Josh Sklar, founder of Heresy, thinks the advertising industry is broken.
“In the late ‘80s the business was still sexy, it was still like the Mad Men days,” Sklar said. “The client would come to us and we would work together and we would build something.”
Then over the years, ad production became more of an assembly line that sucked away the creativity.
“You are just doing production for other people’s ideas,” Sklar said. “How did the business go from being something so many creative people in the world wanted to be a part of to something where you’re just forced to do schlocky work to make some money?”
Sklar asserts that the entire industry is about to fall over a cliff.
“The future was not just bleak but dire,” he said.
So Sklar and his friend and former colleague John Lambie decided to take action. They’ve created “Digital Doesn’t Matter,” a “manifesto, a book, in interactive, feature rich digital and standard hardcover formats.”
Digital Doesn’t Matter is not just a book, but a lasting platform that can be updated and changed with the focus on what went wrong with the advertising industry and ideas on how to fix it.
“We didn’t want to write a book that is out of date,” Sklar said.
They’ve already conducted more than 100 interviews with marketing and branding experts who have shared their “insights, anecdotes, experiences, frustrations, opinions, and perspectives.”
Sklar and Lambie have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $30,000 for the project. They’re almost half-way to their goal with 152 contributors and 24 days remaining. They need the money to create the iPad app and to self-publish the book on Amazon in digital and hardcover formats.
“Everyone who works in the business sees where it’s going and what it used to be like,” Sklar said.
Sklar and Lambie have worked in the advertising industry for more than 25 years and they’ve worked in senior executive positions within top 10 global agencies.
“We know the story and the challenges from the inside out as most recently evident in our positions running WPP’s Enfatico agency to service the Dell worldwide business,” Sklar wrote in a post. “But, more to the point, we know and have access to successful, brilliant people all over the world who are even more experienced, in even more impressive positions and who know exactly what is going on and what needs to change.”
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