for them to find and do once they click through and about a billion other variables that very rarely combine into anything remotely as simple as a traditional piece of advertising.

Frequently, the keepers of knowledge regarding all those variables are the people who know about stuff on the Web.  Why? Because all those variables add up to things that are made with pixels. No other reason I can find.

The shift that must happen, if traditional agencies are to successfully make the transition, is in understanding that interactive isn’t about how things are made, or where you find them. It’s about how people use them. Period. Regardless of how you want them to use them.  Make that shift — really make it — and digital ceases to become a discipline, or a department. It starts to become, truly, interactive.



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