Today, the whole world is lamenting the fate of the New Orleans Saints. They had the game in hand until a flabbergasting no-call by the officials on a play that was pass interference by anyone not Bird-Boxing themselves kept the Saints from a seat at SuperBowl 53. The paralysis experienced by the officials, unable to get their flags from deep in their pockets, sealed the fate of the Saints and dumped cold water on what was otherwise an incredible season. By NOT making a call, they made ANOTHER CALL…sending the Rams to the big game.
Not making a decision IS making a decision. Inaction is action. In football and in advertising, the decision to do nothing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The decision to do nothing has consequences that are just as real as a decision to do something. The biggest difference between the two is who is in the drivers seat, who you are electing to let drive your business to what you hope is a desired destination.
Consider the buzz over the last few years around programmatic buying, the magic that allows for increasingly targeted ads to just the one right person at the one right time. Everyone in the business is encouraged by the efficiencies this allows (and hopes for this predominantly digital engine to spill into other channels as time goes by). But even trusting the entirety of a buy to programmatic opens the door to inaction. Programmatic buying doesn’t know you’re 22% behind your expected sales pace at mid month. It doesn’t know that your competition just launched a road block style radio campaign that has fully disrupted the market. It doesn’t know that the largest player in the market just had an outbreak of salmonella.
So much of what we observe across the advertising spectrum (especially in automotive where we spend the majority of our time) is predicated on programmatic decision making, a set-and-forget methodology that is incredibly labor efficient but fraught with problems for any client actually trying to run a business where the rest of the world’s variables have impact. We chose a different path, committing to knowing every client’s business inside and out. We choose to follow the news and industry trends, the local and regional pressure points, supply and demand, interest rates, incentives and every whisper in the wind that could blow good or bad fortune into an otherwise ironclad plan.
And then we act. Acting means making the tough calls, mid month and or midstream as required to be an active driver of business results for our clients. A ‘wait and see attitude’ is not welcome here, not where the cadence of Research, Analyze, Create and Execute is our mantra. As fortune favors the brave, we seek to act and control destiny at every decision point. Because inaction, more often than not, puts your destiny in the hands of outside forces. This proactive, imbedded and chest-forward approach allows us to be wrong sometimes. There lies the danger of standing in the kitchen when the heat is rising, but it beats the hell out of the alternative.
We invite you to experience this key difference at Miller Ad Agency, recently named a Top AD Agency by DesignRush and by happy clients alike.
