Last week I gave a lecture at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.   A former professor asked me to speak to her Integrated Marketing Communications class, and I spent some time talking to them about trends in user-centric design, inter-agency collaboration, and a view of the agency world from the MBA perspective.  It’s always fun to meet with students, and it was great to be back at my alma mater on a sunny Berkeley afternoon.

I think most students see themselves as brand managers, not ad professionals, and it was great to have an engaging and frank discussion with a bunch of smart future clients.  Among their more interesting questions:

• Can the the interactive channel could hold its own as the center of a marketing campaign? (Yes.  I pointed them to the Jeep Patriot Adventure and Mudds campaigns)
• Should we take a best-of-breed or one-stop shop approach to agency hiring? (Depends.  I think the more engaged a brand’s customers are, the more important it is to hire specialists who are experts in their channel.  The Nike/ Weiden & Kennedy split is a prime example of a great ad agency that is not equipped to handle the digital medium.)
• How can we get more into user-generated campaign ideas without giving up control of the brand? (Oy.  There’s basically an inverse relationship between your willingness to experiment/ let go and how excited consumers are going to get about your campaign.  Strike a balance between no control (Chevy Tahoe) and no fun (Nissan Sentra).

You can view the slide presentation here.

Misha Cornes