My Open Kimono

They-Don’t-Get-It Syndrome

Randall Rothenberg, recently appointed President of the IAB, is taking the association to new heights, and the digital community by storm. Not afraid to face-off conventional thinking, Randall is transforming a stale IAB into a forward thinking, progressive leader.

The following text, borrowed from Randall’s “Clog” (I, A BEE), outlines the IAB’s newest collaborative initiative: Marketing-Media Ecosystem 2010, or …. Lighting a fire under the community of marketers who are way too comfortable to admit they need help understanding and playing in the digital sandbox.

“We are on the verge of finding a cure for They-Don’t-Get-It Syndrome. Everyone in marketing during the past 20 years has suffered from – and with – They-Don’t-Get-It Syndrome. It first afflicted the marketing and media industries during the initial wave of agency mega mergers in the 1980’s, and became increasingly widespread and painful as the digital era took hold. A malady familiar to students of business dysfunction, its primary sufferers are members of evolving industry value chains. You can tell whether a company has been infected when its executives routinely profess: “Oh, we get what’s happening. The problem is they don’t get it.” Marketing-Media Ecosystem 2010, a groundbreaking collaboration among the Association of National Advertisers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, and Booz Allen Hamilton, may lead to a cure for this debilitating marketing disease…”

To read the Clog: www.randallrothenberg.com

And a “Thank You” to Randall, for giving me a break from blogging this week!