The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Nursery Stories Are Killing Advertising …

So one thing I want to bitch about before I go on holiday is the lethargy of agencies.

For an industry that claims to be forward thinking, pragmatic and full of energy, momentum and ideas – I am astounded how slow many of them are to react unless …

1 There is a new pitch

2 A client threatens to walk

What’s even funnier is how slow so many of them are interms of looking after their own staffs needs and wants.

I think pretty much every monotonous, corporate mission statement I’ve ever read pays some pithy homage to the staff being ‘their best asset’ … and yet when they actually have a chance to prove it, they are slower than a snail carrying his weekly shopping bags.

Payrises get held back …

Vacancies take an age to be filled … 

Job offers take forever to be made …

Equipment is updated at a rate where it is already obsolete …

You name it, the majority of agencies do it.

Of course interms of what they ‘claim’ … you’d think you were watching a category that could take on Formula One for speed but far too often, it’s main obsession is with what has happened rather than what they can make happen.

My fave is when they come out in the press banging on about some fancy new job they’ve created – hiring someone with a title like CONTENT PLANNER, DESIGN PLANNER, DIGITAL DM STRATEGIST, INTERACTIVE CONTENT PLANNER – when underneath it all, it’s often very similar to a job someone else was doing before …

1 It became fashionable

2 A client would happily pay a premium for.

A perfect example of this is the rise of Channel and Content Planners.

Personally … and I’m sure quite a few people will disagree with me … I think they’re a load of wank.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the role I am criticising [though Content Planning does make me smile for all the wrong reasons] … it’s the fact that this was the sort of thing great Media Strategists were doing twenty years ago. 

I have some very talented friends who are Channel and/or Content Planners and after much interrogation, none of them has been able to satisfy me they’re doing something dramatically different to when they were a Media Strategists, Planners or Heads Of Copy.

Far too often agencies talk the talk but don’t walk the walk … they’ve been banging on about media neutral ideas for decades and in the main failed miserably to make it happen.

OK … OK … not all agencies have failed and I have to acknowledge clients have played a major role in this lethargy, but it’s still sad the industry treats the creation of a video game [ie: for BK] as the second coming of communication!!!

You can bet your backside that next year they’ll be a billion entries into Cannes of Video Game solutions for clients … or environmental concepts … or Youtube only campaigns, it’s pathetic!

From a consumer perspective, trial and error hasn’t hurt Apple … exploration hasn’t destroyed Virgin … innovation is yet to undermine NIKE [if anything, it enhances their consumer appeal] and yet our industry – made up of all these supposed cutting-edge organisations – sits there waiting for someone else to make a ‘first move’ because they’re all too frightened incase it results in them being ridiculed by the industry at large.

All this results in is more HEADLINES about agencies opening on Second Life or creating a Content Division or starting an Interactive Department or investing in a new process methodology which is set to REVOLUTIONISE the advertising industry – even though the end result is the same old bland bollocks that has gone on time and time before.

Where has the ingenuity gone?

Where’s the bravery?

Where’s the experimentation?

Where’s the leadership?

And no, Kevin Roberts is not an acceptable response.

Look, I am not saying we should discard the old … far from it, there’s huge, huge, huge value in looking at the lessons of the past … and certainly not all agencies behave this way, however if the majority want industry to start valuing them again, maybe they should start to include speed, exploration and bravery back into their ‘equation’ – because if all they do is continue to look through the ‘rear view mirror’, they’re just walking steadily towards their own demise.

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