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Remembrance of things past

Alex Campbell, Strategic Planner at DTDigital / Ogilvy Melbourne

No topic has captivated the imagination of advertising people around the world quite like the “the agency of the future”. Conferences are held to discuss it. Blog posts abound. Twitter is abuzz. Countless articles are published. Almost every agency shamelessly proselytises their “new model” and the supposed glory it can bring to their clients, complete with new job titles and everything.

It has become a cliché to point out that we could have all solved a lot of important problems for our clients in the time we’ve spent debating what the agency of the future will look like, how it will be structured, or arguing over whether agencies in their current form will even exist in the future.

I can’t help but wonder if the answer to this question lies not in our future but in our past. There was a time – not all that long ago in the scheme of things – when advertising agencies were invaluable to their clients business. The days of David Ogilvy, of Leo Burnett, of Bill Bernbach. An age in which choosing the right agency was one of the most important decisions a CEO would make. An era when agencies drove the agenda with clients through real insights and innovation. When clients went to agencies with business problems and agencies came back with business solutions.

Of course it could never stay this way for long. The easy profits agencies made in the early days would never survive as so many new agencies entered the game, and the balance of power between agencies and clients would soon be restored. Along the way the work that agencies do became a commodity. Clients internalised the strategic role that made agencies so essential, and agencies became order takers rather than order makers – their main purpose became taking detailed briefs from clients and turning them into ads of the specified format.

No doubt the industry has been broken for quite some time, but the financial turmoil of the past 18 months brought this into sharp focus for many agencies. At best clients demanded more for their buck, at worst they wanted even more for even less. When you’re in a commodity business, account pitches come down to who will offer the required services at the lowest multiple. Any pretention of caring about strategic or creative value subsided with the times.

I have no idea what the agency of the future looks like. What I do know is that the rise of the internet and technology has profoundly changed the way brands engage with consumers, just as television reshaped the way that brands engaged with consumers in the days of Ogilvy and Bernbach. Everyone is scrambling to catch up with these changes. More than ever before clients need agencies to help them navigate this rapidly evolving landscape.

While ‘legacy agencies’ keep thinking that a 30 second TV spot and 1200 TARPs is the answer to every imaginable problem, let’s get in there and help our clients innovate and connect with their consumers in new ways. Let’s drive the agenda with clients through real strategic thinking – not just in their communications but in their products, in their distribution, in their packaging, and in every area where they interact with consumers.

Agencies that ‘get it’ right now are in an incredible position. We can help transform our clients’ businesses to make sense in the digital age, and reap the rewards that follow. The blueprint for this was established half a century ago - it worked then and it will work now. We need to take back our seat at the corporate strategy table. We need to re-learn how to speak the language of CEOs and boards. We need to build their trust and respect so that when they come to us with a problem, it’s a business problem rather than an advertising brief. We need to think and work laterally across all areas of the client’s business to solve the problem. Just like those who came before us.

Beautiful work from Goodby Silverstein for Tostitos.

Not sure why but I found this quite hilarious. Is it the sound effects? Perhaps it’s the cardboard cut outs dancing around? Maybe it’s the vigorous movement involved in the creative brainstorming process? Or it could be the bad-ass ECD who steps half way through?

It’s in Cantonese but even if you don’t speak the language the explanation makes about as much sense as most discussions on agency structure do.

What's cool and what's not for brand managers

Cool

Creating and publishing content that people genuinely love (Ray-Ban, Johnnie Walker)
Helping bring people together in interesting ways (Bendigo Bank, Football Australia)
Doing crazy shit that makes people laugh or intrigued (Volkswagen, Toyota)
Websites that actually do useful stuff for people (Nike)
Being aware of and connected to what’s going on in popular culture (MYER)
Having a real, distinctive, human personality (Steinlager)

Not cool

Assuming that anyone is interested in what you have to say about your brand
Trying to communicate your message before you’ve earned your audience’s attention
Assuming that the people who watch or engage with your ads are stupid
Taking away privacy and not at least giving relevance back in return
Letting your advertising agency setup a Facebook page for your campaign because “social media is important”
Not actually using the media that you’re making decisions about
Advertising that interrupts or annoys people in any way

Inspired by Jessica’s post a few weeks ago.

gautamramdurai:

“The Internet Hates Ads”

Nicolas Roope from POKE talks about “things vs ads” (via upside)

reblogged from gautamramdurai

Over the last year or two, we have spent untold hours trying to document how we do things at the company. At first, it was this ridiculous futile exercise in documenting every process step and every decision moment. It was like going into the rabbit hole – deeper and deeper into arcana and control freakiness. Now, I’m thinking more about documenting our philosophies, our approach, and what we believe in. The general guidelines for tackling our problems. The general guidelines for stating what we believe in. I find that many of the challenges in maintaining quality work as you step back are rooted in people not knowing your guiding principles. How many other agencies do this, I wonder? How many agencies can stand up and say exactly what it is they believe in and what they are going for? This is something I think we could all be better at, and those that are successful at it are one more step down the path of successful everlasting agency life, I’ll wager. “Why agencies need to make star quality routine” by Rick Webb

Watch this fascinating interview with Tony Davidson of Wieden+Kennedy.

Interesting take on the modern day advertising organizational structure from Mother NY:

The agency’s account people-less structure (a key Mother London trait that was passed down), Karlsson says empowers creatives, who end up getting more involved in clients’ businesses. “(Account management) is a discipline that everyone in that group shares,” says Karlsson. “It’s one little thing but it forces everyone, including creatives, to not just be in their own world.” And along with dedicated account managers, Mother eschews a top-down management style. “We think that no one else should represent anyone else’s point of view. If you have a question about something that was written you talk to the person who wrote it. That engages the people who work on an account.”

Creativity Agency of the Year 2009: Mother New York - Agency of the Year 2009 - Creativity Online (via seij, connerhuber, dennisdemori)

reblogged from dennisdemori

Love this idea from Ogilvy London!

neilperkin:

Idea Shop is a pop-up ad agency brought to you by Ogilvy Group UK. For three days we are offering our services free of charge to small businesses, community projects, arts groups, and other organisations and individuals in the Lambeth area.

reblogged from neilperkin

How’s this for the most amazing agency reel you’ve ever seen? Particularly impressive when you consider that many agencies can’t even get rid of the typos in their pitch decks.

As agency people, digital or otherwise, we can be a little cavalier about our own media habits. We create television commercials and use DVRs to obliterate them from our sight. We create banners and microsites that we never even visit. The days of people waiting to receive our messages are over. The only proof you need is in your own behavior. What was the last television commercial you watched or banner you clicked on? We comfort ourselves with the soothing refrain of “we are not the target” or “they’re not like us.” The good news is that they are more like “us” than ever before, and it would be richly rewarding to treat the people we are marketing to the same way we wish to be treated. “6 digital agency survival tips for 2010”, Liz Ross, EVP & Chief Growth Officer, Digitas US (via @el_gordon)

When a single TV spot or print ad used to be able to simultaneously drive awareness, consideration and preference, marketers got a lot of value out of this ad. But now the best ads can do is start the consideration process, which more often than not is happening online. And although a punchy line might trigger awareness, it plays almost no role during consideration. Here, the “rational” experience of brands trumps the “emotional” delivery of a clever tagline or visual. Yet ad agencies have almost no experience in the former and way too much comfort in the latter. Even when they develop online campaigns, traditional agencies tend to approach the Web as just another place to deliver a metaphor. So instead of creating useful tools, applications, demos, customer support communities or streamlined ways to complete a transaction, they fall back on familiar stunts and gags, such as viral videos. R/GA founder & CEO Bob Greenberg, writing in Adweek

Agencies: definitely don’t try this stuff at home. If you believe that you need to develop apps as well as ads, hire a company with the skills. Quite frankly, agencies might think about learning how to use spreadsheets properly before they try a moonshot. From this funny comment on this excellent AdAge article. I agree that building software companies within the dinosaur agency groups is a recipe for disaster. But it’s already working for the new breed of agencies like CP+B, R/GA, AKQA, Digitas etc