I keep thinking about the old adage: don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. These days, I’d add to that: don’t pick a fight with the whole world when you need them to buy your bonds.
This administration’s chaos engine of policies, delays, switchbacks, and misinformation has brought us the most uncertain economy since the early days of COVID in 2020. And our industry certainly faces the toughest Upfronts since then, thanks to all this chaos.
As marketers grapple with ongoing shocks to supply and demand and the turmoil of new big data audience currencies, brands and agencies will need more than a backup plan to succeed at the 2025 Upfronts. We will need an entirely new playbook — outcomes-driven and flexible enough to shift with the economic and policy sands.
The chaos engine is going to keep churning. If we’d normally bring a primary media plan and a couple of alternates up our sleeve, this time, bring five. If we’re asked for yet another 10% budget reduction scenario, we might as well prepare 20% and 30% versions, too.
There’s a problem, though – it’s always felt absurd, like some Monty Python sketch, that we plan on one thing (reach) and get judged on something else (results). In the old reach-at-the-lowest-price paradigm, we’re trapped in a downward spiral of spending less and getting less, potentially a lot less, while we’re still being judged on harder-to-get results.
Stepping back from the abyss, we can see a way forward. One that allows us to succeed no matter what budget our CFO lands on as we head into Upfront negotiations.
By balancing advanced audiences and predictive outcomes, we can build powerful, flexible media plans that deliver the savings and efficiencies the C-suite craves in uncertain times. In digital advertising, Google and Meta built sleek machines that automatically optimize for the outcomes that drive business results at any spend. Now, new advances in convergent TV measurement are making a similar approach possible across linear and streaming, plus outcome-based optimization of programmatic TV.
And finally: When the CFO says they want to halve the budget or go dark completely, fight against it. Fight like hell. We can’t sit idly on the sidelines until things get better. We owe it to our customers, partners, and communities to keep driving results.
TV advertising is about brand and demand. The data shows it time and again. When a brand goes dark, the funnel starts to wither. Loyalty weakens. Share dips.
We’ve seen this before, and recently. We know how to get through pandemics, supply chain disruptions, strikes, and inflation. Bring those fresh memories, core values, professional judgment, and hard data to the fight.