John Osborn hopes clients keep experimenting

It's a bit unsettling to think of BBDO's John Osborn being held up to the rest of the world as the poster-boy for alternative advertising, since no other agency has quite the allegiance to the 30-second spot as BBDO. Nonetheless, Osborn's gone and told Reuters he hopes advertisers don't cut back on their experimental budgets if the economy really tanks, and about that, he's right. "In tight economic conditions, some of these new mediums are exactly what we should be looking into. I think they are incredibly targeted," he said. Still, the story contains some of the naivete people in the ad business have come to associate with mass media stories about advertising, claiming that unnamed "industry watchers" think that, in an economic downturn, advertisers might forgo new media because "it doesn't have the track record of TV commercials." Doesn't have the track record for what? Being difficult to accurately measure? I would argue—and hope—that in this point in the evolution of digital media (eschewing stuff that's still considered experimental in the U.S., like mobile), an economic downturn will actually move dollars to non-traditional media. It's cheaper, it's far more accountable, and, most importantly—unlike a few years back—marketers actually believe in it.