Wenda Harris Millard on Pork Bellies: Not a Good Thing

Wenda Harris Millard, the chairman of the IAB, President of Media at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and ContextWeb’s newest board member is on her best game here at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Meeting in Phoenix.

Her message: pork bellies (unless Emeril Agassi is cooking them) are not a good thing. And she is right.

Wenda Harris Millard - No Pork Bellies

After recounting various perils in her welcome keynote Sunday night including global warming, terrorism, the sub-prime mess, rising fuel costs and a devastating retail environment, Millard called our current state “daunting but exhilarating” with 2008 set to be “more hair raising and volatile” than 2007. The tenure of the CMO is a mere 22 months and the “consumer is calling the shots”.

“My space is your space” said Millard with roles changing and overlapping, with Sir Martin’s frenemy notion very alive and well. “Madison Avenue is repaving itself” with Publicis buying Digitas, the emergence of new media labs at the agencies, Denuo, Neo, agencies bringing futurists on staff and an ongoing string of investments including Microsoft buying aQuantive, Google buying DoubleClick, Yahoo! buying RightMedia and WPP buying 24/7–a dramatic example of “strange bedfellows”.

Publisher Merdith bought agencies in 2007, publisher Hachette bought network Jumpstart Automotive, CondeNast has a full service marketing group, Turner Digital has a promotions group… who is on first?… “My space is your space”… I’m in your business… You are in my business… We are partners and customers of one another…

With all this change we “must not trade our assets like pork bellies” said Millard. Bring on the networks and exchanges. But let’s “distinguish between quality and commodity” and let’s make sure we are selling value, not price. No pork bellies!

Amen. That’s certainly what we believe at ContextWeb and the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange–delivering both scale and control in a premium (not remnant, not pork belly!) environment.

Other speakers have picked up on the “no pork belly” mantra, so it is going to be a real dust-up Tuesday morning during the panel on ad auctions and exchanges. Stay tuned!