Speaker Series: Lisa Seward

Lisa Seward, currently of MOD communications (founder), formerly of the Fallon media department, came to speak to us today in a talk entitled "Media - From Messenger to Message to Metaphor." MOD is a three year old company that Lisa created in order for her to be a better advocate for media and creative working together.

Lisa Seward described Fallon as the US pioneer of the modern outlook on the role of media. After visiting London for inspiration, they created a department based on the connection/context planning methods. The key idea in Fallon's media department seems to be 'insight applied to creative solutions.'

In her current life, Lisa runs MOD communications and writes a column for MEDIA magazine. In that context, she describes herself as the Andy Rooney of Media. Comments along the lines of 'agencies create process to justify themselves' and 'there are no experts in this business' have made her a controversial figure at times -- though a forward thinking one.

She shared her ideal process model for strategists and media planners with us, which went a little something like this:

1. Communications Strategists and Media Planners work together from the start
2. Think about PR, events and branded content
3. Is there anything else left for ads?
4. Creative

Later in her talk, Lisa Seward made the interesting comment that "you can't know what channels are right just becuase you know the consumer." Though we're taught to try and keep every aspect in mind at the Adcenter, we spend so much time trying to get to know the consumer that it's sometimes refreshing to be reminded. To prove her point, Seward pointed out that consumers have changed radically and are now in charge, and that communication abilities in a web 2.0 or 3.0 world change the playing field for both customers and marketers. Media 'then' was abotu allocating budget to accumulate eyeballs, while media now is about attracting people to message via good ideas.

She left us with the following thoughts:

1. All advertising is spam ~ use that as your filter when creating
2. Fit brands into consumers lives and add value
3. Great ideas are solicited, wanted, relevant and appropriate
4. An idea, not a distribution method, is core
5. Ideas are currency
6. Insight --> Ideas --> execution