A customer: L'Oreal increased their total ad budget by 9.5% to over $6Bio – and at the same time announced their decision to gradually reduce its ad spending dollars on traditional media in favor of the Internet. Last year our MDAS team in France was fortunate to engage with L’Oreal on the launch of the men’s flagrance Amor. Nice revolutions – eventhough they seem like gentle evolutions...

Microsoft: released the beta version of MSN Soapbox - It allows viewers to upload videos, categorize and label them, visitors can watch videos and browse for new ones at the same time, and all digital formats are compatible. I heard ‘late in the game’, I see innovation & quality.

Media owners: Sorrell champions the digital age: “Established media owners need to get their heads around the fact that profitability will be less in the future (...) Frankly, I don’t think they get it… I don’t think they move fast enough.”  Time Warner's CEO Richard Parsons  doesn’t necessarily agree with that… no one media "is going away. I don't think any of the new media is going to obsolete, necessarily, the old."

Whoever whatever whenever, it's weekend.

First two days of this week I was hosting an agency event in Lisbon. 55 representatives from 8 countries from a top 5 EMEA Media Agency - a mixture of Heads of digital and Offline - and our own MDAS representatives. Couple of observations - or at least those that i can share...

• there is a terrible amount of evangelisation work to do on the offline side of the business - but at the same time the willingness to invest time and effort to understand and learn is big
• there is an amount of complexity we as an industry created that makes it impossible for any newcomer - be it a planner or a marketeer - to understand or articulate in an easy way what needs to be done for his or her brand. It's a jungle out there of display tactics and rich media formats, SEO and keyword buying engines, ingaming and mobile marketing opportunities, direct reponse and email solutions, and and and. And when you found your way around you get 5 different measurement & reporting systems. If there is one thing we as an industry need to tackle it is simplifying the story & the tools.  
• there is hardly any work done on how Offline impacts search ROI - how display ads interact and work together with search marketing. guess the IAB and or EIAA need to tackle that one as a priority.

We know this is a people business. But every time we do these events I am still amazed quick you can build bridges, can understand eachothers strenghts and weaknesses and start working on common goals and action plans. The Lisbon connection was a great experience.

Most of the time I can classify the CMOs I meet in basically 4 different categories. A ‘CMO taxonomy’ doesn’t sound terribly respectful - I apologize already – but for the sake of the story bear with me.

• Those who ignore blatantly what happens in the real world and do what they have done for years – they survive probably by accident or because the CEO is their best mate. An endangered species to be avoided because ‘no time to waste’.
• Those who feel the movement in the market but still qualify the smell of digital marketing as dangerous rather than as a sweet opportunity knocking on the door. Most of the time they pretend they know everything anyway (have been to a couple of seminars, read some books (or at least the summary)). I like a bit of a challenge so I prefer them on a Monday morning – fresh & energized after the weekend – heavy effort to ‘convert’ them to our digital religion – label “will take time”, but sweet victory after the first test results. 
• Those who completely get it. THEY educate you with their cases and learnings. I remember the marketer from BMW at the Cannes festival in 2004 standing up for a crow of 200 MSN guests stating that 7% of his media budget went only. A stir went thru the crowd. Never seen a speaker getting so many questions during the drinks… That same company today spends an x-fold of that amount in digital. A blissfull category to talk to. 
• The 4^th category however are those who carefully listen and ask the type of questions you always wanted to answer. They like themes like marketing in this new era of “consumer in control” and consumer generated media. They understand the reality of media fragmentation and the new marketing concepts. They are eager to learn and understand. I love this category. Last week I had this highly refreshing lunch with the CMO of a Belgian Top 10 ad spender. She has been in place for a long time, highly successful in the role and took on a regional responsibility. I immediately liked her approach. In a very collaborative way we talked about ‘How can I organize my marketing department around this new consumer reality?’, 'How should I review and evaluate my current media mix?', ‘How do you create platforms and communities in EMEA that share best practices and leverage learnings?’. Self-critical about their first steps in digital, demonstrating a profound willingness to absorb, learn, take leadership; eager to get it and do it right. It takes a level of self-awareness to ask "what should I know that I don't know".  

I love the 4^th category. I’d love them for breakfast, lunch, dinner and anywhere in between.