Björn Rietz is the new CEO for the Advertising Association of Sweden. I guess I should comment on that.
“The World is Changing” is perhaps one of the most worn out phrases in trend analysis. And it’s always true. But now, the rate of change for our context as marketing professionals act is extreme. Not surprisingly, since in the history of human interaction, there has been no disturbance of the same magnitude as the introduction of the internet. And even though the internet has been around for a while, it has now gone mainstream and truly interactive. Bending the truth is an obsolete strategy, while honesty reigns. The rules have changed. Most agencies haven’t. Yet. Therefore the choice for a new CEO for the AAS is crucial this time.
Björn retains respect from the men of power (yes they’re mostly men) in the industry. He is, to cut things short, a true ad man. But it seems to me that he also enters his new job with a humble attitude towards the changing reality. This is very promising. For instance, I hope he will take a really close look at Guldägget, which is on a dangerous path with strange categories and ludicrious rules. Among other things these rules state that you can’t report results of your campaign, but it has to have been published. This means clients are at risk for being lured into funding art projects.
Björn does talk about advertising being art, which is a shaky proposition. He refers here to how “the same part of the brain is used to produce poems an outdoor headline”, which is true, but doesn’t mean that advertising is art. I wrote my masters thesis on innovation management and involved myself heavily in how the parallell processing right side brain is about synthezis and innovation, of art, creative strategy, products and many other things. I hope this is what Björn meant. Art doesn’t require ROI.
That said I have high hopes for Björn! As a test, I will link to his blog here to see if he keeps track of his incoming links. If you are, Björn, I would also like to encourage you to mix your blog up with shorter posts and get a Twitter account. I can be your first friend at @walternaeslund.
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