Last week I was talking to Erik Press, Executive Producer of Commercials at Zoic Studios about the future of advertising. Erik has been working in commercials for over twenty years so has seen a great deal of changes in the advertising industry over that time. Erik considers himself, “an orchestrator of putting creative teams together … Essentially my job is to manage teams of producers and artists. I look outward to sales and client relations to foster those relationships as well as build new ones. connecting the right people together and figure out the cost implications of doing so. I engage people to dialogue about creative solutions inside and outside of Zoic Studios. It’s working with people, creating ideas and building something exciting.”

Prior to my obsession with the television show Mad Men, the world of advertising and marketing has always been fascinating to me. As a kid, I remember commercials that stuck with me to this day,

Mikey likes Life cereal:

An old woman asking, where is the beef for Wendy’s:

Madge dipping her hand in a small bowl of Palmolive:

And of course I know how to spell bologna because of Oscar Mayer:

However, the world of advertising has come a long way since then, so I wanted to pick Erik’s brain and find out where he felt the advertising industry was headed.

Press has seen his fair share of commercial production through the years and he says the economy has naturally affected the advertising industry. Whereas years ago budgets were larger and there was only one place to put a commercial, now budgets are smaller and there re multiple places where commercials are placed, “Budgets haven’t grown, but now you have three different places to put your campaign and now you have to split up you production money.”

Besides sheer economics, another shift is the use of an interactive component in campaigns. “The biggest shift in the last two years is what is driving the campaign. It used to be the broadcast driving the campaign and now the interactive and integrated components are on par with what is driving marketing and advertising in what we have been calling the ‘commercial’ world, at least in my perspective. There is becoming less of a barrier between commercial and interactive and there should be less of a distinction. I think there has to be a synergy amongst the different platforms and I don’t think we should call it just commercial production anymore or just interactive production, I think there is a larger picture.”

So what is the bigger picture for Erik? “You have interactive content that keeps people’s eyes on brands longer. They are exposed in different media outlets and platforms.” If that is the case, then what in Erik’s mind is the future? “I think the future of advertising and marketing is about lifestyle. It’s about the things we buy, the places we go, the environments that we live in, fully integrated into those pieces of our lives are marketing and advertising. Marketing and advertising naturally becomes a part of our everyday lives. It’s not just a television commercial or print ad anymore. It’s about intertwining brands in lifestyle and that is the biggest impact. It’s the Nike lifestyle or the Red Bull lifestyle; it’s literally what we surround ourselves with.”

There are interactive projects currently in the works for Zoic Studios. “There are a lot of projects that we are talking to agencies about that will have a large interactive component, everything from athletics to communication devices. We are talking to major brands about campaigns that the broadcast is inspired out of an interactive experience, it’s amazing stuff.” Erik sites Zoic’s involvement in Killzone 2 as an example of an interactive experience combined with a broadcast experience. “You can look at some of the game trailers. Killzone 2 for example is a broadcast spot, it’s a downloadable spot on the Playstation network and within that it is an engaging and interactive experience. You can drag a thirty second spot out to nine minutes by exploring different levels and facets of how that project was put together. That is a spot that is a great example of interactive.”

Does Erik see any challenges with this new interactive component in the advertising world? “The challenges are that the agencies are splintered. There are interactive people and there are broadcast people and it is a rare agency, in my experience, that completely melds the two together. I think that is changing. I see a lot of agency creatives and producers that are fully throwing themselves into the interactive because that’s where the growth is.”

Are we headed to a world like the one we saw in the movie Minority Report? “Yes it’s coming. Brands aren’t exclusively broadcasting anymore, they are narrowcasting, and they are targeting very specifically because they have all of this data of who you are as a consumer.”

In terms of interactive advertising has Erik seen anything as a consumer that has excited him? “Something I am really excited for is the new Arcade Fire interactive music video which is basically an interactive Google Earth experience.”

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

“It’s a personalized Google Earth experience where you type in an address and you zoom down to the street level you type in. The story is then told through both the music and on the personal address you typed in so every user experience is different based on a geo spatial location. Those kinds of things are exciting. We are looking at a campaign now that is an advertising campaign with a very similar idea. It’s inspiring.”

I agree with Erik it is inspiring. I don’t think Mikey, Madge or Don Draper ever anticipated being part of an advertising campaign that was personally geared toward them and definitely check out the Google Earth/ Arcade Fire experience above. It will seriously blow your mind!