Is it digital? Traditional? Or are we way past the point of the online versus offline debate? That’s the question that was resonating in my head and among colleagues on Tuesday, Day 2 of the Cannes Advertising Festival.

Unfortunately most of the seminars I attended left me with little to write about. They seemed to cover the same material or be a bit too direct of a sales pitch than what should happen at Cannes. So I spent a good chunk of time walking the floor of work in the Outdoor and Direct category. And I came back with the following observations.

Outdoor has no scale—but no one doubts it.

The outdoor work that made the short list and won Lions was outstanding. It was entertaining, linked to brand benefits, and smart. Although I have debated in the past in this space whether outdoor ads are meaningful, the work here demonstrates that even a traditionally interruptive medium can add value to people’s lives when it makes them laugh, cry, or think. It reminded me that any medium can be meaningful.

But one of the things that hit me was that these award-winning outdoor ads are often one-off executions that might appear in a single city for a limited time. Because they are innovative and often surprise people with a laugh, there’s little use in keeping it up once everyone has gotten the joke. Several of the executions were also expensive and difficult to place. You simply cannot expose them to enough eyeballs to generate “scale” like a print ad or TV commercial. Take this terrific example from Hot Wheels, below:

Another favorite of mine was this campaign for James Ready beer. It offered billboard/photo coupons for local stores so that you could save money in other ways and put the savings toward beer.

Clients are looking for scale, so why would they sign off on this kind of one-off work? It’s a challenge we hear all of the time in digital, but I’ve not heard it applied to outdoor before. Perhaps this comes from the agency test/award budget, or maybe, just maybe, clients are starting to buy into great ideas that make a big impact with a smaller audience. It’s a question I’d like to explore further and would love your comments here.

Direct is digital.

In looking at the range of Direct nominees and winners I was amazed by the amount of work that I would call digital. “Direct” has traditionally meant something that went in the mailbox—but if Cannes is the standard, that definition is done. My friend David Sable at Wunderman has said for years that “direct is digital” and he just might be right.

Take the example above for Nokia’s navigation tool: The World’s Largest Sign. Here, people could search for directions online in London and the sign would rotate in real-life to point to whatever you searched for. To me, this is a digital idea that just happens to connect to the real world. But it was offered in the Direct category.

Another example is this direct/outdoor piece for The Economist in India that asked people to text for clues to decipher the political debate behind the ad.

Where are the digital agencies?

This merger of Direct/Digital brings me to my final takeaway of the day. This morning I opened the daily Cannes Lions magazine to look for the short-listed work in the Cyber (digital) category. It’s the category we won a Gold for last year for our Pringles banner. I was blown away to see that of the 150 or so short-listed entries, only about 6 or 7 of them were created by digital agencies from the Advertising Age list. Very big names such as Razorfish and Digitas were missing in action. This could be the big news of Day 3 when the final Cyber winners are handed out.

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but there are a few hypotheses. Maybe digital agencies don’t know how to do the kind of work that wins Cannes awards—or they don’t know how to “campaign” to get their work into the winner’s circle (a little-known secret to winning sometimes). Another possibility is that a lot of the work digital agencies do—such as e-commerce sites, mobile apps, search optimization, and social media relationship marketing programs—simply don’t fit into a creative awards competition. What tends to win here are one-off “ideas” in the form of smart, funny, interesting engagements.

Or, maybe traditional agencies are now very close to mastering digital agencies’ space. After years of wondering and waiting, maybe they finally now get it. If so, and if Cannes is the place this is judged, it’s not great news for digital agencies like mine. But this also might be a wake-up call for those of us on the digital-agency side to take our game up a notch or two.

First up is this incredibly powerful and simple idea from BBDO in New Zealand that won a Bronze Lion in the Design competition. The video above tells the story much better than I can, but in summary, its goal is to reduce car accidents on the roads of Papakura, New Zealand, which tend to spike when rains come and roads become slippery. This campaign reduced road deaths on this particular piece of roadway to zero.

It is great to see a piece of brilliant, meaningful marketing for a nonprofit issue here. One might argue that all cause-related and nonprofit marketing is meaningful, but I don’t believe that is the case. Issue-related nonprofits are in sales just like regular businesses; their goal is to “sell in” their point of view on a topic. But unless they draw true engagement and value for the targeted audience, they fail.

In this case, local government is trying to “sell” its drivers on the need to slow down during rain. To measure success, instead of tracking sales of a product, it is tracking the number of road accidents and fatalities. And clearly some marketing is more effective than others. Imagine TV commercials or print ads with a policeman or government official lecturing a viewer about the need to drive cautiously during rains. Failure is almost assured for such an approach because it does not come at a relevant time in an engaging way. Here, the bleeding billboards not only come at the right place and time (roadside during rain), but they communicate the message in a way that embodies the tragedy of drivers’ failure to adjust—the photo of a young child. This beats a flashing yellow warning sign any day. Not only is this effective in its roadside ad placement, but the ad has been viewed nearly 500,000 times on YouTube in less than a month.

My hope is that the concept and framework of Marketing with Meaning is also used by nonprofit organizations to better their strategy and results. Coming up in my book, The Next Evolution of Marketing, I share the story of how another nonprofit issue organization, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, dramatically shifted its marketing approach from interruptive ads to meaningful messages and advice. I may also try to do something in the marketing of the book to specifically reach out to nonprofits, perhaps in a nonprofit way. Stay tuned and, as always, your ideas in the comments are welcome and appreciated!

(Special thanks to Chris Zieverink from our Creative team, who not only sent me this link but just created a killer logo for Marketing with Meaning that I’ll be sharing here soon.)

I trust that I’m not the only one who was horrified to read in Advertising Age yesterday that the city of Venice, Italy, is opening up St. Mark’s Square for advertising. It marks the first time in the piazza’s 900-year history that advertising will grace this remarkable scene. Large electronic billboards will be placed on scaffolding, and the cash from the program is said to help pay for the restoration of the square.

Some predict that this will be another great opportunity for brands to connect with consumers. Mike Segrue, Global Chief Client Officer at out-of-home agency Kinetic Worldwide, captured the opportunity in saying:

The screens in St. Mark’s will be a great chance for high-end brands to reach a largely upscale audience… The careful vetting of copy and creative should allow Venice city council to retain some control and, of course, in the end important renovations will be completed. It is probably a relatively harmless necessary evil.”

Kudos to Segrue for his optimism and acceptance of the idea as a “necessary evil.” But I fear that this modest proposal will do much more harm than good. I believe that consumers are increasingly hostile to the way advertising has invaded nearly every square inch of eye space, and by bringing its touch to a 900-year-old historic landmark, advertising brands may find angry reactions instead of equity building.

I believe anger will come from an overall impression that “enough is enough” and that a line has been crossed. Recall the ill-fated attempt by McDonald’s to advertise on report cards. It was another example of a government body looking to embrace a “necessary evil” in order to pay the bills. But both local and national citizens rose against the plan and it was abandoned within weeks. Advertising in St. Mark’s Square will remind people who have visited the spot of a special time in their lives, and legions of future tourists will be disappointed to see the city of Venice sell out.

There are so many other ways that both government and marketers could renovate St. Mark’s without meaningless ad messages. I could see American Express or Visa create a global campaign about saving the square, raising money and contributing to the renovation. A small, tasteful plaque could be placed in the cobblestones to thank the brand and its members for their support. And it’s not too late! What a PR opportunity for a brand to propose this solution and come in and rescue the product from a necessary evil.

For now, though, we’ll have to chalk up another one for meaningless advertising and the continued belief that innovative advertising interruption will cure all ills. I leave you with a few of my favorite photos from my two visits to St. Mark’s Square.

(My wife, Stephanie, from 1999)

(Me while backpacking, from 1994)

I will be the first to admit that our concept of “meaningful marketing” is not an exact science. One of the main reasons we have launched this blog is to generate a conversation about what is meaningful and what is not. Clever outdoor advertising is one example that I go back and forth on.

I don’t mean the billboards that are plastered everywhere along the highways, on buses, and even on gas pumps and airline tray tables. For an outdoor ad to even have a chance to be effective marketing, it needs to grab your attention. I believe that to be meaningful, outdoor ads must both get your attention and reward it.

Take the example above for Nationwide. As part of its “Life Comes At You Fast” campaign, the brand took over a parking lot in Columbus, Ohio, and re-created a giant paint spill. This ad certainly grabs attention and I believe most people would say it made them smile at least once. As for marketing effectiveness, my bet is that it wins on both gaining attention and generating a positive feeling for Nationwide. In the highly competitive life insurance game, this small difference could mean a lot.

Here’s another example below for our hometown Cincinnati Cyclones hockey team. A few weeks ago I was walking out of a client’s office and saw this pile of snow on the corner during a 70-degree afternoon, with an advertisement to that evening’s playoff game. Again, it got my attention right away, and it got a smile as well. Heck, I even had a little sense of pride that our local team was in the finals and got out in the community to build some buzz. Plus, $1 beers is meaningful to a lot of us….

The downside to clever outdoor marketing is that it is by nature interruptive – and by forcing everyone to look, they can piss off a hell of a lot of people. In the examples above, for every smile or snicker there may be another cry that these ads are polluting our landscape. Other horror stories abound. Target was taken down on NPR for its pair of ads that placed female legs between a four-lane freeway. Got Milk? ads on bus shelters that put out a cookie scent were pulled in San Francisco after one day. The A&E network was blasted for its ads in New York City that beamed a sound message directly into the skulls of passersby.  These are extreme cases, but sometimes even a company logo can be offensive.

So what’s a marketer to do? Tread carefully. I think the best advice comes from our friends at Millward Brown (full disclosure: a fellow WPP agency and we like them a lot). Dede Fitch, Global Analyst at MB, recommends that marketers ask themselves: “What are you giving your audience?” She suggests that we carefully consider length of exposure, intrusiveness, and viewer mood and mind-set.

At the end of the day, marketing with meaning overall, and the use of clever outdoor creative in particular, depend on marketers’ judgment. That’s why we get paid the big bucks.

UPDATE: I just learned that it is now legal for legal brothels in Nevada to advertise their services in Las Vegas. I guess this opens up an entirely new avenue for meaningful marketing….